RSP: Many writers experience a low period immediately following publication of their first book. Did you get the blues after your first book Smile! was published?
DD: Yes! It was much more exciting a day when my first book was accepted. When it actually arrived, the physical book was, of course, also a great joy. But soon after I realized that there were boxes and boxes of books in a warehouse somewhere. How was I ever going to sell them all? Who wants a first book by an unknown? Who would review it? And on and on. Smile! was published in 1993, and in 1995, I actually wrote a poem about this experience that was published in the magazine Gargoyle:
MY FIRST BOOK OF POETRY WAS LIKE MY FIRST BABY
since I don't plan to have children. I wanted people to love it
and make a fuss, and, in turn, tell me what a great job I'd done.
My book wasn't reviewed in that many places, and when it was,
one reviewer even called it sloppy. The grandparents weren't as doting
as I'd expected. They went on with their own lives
and didn't buy the book any presents. No one took a picture of me
holding the book in my lap. My husband wasn't jealous
that I was spending too much time with the book. My dog
sniffed the book and walked away, unthreatened. Other books
were getting cooed and fussed over, books cuter and more enchanting than mine.
There is no greater pain for a mother--seeing her child left out. Soon I knew
I had a book that would never accomplish much with its life,
that it wouldn't win prizes or be displayed in prestigious bookstores.
That my book would probably be a drop-out, that I'd have nothing
to brag about when my cousins showed me graduation pictures of their kids.
That my book wouldn't buy me dinner or take care of me
when I grew old. I tried not to let the book sense my disappointment.
I tried to love it for the book that it was, but it began to have the telltale signs
of depression, hanging out with the wrong crowd,
dressing like a rebel. The book reminded me of myself as a teenager,
but when I told it that it shivered in disgust, blaming me
for bringing it into this world in the first place.
RSP: You submitted Kinky to a whopping 54 publishers before it was published. Did you revise the manuscript or the cover letter along the way to make your work more appealing to publishers?
DD: I didn't revise Kinky very much at all, except maybe to add or subtract a poem every once in a while. I submitted the book to a lot of contests so I didn't always need a cover letter. When I did submit a cover letter, I think I just said something along the lines that the poems were about Barbie, the 12-inch tall fashion doll. When I submitted the manuscript to Orchises Press, the press that ultimately published it, I think I said something about liking Big Leg Music, a book by David Kirby that Orchises had previously published. I wish I still had a copy of the letter I sent way back when. I hope it wasn't too embarrassing! I find the more one says in cover letters, the more one risks sounding overblown and pretentious and ridiculous. I hope I wasn't tooting my horn too much. I have to say that the story of Kinky, though, is ultimately a story of persistence. Kinky is my best-selling book. I get a royalty check from Roger Lathbury, who is a wonderful editor, every year.
RSP: You've mentioned that it's important to acknowledge one's influences, and that your influences include Sharon Olds, Molly Peacock, Ai, Sylvia Plath, and Jayne Cortez. But when I read your work I can't help but think of writer/activists such as Susie Bright and Annie Sprinkle because they are also funny, intelligent, sex-positive feminists. How often do you find inspiration in the works or personalities of non-poets? Who would you acknowledge?
DD: I love Annie Sprinkle! She actually made a cameo in my poem "Whole" from the book Girl Soldier:
WHOLE
I learned to masturbate late,
in my mid-twenties, with a self-help book
in my loft bed in the east village.
A few blocks over at an underground club
people were having orgasms in public,
and on stage at the Pyramid,
Annie Sprinkle showed her cervix
to all who were interested. As I learned to dance
around the primal scream that was my clitoris,
around the pink cartoon blurb missing words,
I was in kindergarten gym again. Mr. Lupean
held his left open hand against my back
and his right open hand under the wing span
of my ribs. The forest green mat before me
was spooky, everything dark
beyond my small town. When I tried to explain
I'd never done a tumble before,
he grew impatient, his hands somehow unbuckling
my taut legs until I was kneeling at the edge
of that plastic forest that smelled of sweat. I was sure
I'd break my neck, that my head
would be crushed under the weight of my stiff back.
