the conversation: Jon Sands talks with Jack McCarthy
Stephyn Dobyns refers to Jack McCarthy as “one of the wonders of contemporary poetry.” Anyone who has had the opportunity to be hypnotized by one of Jack’s poetic spells knows what Mr. Dobyns is referring to. I first saw him read in 2008 at Bar 13 in Manhattan, and was absolutely dumb struck. It only got better when I went home with two of his poetry collections. Each subsequent interaction with both the poems and the man has been ripe with always a new form of magic. The poems plead to be read aloud (shared with the people you love, people you want to love more, people you don’t even really know that well). Having been a positive and constant force in the world of poetry and performance since 1993 (when he got hooked at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts – while attempting to get his daughter excited about poetry), Jack McCarthy is an absolute legend of this art form. There could be no better choice for a summer conversation. Buckle your safety belt… – Jon Sands
JON SANDS: On a previous visit to Washington, we spoke about what it means to have a poem seem to say, “I’m too big for you to write.” What is the process of tackling a subject that seems outside your comfort zone, and what is gained from such an excavation?
JACK MCCARTHY: It’s a statement of principle that to me seems unarguable on its face.
But there are really two things going on here: the “too big” issue doesn’t always have anything to do with comfort zone. My comfort zone is this, my voice and this, my audience. And I submit that having a comfort zone is not necessarily such a bad thing. When you’re attacking a subject that is by its nature difficult, you don’t need to introduce a lot of extraneous issues on Day One. Maybe down the road you might realize that My Voice isn’t working here, and take yourself out of it; that’s always an option. I’m a big fan of rewriting; I think First-Thought-Best-Thought is a lazy man’s horseshit.
Subject matter is an entirely different issue. Example: I once had a flash about the common ground between alcoholism, sexuality and rage, and my immediate response was, “Whoa, you’d never be able to get that into a poem.” Then I went to a workshop with Galway Kinnell, and his opening remarks seemed to give us huge permission. That night I went back to my room and worked almost all night on that poem. It hasn’t been one of my most popular poems, but I still think it’s one of my best. (And Galway seemed to like it a lot.)
Another example: my men’s room etiquette poem. The little voice said, “You can’t possibly pull that off without crossing every line in the book.” So I had to try, and the result was one of my more popular poems. And half the fun of it is watching the poem dance on that line without falling over.
JS: You’ve been associated with both national and local poetry communities for the better part of two decades. How has community been a service (or perhaps, at times, a disservice) to the art you’ve made? How has your concept of community evolved throughout your writing career?
JM: I often say, “I didn’t find my voice until I found my audience.” Basically, what I mean when I say that is that I always sort of knew I could do what I’ve been doing; but I wasn’t bothering to do it because there was no audience for it. I checked out the scene around Boston in the late 70s, and there was no there there. But when I happened into the Cantab in ’93, I found my people. A roomful of people with dayjobs who came out at night for poetry, who wrote in real words about real things.
First, I found my audience: then my community. At those first few open mics,
I’d sit there thinking, “Not my turn, not my turn, not my turn…MY TURN!!” It was all about me. Once in a while the people around me would laugh, and I’d tune in to what someone else was saying, and it was pretty good. Or somebody would come up to me after and tell me they liked my poem, and I’d wish I could say something about their poem.
So I started listening, and my first impression was that whatever talent I had was a dime a dozen, that good poets were pretty thick upon the ground. Over time I have since refined that impression; today I’d say that an awful lot of people have at least one or two really good poems in them.
Listening is what I love about the open mic scene, my own listening as much as the audience’s. Almost.
JS: Jack McCarthy getting hooked on poetry at the Cantab has become a piece of Spoken Word folklore. In what ways did your life change through a more consistent interaction with this art form? In what ways did you change?
JM: My priorities changed totally. Up until that point I had been unable to make time in my life to write consistently. Starting then, Carol and I would set aside one weekend morning for writing every week. We stuck to it pretty well. Most of my first drafts were produced on Saturday mornings.
JS: Would you stock pile ideas to go back to them on Saturdays?
JM: Yes. I still collect ideas. My Poem Idea file is now over 50 pages. I try to set aside at least one morning a week for writing. If I don’t have a burning desire, I just go down the list ‘till something calls out to me saying, “I would be easy today.”
JS: You write a number of pieces that focus on the excavation of one moment (or a series of moments). For instance: A childhood friend who believes the moon moves as he moves, what it means in Boston to “Bill Buckner” something, your own anticipation of a turn in The Odyssey that doesn’t arrive (so you “arrive” it). When navigating your own life, what aspect of a moment informs the creation of a poem?
