If you could ask seven questions of a modern poet, what would they be?
Writer Jeremy Brunger had the opportunity to sit down with poet Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, American poet and songwriter. Here are his thoughts on art, how it has changed over time, and our place in its history.
J: Throughout Western antiquity, art was not such a conceptual disunity as it is now—it even included scientific inquiry. I think the way we conceive of the arts is an effect of our century-long division of labor, our piecing of the economic whole into its individual constituents. What is art, to you? How does division within artistic movements, throughout time, affect your cognition of art as a whole? Do you see it as poeisis, in the classical and Romantic sense, or do you see its individuation throughout poetry, prose, sculpture, and music, whose fundamental elements are disparate?
G: In many ways I remain a child of the ’60s. “Interdisciplinary” was a mantra of the times, at least academically. In high school, at the North Carolina School of the Arts, although a “visual artist,” I was pulled out of standard English by my professor and tutored in poetry for two years (and thus had a publishing contract by the time I graduated). In the studio below our art department, Martha Graham was teaching dance; I used to sit in her class with a pad and charcoal and sketch her for hours (I was enthralled!). Across the hall in the dorm was Danny Brubeck; whose daddy, Dave, would come on weekends and they’d jam until curfew. It was the ’60s and we never discussed making a living; we made art.
At California Institute of the Arts, for college, again I was a visual major, but the wonderful Deena Metzger taught me writing. Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Rubenfeld was my suite mate, hogging the bathroom while endlessly applying curlers and mud packs; I made a wondrous film starring Paul as a mermaid, and the famous Bloomsbury poet, Paul Roche, as the Old Man of the Sea. “Conceptual art” was the new maxim and frequently all students would attend classes wearing some mask creation or participating in an elaborate choreography. All students had to take Tai Chi and read Joyce. Money and careers were rarely mentioned; we were hippies. There was always live music to be heard, dancers stretching on anything horizontal, and both film and still cameras recording our lives.
So … I have always perceived ART as a unit, a whole, as life itself, and unrelated to economic issues. Hence, I have made a life as a poet—illogical, but inescapable and inevitable.
J: If you consider poetry an art separate from the others, why do you engage in it and its traditions? If you consider poetry an aspect of the artistic impetus as a whole, why do you focus specifically on it rather than the whole gamut?
G: I came into this life writing spiritual koans and couplets. I had a bound collection by second grade. So perhaps I was a zen monk in a past life—I have always been an Asianophile. But I also grew up drawing and watercoloring. I became obsessed with William Blake (with whom I share a birthdate), words meeting images. For years I had galleries in L.A. I no longer paint, for various reasons, but I have fallen back in love with analog photography—I have taken thousands of portraits over the years, mostly of artists and writers. (see gavin geoffrey gillard’s photography here. NSFW)
Poetry does not stand alone. It has simply always been my through-thread. It is as old as imaging, and certainly outlasts troublesome prose!
J: Does poetry have room for a prescriptive manifesto of form and content? Is there room in it for an Enlightenment theory of unity, of administrative rules and formalisms, or is it best served libre?
G: I would rather ascribe to poetry/art an “enlightenment theory of enlightenment.” When I meditate I put my foot on the clutch. The car may be still running, but it is no longer engaged. I learned this through writing, through art. When I try to be creative, the best I can be is derivative. But when I am out of gear, I become engaged with what the Buddhists would call Buddha-mind, the Taoists would call “no-mind,” and the Hindus may call simply “Awareness.” At that time, I am being arted. Even as a kid, I’d write a poem and then have to look up half the words I’d used. Flannery O’Connor used to say that if your stories didn’t surprise you, they certainly wouldn’t surprise your readers. Word.
J: Some think of poetry as akin to gardening, as a hobby people take up later in life. But I have seen it taken up as a hobby, intellectual and emotional, among younger people—it is even a profession for some. Is there a generational gap within the poetic canon, or a sort of gap between types of people who may register it and who may not? If so, what typifies this person?