I half-abandoned myself to death
when I heard the girls behind me, waiting their turns,
sizzle with impatient whispers. My rolling was far from perfect,
the almost-horizontal lost hubcap seconds before its collapse.
I think a few children laughed, my body sideways,
my legs off the mat. And everyone else went on,
perfectly whole as bagels, donuts, and bicycle wheels.
Some even lined up to do it again and again.
DD: And Susie Bright is a goddess. I love reading her column in Bust. She edited a novella of an old friend of mine, Tsaurah Litzkyin a troika called Three the Hard Way: Three Novellas. She is always doing provocative and interesting things and she crosses genres freely. She's a Renaissance Woman, to be sure.
So when asked about influences, I guess I always assume that the interviewer is wondering about poets. But now that you've cast the net a little wider, I should also say that my influences include Lucille Ball, Roseanne Barr, Andrea Dworkin, Alyson Palmer, Amy Ziff, and Elizabeth Ziff who make up the singing group Betty; and the 70's television heroine Mary Hartman (from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) as played by Louise Lasser.
RSP: Your collaboration with Maureen Seaton is exquisite. I especially love the vitriolic poem A Crown of Spells to Ward Off Susans. What is the story behind this poem, the source of this angst? Also, because the poem involves a humorous exagerration of Pagan rituals, I was curious if Pagan beliefs or practices play any part in your life?
DD: Jalina, Im so happy you like this poem! It's technically a crown of sonnets (weirdly rhymed sonnets, but sonnets nonetheless). Maureen and I wrote the poems as witches' spells. The octave of each sonnet is the set up or preparation for the spell and the sextet is the incantation of the spell. They were so much fun to write! Maureen and I are best friends and we were both going through a period where we each had a Susan in our lives. My Susan would boldly and relentlessly flirt with my husband and Maureen's Susan would flirt with her partner. Maureen and I were at our wits' end, so we wrote this poem sort of as a real spell (tongue in cheek since we're not really that mean!). The odd thing is that our spells/poem worked. Shortly after we wrote the poem, the Susans slunk away and became minor characters in our lives. So while I don't actually practice Pagan rituals on any sort of regular basis, I have to say the one time I tried a spell it actually succeeded.
A CROWN OF SPELLS TO WARD OFF SUSANS
1.
Stop crying. Bring all her costume jewelry
to the oldest corner of the dark house
where rats are gnawing. Take cheese, five ounces,
preferably moldy, and write her name backwards
on a soft-shell crab. Eat it while farts
waft past that time-honored Szechuan dish,
the creamy casserole that made Susan ill.
Eat it by fistfuls, your stomach hers. Say:
Sour Cheerios and cesspool Smoothies, gray
chopmeat and the gums of old llamas.
May the double l's double over Susan.
May the pink raw meat and mouth rip
her into puzzle pieces that tip
like a Rubic's Cube in the fat hands of God.
2.
When she denies she's flirting, slit open
a pepper and gather the seeds. Then spit
into a waiter's ear, eat rarebit
or Egg Foo Young, release doves. Now circle
her shoe which you've stolen, its purple
laces and lime-green sole. Take the tongue
of your ogling boss and, to the far-flung
noise of Nine-Inch-Nails, wave it high and yell:
Goddess of Toe Nail Clippings and Bad Smells,
pluck Susan from each potential suitor
and stick her with a corsage pin saying: "For-
ever clumsy." May she wander dazed
through malls where she works for minimum wage
in stores where my lover would never stop.
3.
Razor the bristles off her wet toothbrush,
collect her saliva and plaque in a pouch.
Throw a carton of organic eggs, loud
and unfertilized, into her pancakes.