JM: It can be just about anything. When Carol said to me, “If your first marriage had worked out better…” and I answered “It’s as if we both broke down…” that was a classic example. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I new there was a poem there. When my daughter Annie pointed out to me that teenagers had become the hottest market for all the advertisers, a lot of things clicked into place. The Buckner poem grew up as sort of a complex of things I wanted to say to people. Those moments in life when you didn’t know what to say; now you can go back and make them right. Anything. When you suddenly realize that a lot of strands of your life connect in this one place.
JS: What role do you feel discipline plays in your process? Do you have methods for finding that intersection? Or that muse? Or finding your way into a poem?
JM: I find it hard to fit the word “discipline” into my process. Once I get going, work is joy. Even when it’s not working, OK I can put it aside. Maybe three years from now I’ll have a flash that tells me where this wanted to go. Never throw anything away.
JS: How would you say your work been influenced by the poetry slam? How has your relationship to the competition changed throughout time? What have you gained from slam as an artistic tool? What have you lost?
JM: I love Slam. Most of all, today, because I don’t think any poetry audience ever listens as well as they do when there’s a competition going. I also prize it for the feedback. Somebody would come up to me after an open mike and tell me they liked my poem and I’d be very pleased, it’s always nice when someone goes out of their way to tell you they heard you. But at the same time I’d be burning to ask them, “How much did you like it? On a scale of 1 to 10? And was it better than Brian’s poem? Was it better than Patricia’s?” That’s the precise feedback you get in a slam, and you know it’s honest. And it’s an ideal way to get a comparison between two of your own poems (assuming that the first one gets you to the next round). Granted, it doesn’t tell you which of your poems are “best,” just which are most audience-friendly.
My relationship to Slam has changed drastically over the years, but that’s partly a function of logistics. At the Cantab, which was my base for 10 years, the open mic was the high point of the night. A lot of people wouldn’t even stay for the feature, and most of them left before the slam, which never started much before 11, on a Wednesday night, and most of those years I was working, so I didn’t compete in many open slams.
As for Nationals, my first experience was 1996, which was the first time I tried for a team. I loved the event, but I felt the team practices were a major waste of time for minimal rewards. I decided it would be a while before I tried for a team again. But I still liked to know where I stood, and I particularly liked the semi-final format, where I got to try out my stuff against good competition, and my general strategy was to win open slams just often enough to qualify for the semis, then go all out in the semis, with an emphasis on new stuff. My goal evolved into make-it-to-the-team-finals-and come-in-6th. One year I miscalculated and came in 4th; a new poem in the last round really surprised me.
Now I’m in Seattle, where the Slam is the highlight. I’m not working any more, so I can stay up late. Every week my choice is do I want to do one poem in the open mic, or maybe three, with numeric feedback, in the slam? I shoot a lot of 3s. The beauty of it is that in all those open mic years, I wrote a lot of poems that got done once at the Cantab, then never again. In Seattle I’ve been pulling many of those poems out and slamming with them, and I’ve had some very pleasant surprises.
JS: I’ve heard more than a few people remark how reading or hearing your poems bring them comfort. Like a conversation with someone who cares for them. If some of the best art comforts by conveying how we’re not alone, and revealing some of the beauty hidden beneath the human experience — which artists do you turn to? Who does Jack McCarthy curl up with? Why?
JM: I don’t read anyone for comfort. Writing isn’t a discipline for me, but reading is. Most of my comfort comes from my meditation routine, which includes prayer and reading. The reading is split between poetry and spiritual. Right now I’m reading a couple of pages a day of Donald Hall, one Hafiz poem, and five pages of poetry magazine, plus a couple of spiritual things. I also do a walking meditation/exercise about three days a week. And on the long drives to venues and home, I take great comfort from my iPod, which is mostly music, but has quite a bit of poetry as well.
JS: What poet has the most plays on your iPod?
JM: probably a tossup between Mike McGee and Iyeoka Okoawo.
JS: Not a bad duo right there. In what ways do you find yourself applying the creativity from your artistic process to the other parts of your life? To your relationships?
JM: Actually, I think it works more the other way around. My life saturates my poetry. But the poetry life takes a lot of pressure off everybody else. My oldest daughter once said to me, “Dad, you are so unfulfilled.” Not any more.
JS: What scares you most as a writer? Also, are there fears you feel writing has helped you to quell?
JM: I can’t think of anything that scares me–AS A WRITER.
JS: Fair enough.
JM: I think writing has lessened the fear of making mistakes. It gives you a better perspective on things that seem critically important right now, but you know you’ve written about so many of those things, and none of them killed you.
JS: When I saw you read in New York in the Fall of 2008 (I believe you were doing 4 shows in 5 days), you read the persona poem from Odysseus to Calypso in response to an offer of immortality you felt approaching (but ultimately Homer went another direction). In your introduction of the poem, you said it was a piece you were very proud of. What in a poem makes you proud? And, maybe that one specifically?
