I remember tasting the tobacco shored in your lungs, and you had the courage to tell me my auburn hair smelled of a bonfire.
I once vowed a dress I owned would forever smell of rain and my ink-stained fingertips would fidget – restless with memories, but now, when I cradle myself to sleep, my eyes are empty.
I no longer name the silhouettes that landscape my bare walls or dance along my broken skeleton bones.
I remember when my brittle skin was scented like my favorite library, but no one picks up an abandoned tome when the ink that travels the pages is nothing more than a smudge and ashy dots.
I am an empty teacup in a house that is haunted with your name. When I reread the letters you wrote me, shards of glass glitter along voids of thought, threatening to lacerate the emptiness. To puncture the silence where memories once towered like infernos.
William Goldspiel is a poet by passion; though few of his works have seen the public eye, he has been writing since he could hold a pen in his hands. As a young child, he wrote a page a day in his book after school. He is in the process of rewriting his current works.
William’s style can be considered unconventional at first glance, but when you read more of his poetry, you begin to understand his rhythm and cadence. He can have a polarizing presence – in fact, when I first talked to William, he infuriated me because of a purposefully poorly written poem. Little did I know, it was purposeful, and he is actually a very talented, if sometimes obscure, poet. His poems remind me a bit of e.e. cummings, in the vein that I have to reread them often to fully understand them.
I know it’s a cliché, but what inspires your poems? How do you know what direction you want them to go in?
Most often, I find myself hit by a line or a series of words, an image, or a concept from out of nowhere. Often, it comes out in a long first draft, though sometimes it starts and stops for a while (years) as I work out what they mean. Generally, what inspires my poems is the same thing that inspires all the forgotten notes files on my PC. There’s not really a rhyme or reason as to why something works or not.
Where I intend to take a poem and where it goes depend on the poem really. I remember while writing B. Solid/Liquid/Gas I had to hit three different story beats, but the beats themselves came as I was writing them. I would say that I mostly find the direction when I’m there.
A lot of poets seem to think that because poetry is a form of self-expression, it should not be edited; otherwise, it censors the poets’ intention or somehow convolutes the message. As a poet who clearly puts effort into his work, what are your thoughts on this?
When I was a kid, I didn’t know how to edit. So I just wrote and when it was done, it was done. When I learned to really go back and fix my writing is when I became a better writer, and it’s the part I stress to anyone starting out. [Emphasis my own, not William’s.] It’s why simple things like a spell check can make such a huge difference in the quality of your (and not you’re) writing.
What do you do when you feel blocked? What are some of your favorite subjects to write about? Least favorite?
Distraction is basically all you’ve got. Back when I was routinely productive, I would take breaks between writing to play Civilization. I actually wrote a book that way.
I have a core group of people who have followed me from story to story, so no matter if my book takes place in 1980s Colorado or after the sun has gone nova in an extire galaxy away it will probably be about how they would respond to the situations. I also like writing indecipherable metaphors, a unified theory of everything, the words “you” “fuck” and sometimes “duck”, and nonsense. I dislike actually doing any writing at all, as it’s not only emotionally and mentally taxing, but I never have any idea if I’m doing it right.
We’ve discussed how you use George Carlin as an inspiration for titles. What poets, lyricists, comedians, etc. inspire your poetry? What do you take away from each of them?
I got the idea for the structure of matingsong [William’s in-progress poetry book] from misremembering a Kafka story that completely slips my mind at the moment. He (or the translation) used indentation to great effect in the story and it created the B, etc. [William’s structuring device in his poetry book.]
Here’s the place where I admit that I haven’t read any poetry and everyone outs me as a fraud. I do enjoy Vonnegut, Bradbury, King, Kafka, and Douglas Adams.
Despite the fact that I name-dropped them in a title, I’m not inspired by Daft Punk.
What’s the most difficult thing about being a poet?
Trying to force it when it isn’t there. Especially when you have something and then it stops. You like what you’ve got going and now it’s just not there any more. Then you push and make it work and you question if anything you’ve ever written has ever been good.
Why do you write poetry?
When I get that thought, that image, it’s something that I want to make real.
What emotions elicit the best poems in you?
Longing. Plummeting, pit in your stomach rising, endless falling. Not hopeless, but certainly about to crash. Also, Sardonic glee. Triumphant wonder. Peevishness. Love.