Now pee on a lamb's tongue then into a lake
where your power will do the most harm. Lick
the crispy raisin moles that dot your sick
mother's stomach and you're through. Ready? Say:
Goddess of Wheatgrass, keep Susan away
in the state of Kentucky where lovers
sleep in slop of pigs and fowl. May she hover
over the Jersey turnpike at rush hour
as she spends her years alone. May admirers
find her breath bad and her clitoris lax.
4.
Cull the sickest-looking fruit from the scarred bowl.
Mashing, drip something green from your mean face
into a stew of awkwardness and baste
until Susan is the shade of your eyebrows.
Stir until she is the shape of five cows-
never before has broth tasted so bossy!
Walk into a forest, bicycle or ski
where you can spin near wild mushrooms, singing:
May the angels toil for you, Susan, ring
creepy Alleluias into sex and dream.
May your days be dark and stained as red beets
as you crawl to find your dusty contact lens.
May the skinny ghost of Ichabod Crane
carry you, cashless, into K-Mart.
5.
Gather stereotypes who look like Susan.
Bring them, insipid and limp, to the cliff
where you saw her kiss your sweetheart. Don't mind if
the pain in her loins is stronger than rum.
Sing "Hey la hey la my girlfriend's back." Bum
a funny cigarette from a famous queen
whose danger is unknown. Saute a cat's spleen,
if you can find one, and while you're cooking, say:
May the half-moons of your thumbnails slay
your future offspring, may their sharp white teeth
bite the TV cord during Ricki Lake week.
May safety pins leap through your ears and tongue
and lacerate you, Susan, the thin rungs
of your career plans ladder you into hell.
6.
Turn on the ceiling fan and imagine
her neck cut off by each whirring blade,
her spine collapsing like a blanched and frayed
embryo in the clinic's light. Pour urine
into the mouth of a north-flowing river
while drowning five blue newts in the cream bleach
she used to lighten her moustache. Eat
the dandruff you snatched from her collar. Holler:
May your leather be stolen at Girl Bar.
May your pee be green, may your hair be cut
by untrained stylists who highlight your bald spot.
May everyone who meets you say "Who?" May
you grow as lonely as a rope. May you fly
into traffic begging my forgiveness.
7.
Now go to Penny's and hide in the smallest
dressing room until you see Susan's feet.
Stretch her toes until they resemble eels,
then bruise them with rocks or small furniture.
Take your brother's old odor-eaters,
the hair of a plucked nipple, and repeat.
Slip her photograph into a hive of bees
and as they sting her image, say out loud:
May you live to bowdlerize your proud
operas into fanny songs, your cinched
waistline into suet. May your rhinestoned hand
grow arthritic, and may your whiny voice
whine over the last prairie like a toy
airplane before it screams into flames and melts.
RSP: When you and Maureen Seaton do collaborative work, how do you avoid a clash of egos? Who ended up having the last say on any given poem? Did you tell one another when you didn't like what the other wrote, or was it a magical symbiosis?
DD: Maureen and I have been collaborating since the early 1990's. We write a lot and throw what we don't like away rather than revise extensively. Something magical happens when we write - we find this third voice, someone who is neither Maureen nor I, and our ego sort of fades into the background. The poem matters, not either one of us. Maureen and I also usually agree when what we've written is dull or unintelligible or not up to par. When that happens, we just begin a new poem. We often use the surrealist technique exquisite corpse, but other times we write one line at a time or chunks and then cut them up and paste them together. We write together sometimes, and when we're really busy, we also compose by sending each other lines by e-mail.
RSP: Would you ever do a collaboration with your husband, poet Nick Carbo? Why or why not?
DD: Nick and I have written a couple of poems together, some written from the point of view of our fictitious Filipino/French Canadian daughter who complains about what bad parents we are. But Nick isn't as interested in collaboration as I am.
RSP: Your husband's poetry is also very funny and insightful. Do you ever find it difficult to be working in the same field? For instance, are there ever resentments or envy if one of you is experiencing great success while the other one's work is lagging? I know this sounds petty, but were all human. I think people would be really interested in how you both balance and support one another despite the inevitable competition (even if it's just subconscious).