JM: That particular one came very hard. It almost was too big for me. Usually my first draft is way too long, and I have to cut and cut to get the poem to where it wants to go. My first draft of Odysseus said all the things that made me want to write it, but it was DOA. So I started cutting. And it kept getting worse and worse. I finally realized I was going in the wrong direction, this poem wanted to be bigger, not smaller. So I found a couple of junctures that would support extended metaphors, and suddenly the poem seemed to me to sing. I know audiences don’t give points for degree of difficulty, but some of the poems I’m proudest of have been the most difficult– whereas some of my most popular poems feel like happy accidents.
But Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening was a happy accident.
LITTLE DEBBIE
For CarolSo I’m in the office with Kevin McCarthy
(no relation) sitting in the side chair by his desk
and we’re talking business, and I must have been
out late the night before and skipped breakfast,
Because I’m really, really hungry,
and there’s this Little Debbie snack cakeon his desk, and I’m getting a little
distracted by it , and thinking about it
I realize that I’ve been seeing it there
for some time, there’s actually a thin film
of dust collected on the cellophane
so it’s probably not something Kevinhas a specific intention of eating any time soon,
so I ask him, “Are you gonna eat that?”
and he says, “Why? You want it?”
and I say, “yeah, I’m really hungry,”
and he says, “It’s been there for some time,”
and I say, “How long you think they’re good for?”
and he says, “Probably forever.”Now I know that Little Debbie snack cake
isn’t really going to last forever,
and I know that I’m not going to last forever either.
But I also know that I’m going to love you
till that snack cake is no longer edible or I die,
whichever comes second.
Jack McCarthy
JS: As you watch this art move forward, where do you feel poetry is succeeding in connecting to a general public? Where are we falling short? What would you say is the ideal medium for poetry to reach the masses? What do you imagine the future holds?
JM: We’re succeeding, in a small way, with the open mike movement. The downside is everybody has an equal right to suck. The upside is, if you keep coming, you get to watch people grow. I think almost everybody has at least one or two really good poems in them. Open mics allow a lot of those poems to come out. The problem with open mics is that they don’t attract the non-writing audience. Why would they want to come to something where somebody’s certain to be pretty bad? We need more showcase-type events, where everyone agrees to bring their very best stuff. [And] if by general public you mean non-writers—and that’s really what I mean—we’re not connecting at all. Before I got serious about my own writing, I probably could not have named five living poets, and I would wager the majority of Americans are in the same boat. If they ever got interested, they would find much to get excited about.
My ideal medium, to get them interested: drive-time radio. It’s the one time in his life where the Average American has no art/entertainment options other than listening. And anyone who has ever been in that situation knows how boring the listening options are. Poetry is infinitely various; there’s a vast new audience out there, ripe for recorded poetry (and traffic reports). Every couple of years I write to the Poetry Foundation and beg them to buy a radio station. I bet they’d end up making even more money than they have now. I’ll keep trying.
Over the next generation, I foresee the decline of poetry as a print art. What market there is will gravitate toward sound and, to a lesser extent, video. I’ve been reading a book called “Orality and Literacy,” by Walter J Ong. It describes in detail the impact on human society and the very thought processes of humankind by the invention of writing in general and the alphabet in particular. It’s a real eye opener in many, many ways. But the thing that strikes me most is that while writing, reading, and thinking have been evolving, listening has not advanced in 4000 years. The role of the live, listening audience hasn’t changed one iota. The presentation techniques that Homer used are every bit as effective today as they were before B followed A. And maybe as necessary.
JS: Jack, I want to thank you so much for joining me here. You have a mighty fan club in NYC happily awaiting your return.
JM: Thank you, Jon.
JACK MCCARTHY calls himself a standup poetry guy; he has been called a legend on the national poetry slam scene. The Boston Globe says, “In the poetry world, he’s a rock star.” Poet Stephen Dobyns calls him, “one of the wonders of contemporary poetry.” He’s been on two national slam teams and has brought out five books of poetry and two CDs. An engaging minor character in the film “Slamnation,” he was a semifinalist for the Individual Slam Championship in 2000 and won the haiku championship at IWPS in 2007. His work has been published widely, and appears in the anthologies “The Spoken Word Revolution,” “The Spoken Word Revolution Redux,” and the prestigious “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Slam Poetry.” His website is www.standupoet.net.
JON SANDS has been a full-time teaching & performing artist since 2007. He’s a recipient of the 2009 New York City-LouderARTS fellowship grant, and has represented New York City multiple times at the National Poetry Slam, subsequently becoming an NPS finalist. His first full collection of poems will be released this year from Write Bloody Publishing, and he’s currently the Director of Poetry and Arts Education Programming at the Positive Health Project, a syringe exchange center located in Midtown Manhattan, as well as a Youth Mentor with Urban Word-NYC. He is also one-fourth of the nationally acclaimed electricity-fest, The SpillJoy Ensemble. Jon lives in New York City, where he makes better tuna salad than anyone you know.