B. Snowfall Frost clings to your eyelashes sending diamond rays across your sight. You’re the ideal vision of a makeup advertisement 1)A perfection untouchable a)even if they’re using the brand the makeup is still applied by artists and you can never hope to achieve the effect at home b)much too beautiful for the average person to ever hope to attain and that’s only starting with your eyes. I’m in wonder at your hair, something that can pool underneath your lying form to create a black canvas that hides all manner of linen; strung tight coiled rope down and up your back, into your hands, nervously fidgeting with icicles on clinging strands. It’s like a slowly moving snap fan, with seamless transition. You stand on a fire exit, broad enough to turn into a porch. Are you smoking? I don’t know. It’s cold enough out that your breath mists around you anyway. You’re leaning on a railing overlooking the entrances to a few lower built buildings yet still high enough to see most of the city. 1)Why are you always up high? I’m terrified of heights. I wish you would move so I could describe your motion. It’s melted metal flowing into place with mechanical precision. There’s the smoothness the liquid perfection, with this robotic touch that gives every motion a feeling of finality to it. When you fly you’re a rag doll tossed around by those behemoths in your back, if you let go of your iron will your limbs jerk with each metal wing beat. – William Goldspiel
From the Academy of American Poets, a cento is derived from the Latin word for “patchwork”. The cento (or collage poem) is a poetic form composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets.
Love, what is love? I tried to answer, but our language had been lost (and forgotten). So, love’s face may still seem love (to me).
Everything carries me (to you).
Love, what is love? I tried to answer, but our language had been lost (and forgotten).
If little by little, you stop loving me, I shall stop loving you…
If suddenly you forget me do not look for me…
Love, what is love? I tried to answer, but our language had been lost.
If I were a poet, I’d kidnap you. Lyric you in lilacs.
If suddenly you forget me, do not look for me.
Isabelle Palerma
Poems Used:
“Love — What is Love?”, Robert Louis Stevenson.
“In the Dusky Path of a Dream”, Rabindranath Tagore.
I sicken myself with hunger. If this was a physical disease, my ribs would be visible through a sheath of skin. (My rib bones so sharp they could splinter glass.) Instead, I waste away while appearing strong. I’d have carved your name on my bones, but bones fracture and break.
You took a needle to your skin, but this time, it wasn’t filled with an illness. You injected yourself with ink, and ink is my illness, my poison.
If you throw the stars upon the midnight canopy, a constellation can be found. In that pattern, my star is home. But this emptiness gnaws at me, a hunger that makes me want to devour my own flesh and cannibalize myself. Instead, my soul is atrophying with disuse. (And I pour more and more into myself, wondering when you’ll return.)
This isn’t a lacuna nor a crater. You have vanished for longer, but I have a heart that’s gone beyond starvation. It’s empty here without you, & I just wait for your return, sustaining myself on memories and promises.
Like collaging layers of parchment paper on top of one another, I have buried myself underneath a rubble of trauma.
Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon or a phoenix rising from the ashes, I am discovering my autobiography stencilled between lines of poetry
and fiction
and fire.
Every word I scribble down in a mad haste is a frantic attempt to name a feeling that is beyond words. (My way of sketching the rocket ship that will guide me back to my galaxy.)
The sanitized version of reality goes down as smoothly as cyanide – a bitter pill, but somehow, something I’m forced to swallow, nonetheless. I see myself in the paint splatters & the little messes she was so eager to take a damp rag to.
(This is an imperfect work of art – lines crooked and acrylics splashed out of bounds. This is not something that will catch the eye of an art dealer.
This is my little mistake on canvas, but you see, that inked-in star is home for me.)
I have spent lifetimes, hiding underneath piles of paper, dodging who I could have been, avoiding who I could be, but the truth is
I could be amazing if you bend the bars of this iron cage. I could be unstoppable if you listen to these memoirs, read these poems, study these paintings.
When you finally ask who I am, I’ll tell you. I’m in media res, still in the progress of self-discovery, but I swear, even in the shattered mosaic bits, I can shimmer.
I, too, can shine.
& perhaps that’s because of your belief in mirrors that I can see the vestiges of beauty glittering through the shards others neglected and left behind.
Isabelle Palerma 