DD: I know this sounds really corny, but I take such pride in Nick's success that I don't usually feel anything that amounts to jealousy when he's writing well or getting acceptances. The one time I did feel jealous was when Nick won an NEA the first time he'd ever applied (I had been applying for a decade with no success). If I remember correctly, I was the one who actually waited in line at the post office and mailed his application because he'd finished so near the deadline. I was so ashamed of my jealousy, but Nick could sense it and split the grant with me. And we've done that ever since. If I win any grant money, I split it with Nick. That assures we are always rooting for one another. In terms of publishing, Nick and I have been really supportive of one another. We don't publish in the same magazines all that often and we have, limited as they are, somewhat different audiences. While there is, of course, some cross-over since the poetry audience isn't that big to begin with, Nicks poems really appeal to the Asian American community while mine appeal more to women.
RSP: Do you and your husband share your work with one another regularly and give feedback?
DD: We tried that early in the relationship - sharing each other's work for comment but we quickly learned not to do that. I realized that I really wanted Nick to say, "you're a genius!" And he wanted me to say, "don't change a thing! This is perfect!" We have friends who help us with our work. My friend Maureen is actually my best reader. And Stephanie Strickland, another poet friend of mine, helps me put together book manuscripts. She's really amazing when it comes to seeing connections in poems.
RSP: What are your thoughts about Bush appointing an ultra fundamentalist Christian to oversee womens gynecological / reproductive health? What are your thoughts about prayer as a solution to gynecological problems?
DD: I am so horrified that Bush was elected to a second term. I can't believe I live in a red state (Florida). I grew up in Rhode Island and lived in Boston and New York before moving here, so I've always been in blue states. As for the question of abortion and moral values: I guess fundamentalist Christians would rather kill the babies when they're 18 and its time to send them off to war.
RSP: In keeping with this topic, what is your reaction to Bush's push to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and National Public Radio? Being a prior recipient of a NEA grant, how do you feel this funding helped you in your career, and how has your work in turn benefited tax payers?
DD: I'm very distressed by any cut in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. And I really hope that doesn't happen. I applied for 13 years before being awarded an NEA. The grant came at a time when I really needed it and I'll always be grateful for the money and the extra time it gave me to write. I believe in funding creativity, not destruction. And I believe that art and poetry benefit tax payers in that they provide beauty and a way of seeing the world that isnt pre-packaged or in a sound bite.
RSP: I'm the biggest fan of your book The Woman With Two Vaginas. In your interview with Thomas Fink you mentioned that your first glimpse into Inuit folk tales was the story of Sermerssuaq, "...a physically huge and well-respected (a dichotomy that interests me right there) woman with a clitoris that could engorge and grow bigger than any penis. In another story, a woman brings back her true love from the dead by carving his likeness in blubber and essentially masturbating with it. I was immediately hooked: here were strong woman characters, a dismissal of machismo as silly..."
I can't think of any other culture - except maybe the Kung! in Africa - whose folk tales represent women as being strong, independent, capable people. Greek myths, the Bible stories, and European fairy tales all seem to conspire against a positive female model. Denise, what was it about Inuit culture (at the time these stories were created) that gave rise to these powerful feminist voices? Why was their culture such an anomoly?
DD: When I began researching Inuit stories, I found out that the Inuit had no written language until one was introduced by Christian missionaries in the early 1900's. Before that, Inuit folktales were passed down through oral history. In some of the Inuit languages, there was no past or future tenses and everything was in the present, which I found very interesting. The sexual taboos were very different from our North American sexual taboos, that's for sure.