G: As I said, I was writing poems before first grade. I stopped through much of grade school, until a poet-English professor discovered me and allowed/encouraged me to write daily and obsessively. Now I’m an old fart and I’m still writing. Large chunks of my earlier canon have recently been rendered into an operatic libretto, When Adonis Calls, composed by Clint Borzoni, which has just won the international Frontiers Award and is soon to be presented by the Fort Worth Opera Company (whenadoniscalls.com). I’ve written musicals, pop songs, and have had many poems turned into classical art songs. In my Hollywood life I wrote comedy for Joan Rivers, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton … and have to say that said quips were poems in their own right—as much of my poetry tends to have punch lines.
“What typifies this person?” People write for ego, to get laid, for therapy, for career, for spiritual revelation … All of those apply to me!
J: Even Darwin, in his Origin of Species, borrowed aesthetic concepts from philosophy and the arts to support his scientific argument for biological evolution. It could be argued Darwin, too, wrote poetry in his own way and for his own purposes. What does poetry do for you? Why bother? “Must you write,” as Rilke asked in his Letters to a Young Poet?
G: Poetry genuinely has been my country and religion and yoga. Many a young man has told me over the years that he “came out” reading my romantic poems, or that reading Notes from a Marriage with a partner saved their relationship. But in my own life it has been a personal sadhana. A constant awakening. All of my spiritual searches and attainment have been a direct result of the disciplined practice of stepping on the clutch and allowing the Creative to create me. No, I don’t have to write, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t. Even believing as I do that all this (society, world) is going down soon doesn’t thwart my process, nor have the times when publishing seemed out-of-reach—because publishing never really was the impetus. But if I stop being Awareness’ bitch—I mean “pen”— of what use am I?
J: Poetry was once considered the purview of academia (and still largely is), a game for academics and their theories. Through the 1960’s and beyond it reached a more popular audience who not only read it but also wrote it—one thinks of Plath, a bourgeoise, and Sexton, a woman who came to poetry through an adult-education center—and poetry became uprooted from its origins in professional artistic discourse. It found an audience not among the successful people typical of the postwar booms but among the excluded, the subaltern, and the (nominally) insane. Is there a future for the art form, and is that future democratic? Or is it trending towards an aristocratic reformation, wherein only the educated bother with it, and the rest denounce it as a waste of time?
G: Academia has never appealed to me. And the writers I adore are more apt to hang out in hovels in the mountains or along river banks. What surprise has ever come from academia? Whitman has never been a favorite, but he is certainly one of our most notable poets. But so is Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Buffy St. Marie. The psychedelics of the ‘60s created many a fine poet—but that’s another topic! Personally I follow the hermits—Ch’uang Tzu, T’ao Ch’ien, Li Po, Basho and the haikuists; courtesans—Ono no Komachi, Izumi Shikibu; and the many wonderful, crazy mystics—Mirabai, Hafiz, Rumi, Francis … I would rather an author who lives in a cave than within ivy-covered walls. But I am always ready to be surprised!
J: Is art manly? Where it is thought of outside of academia, it is often thought of as a feminized art form, a plea for losers who would rather think about abstractions than paying the bills through toil. I know that most poets writing today have to do both, since only a very few manage to make tenure off of it. This observation pertains to the question of poetry as hobby—but what sort of hobby might it be? What is the sex of poetry? If it possesses the capability, who might it free?
G: Are three-piece suits manly? are silly leather outfits? military apparel …? In Eastern philosophies, the Void, from which all is created, is often considered feminine (or yin), but the act of creation itself is manly (yang, active, or godly). Whatever. Paying bills has never been my forte. But for six decades they have managed to get paid. Okay, so I’ve filed bankruptcy a couple of times, but I’ve always eaten well and supported a host of felines. But NEVER have I considered art or poetry a “hobby”. “Sex,” definitely, at times, but never “hobby.” And now that I have recognized the act of creation as liberation, I am free. And as such, my poetry has become free as well.
Is it a “career”? Eh, who can say—such has never been my intent. Perhaps the new opera will slather me in jewels. Or the new hardbound Sibling Rivalry anthology, The Mortal Poems, will make it to Oprah’s playlist. Maybe I’ll even get laid. But, frankly, I’d rather just keep on writing.
Photo: courtesy of whenadoniscalls.com, a new opera by Clint Borzoni, from the poems of Geoffrey Gavin Dillard, adapted for the stage by John de los Santos.