I am still to this day not sure why, sociologically speaking, female Inuit characters are so strong, only that I was drawn to them for that reason. I am aware that I am also drawn to and perhaps infusing the tales with my own feminist leanings, that I am reflecting the assumptions of my own time and place. In Inuit Women Artists, a book I bought when I was writing The Woman with Two Vaginas, scholar Marion E. Jackson writes:
"It may be tempting to view the emergence of Inuit women in leadership roles and the emergence of independent women artists and writers not only as a new phenomenon but also as evidence of women's movement from positions of subordination to positions of more independence and power in the Inuit culture. That would be misleading. The role of women in Inuit culture has always been one of strength."
This was published in 1994.
RSP: You end your poem Girl Soldier with the lines:
Vaginas from all countries make peace-
the root of the word literally meaning sheath,
a resting place for men and their swords.
Is it your conviction that if more women were in office, the world could be a more peaceful place? Do you ever see that happening?
DD: I really do think that having more women in political power could make the world a more peaceful place. I can't imagine women sending people off to war. I think the United States needs a woman president and more women in congress. I hope we're ready and I hope that women will want to run. I'm actually thinking of running for vice-president with Richard Grayson, another writer who wants to run for president, in 2008. We're already thinking of the scandals we can create and the ugly things that are in our closets. My husband Nick has agreed to be a charming first vice-husband and will take up some benign cause like "save the tulips".
RSP: If you could create a female president by combining different traits of individual women, which women would you choose?
DD: That's a great question. I think she'd have the moral compass of Oprah; the fighting spirit of Sandra Bernhart; and the fiscal responsibility of financial guru Suse Orman.
RSP: In an interview with MiPo online journal, you wrote, "...because America so ignores her poets, we poets have the freedom to experiment and say pretty much whatever we like." Do you think that if poets were given the same due as actors, we would become self-conscious and begin to censor ourselves? Or do you feel that the public would demand this of us?
DD: That's such a strange thing to think about - poets as celebrities. But yes, I do believe that even poets would perhaps become corrupted into being too careful, afraid to offend their sponsors or their fans. Poets make so little money from their poems that they can take chances. Who cares if a poem bombs? No one invested millions of dollars in making it. Imagine if it cost a million dollars to get a book of poetry out there? Poets wouldn't be able to experiment and take risks. They'd be pitching their books as: this is Sharon Olds meets Louise Gluck. Poetry would become mere entertainment. That's not to say poetry shouldn't be entertaining. I think it definitely can be. But it can't be too slick or conventional.
RSP: Have you ever divulged anything in poems or interviews that you now wish you had kept to yourself? Is there anything youve ever written that you feel has been grossly misunderstood that you'd like to set straight?
DD: No. I feel very lucky in that people have given me my say.
RSP: Online journals have become so popular in the last couple of years, particularly among writers. Would you ever do a blog? What is the one thing you would hate for readers to think of you that might inadvertently be revealed in a daily journal?
DD: My husband Nick is a lover of blogs. He has two (Carbonator and Secret Asian Man) that he keeps up. He also is a great reader of other people's blogs. My friend and colleague, the prose writer John Dufresne, also has a great blog. I tend to like blogs that are political rather than personal, though the gossip aspect, I must admit, is fascinating. I guess that's what you're referring to as the "inadvertently revealed". I guess I would be afraid to come off as petty and small. I know that's a real problem in e-mail writing back in a huff to a perceived insult rather than waiting to count to ten. That seems to me to be a real danger in the blog world too, though the joy of blogs is their immediacy. Maybe I'll start one someday, though I don't even have a website yet! So I guess I'm far behind as far as web technology is concerned.
RSP: You've written that "on a day to day basis [women] must wear a face of politeness and false behaviors just to survive." Would you guide us through a day you've had where this has been the case? Tell us what you wanted to say, or how you wanted to react, but how you actually reacted - and why.
DD: This following is a composite, but you get the idea. I'm in line to get coffee and the cashier and the coffee pourer are chatting away - or worse, one is on the phone. I clear my throat and the cashier looks at me like I'm a bitch. After I get my coffee, I leave a big tip in the tip cup rather than scream. (This is also why I don't think most women in power would start wars: in addition to respecting life, they are easily made to feel guilty). Later that day, I'll buy a paper and some old guy selling the paper will ask if I'm married, if he can marry me, etc. I smile rather than scream. There is no reason that I couldn't be completely confrontational in these situations, but I don't have the energy it takes to meet head-on every one of these small insults. I save that energy for the really big stuff.
RSP: You've mentioned that you approach writing with a "lunch pail and hardhat sort of mentality," possibly due to your working-class upbringing. What is your process (how many poems might you produce in a given time frame, how do you document submissions, how often do you do mailings, and what journals are your favorites to submit to)?
DD: I used to work every day, no matter what, for a half hour at least. And my higher self still wants to do that. But now that I'm teaching full-time at Florida International University and giving more readings, sometimes weeks go by at a time where I don't have a chance to get to the computer except to check my e-mail or write letters of recommendation. Over the past few years, I've been most productive in the summer, when I have time off from my academic responsibilities. Nick and I call ourselves colony sluts and we do try to get away almost every summer to an artists' colony. We're able to get so much more work done when were not worrying about who will make dinner or who will shop for groceries. When I'm really in the swing of things, I can write a draft of a poem each day.
In terms of sending out poems, I also take a very hardhat approach. I keep a list of my poems, where I've sent them, and on what date. If a batch of poems is rejected, I immediately send it out someplace else. I keep really good records so I don't make the mistake of sending out poems to someone who has already rejected them. In terms of print magazines, some of my favorites are Ontario Review, Mid-American Review, Crab Orchard Review, Ploughshares, and Salt Hill. I'm also supportive of new magazines - two very good ones are Terminus and Four Corners. As for webzines, I like many, including Jacket, MiPo, McSweeney's and La Petite Zine.
RSP: When you sit down to write, do you have a long list of subjects you want to explore, or do you start randomly writing until something sticks?
DD: My favorite kind of writing is still free writing and automatic writing. Though I have a lot of ideas on issues, when I write I want to go wherever the poem wants to take me. So I'm open to writing and writing a lot of crap to get to the poem. More recently, I've been interested in formal writing: sonnets and sestinas and such. My approach to those kinds of poems is a little different. I wrote a sestina about Sean Penn, for example, in which every end word is Pen. I wrote another sestina about Josh Duhamel (the actor teenagers ask if Im related to) and Georges Duhamel (the Parisian novelist scholars ask if Im related to), using the end words: do, ham, el, Duhamel, Josh, and Georges. When writing those kinds of poems, I have to have the idea first. I try very hard to write for uninterrupted periods of time, ignoring the phone, etc.
RSP: How did your career change after winning an NEA grant? Were you taken more seriously as a writer, did you notice a higher acceptance rate, anything? I think a lot of poets are under the impression that sudden fame will accompany the fortune. How about being added to the Academy of American Poets website? Did that affect you at all?
DD: Even though I was absolutely thrilled to get an NEA, I don't think anyone (in terms of publishing) cared at all. I don't think any editor really concerns himself or herself about that sort of award. I think, if anything, editors might perhaps be swayed by the fact that the person submitting poems was in other good magazines, but I'm not even sure that's true. So no, sadly. No fame comes along with the fortune.
I have the suspicion that many people find me through the Academy of American Poets website, since I don't have my own website. I feel like websites are important, but like blogs I just can't imagine having the time to maintain one. So I owe a lot to the Academy of American Poets. I use their website often in my own researching of poets.
RSP: What projects are you currently working on, and where can we read your latest work?
DD: I have two new books coming out-- Two and Two (University of Pittsburgh Press, April 2005) and Mille et un sentiments (Firewheel Editions, January 2005). I've also edited, with Maureen Seaton and David Trinidad, Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (Soft Skull Press, January 2006). I'm currently working on a group of poems that also exist as art objects. Some of those poems are up on webzine No Tell Motel.
