Steve Goble was our most-read poet for February with his Japanese short form poem, “Winter’s Ghost“.
***
EDP: Your most-read poem at EDP was a haiku. What attracts you to the haiku form?
Steve Goble: I don’t recall when I first read it, but way back in the day I came across a fabulous haiku by Matsuo Basho. I’ve seen it since translated in various ways, but the one I read was this:
Only summer grasses,
after the mighty warriors,
after their dreams of glory
He composed this on the edge of a long-ago battlefield. He simply observed, then summed up pretty much all of humanity in such a compact phrase. I was blown away by that — it seemed to me to be exactly what a poet is supposed to do. That led me to read more haiku and learn more about the form.
EDP: What types of ideas and themes do you like to explore in poetry?
SG: Oh, why limit oneself? Any theme is appropriate for poetry. I lean toward Zen themes and spiritual themes, because I think writing is a great way to work that kind of thing out in my own head. In that sense, such poems are really just me thinking out loud, and they reflect whatever metaphysical place my brain might be in at the time. But I’ve also written poems for my wife and daughter on special occasions, and some humorous poems, and some bloody sword-and-sorcery stuff full of Anglo-Saxon alliteration, and I wrote a very short, light Hobbit-like piece once after watching a pair of hummingbirds in our front garden. That one will show up here at EDP, eventually.
EDP: Who are some of your poetic inspirations? Is there a certain poet that you can point to as a profound influence?
SG: Well, Basho, as mentioned above. Dogen and Ryokan, both Buddhist poets. Rumi, a Sufi mystic. And Robert Frost. And Jesse Stuart. And Poe. And Shakespeare and Coleridge and Browning and all those many-times-anthologized poets. And Homer and Virgil and whoever wrote “Beowulf.” Billy Collins, I should add. Songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Steve Goodman and Tim O’Brien. Neil Peart, the lyricist for Rush, is a big one for me, partly because he tackles some very cosmic themes and partly because he just does it all so damned well.
But really, pretty much anything I read is influential in one way or another, in that anything I learn and absorb can only make me better.
EDP: How do your poems develop? Over a length of time, quickly, in stages?
SG: Great question. Often, it’s just a phrase, something that gets my attention and sticks in my head. “The Weight of Light” is one such example; my friend TW Williams tossed out that line as a prompt to inspire some of us short-story writers to build upon. I loved the phrase and built a poem instead, and I had it in fairly short order. I’m a journalist, so I veered into a sort-of journalistic theme with that.
Other times, that phrase gets written down and I mull it over for weeks, months, years, lifetimes. Sometimes it gets a poem built around it, sometimes it just sits. And every great now and then, I’ll have a sort of transcendent moment. Winter stars on a dark night, or a perfect autumn afternoon, or something like that. I can’t paint, and I’m not much of a photographer, but I can try to capture that moment and feeling in words.
EDP: A dactyl, a spondee and a pyrrhic walk into the bar – buy them a drink, or back away slowly?
SG: You read my blog and saw where I mentioned my dread of discussing nuts-and-bolts poetic lingo, didn’t you? I mean no disrespect to people who can memorize such things and can use the word “etheree” in conversation, but I have little patience for such jargon myself. I’m more interested in the art, in the message, in the life of a poem, than in the parts and pieces. I use rhythm, and wordplay, and structure, but I don’t always know the literary lingo for what I’m doing and I don’t usually care if I’m breaking some rules, as long as I’m getting the effect I want. Maybe it’s easier to creatively break the rules if you never learn them.
EDP: How does Zen figure into your writing in general, poetry in particular?
SG: I’ve been practicing Zen meditation for quite a while now, and reading a great deal of Buddhist writings. There is a lot in Zen Buddhism that makes sense to me; Zen doesn’t really give you any answers, but it gives you a great way to ask the questions. Poetry is another great way to ask questions, eh? Anyway, some of that stuff is bound to come out in my poems, especially when you mix in the Basho and haiku influences. There is a lot of Zen in Basho.
Sometimes a poem comes straight out of Zen. I meditate silently, no chanting or anything like that. But ritual is part of the process, and I always sit the same way and go through the same settling-in and breathing routines, etc. I wanted something of a verbal content to add to my mediation, and so I wrote my own mantra. My EDP poem this month, “A Buddha’s Walk,” is that mantra, and I recite it mentally each time I sit to meditate. It sort of boils Buddhism down to an essential focal point; that was my aim, anyway.
There is a fair amount of Zen in some of my other poems, too.
EDP: Are there advantages to writing both stories and poetry? Disadvantages?
SG: Well, they sort of cross-pollinate. I started writing poetry specifically to improve my fiction prose. Poetry, to me, is more demanding, but I find the effort pays off in that my prose is shinier.
I think any theme can be handled well in prose or poetry, so there’s no particular advantage one way or the other that I can see. And I’ll sometimes take an idea or theme that emerges in a short story and make a poem of it, or vice versa.
EDP: Do you have a favorite poem among those you’ve written?
SG: Probably “Winter’s Ghost.” If not that, then “A Buddha’s Walk.”
EDP: What is the most difficult thing you find about writing poetry?
SG: Showing it to people. Seriously. I’ve written enough fiction, and read enough of it, to have an idea of what I’m doing. I usually can tell if a short story is working or not. I can tear it apart, rebuild it, whatever needs to be done, and I think I’m pretty good at knowing when it is ready to submit to a publisher.
With poetry, it’s a very different thing. I’m still very new at it, for one thing. I don’t have that intuition yet as to what works and what doesn’t work. So when I submit poems anywhere, I do it with a lot of trepidation.
EDP: Is poetry important?
SG: Absolutely, whether it is written down as such, or off the cuff, or in a song, or smack in the middle of a novel or short story, or just a good phrase in a letter to a friend. Ideas well expressed are memorable, and thus useful, and thus alive. Ideas blandly expressed usually just die.
EDP: What else would you like our readers to know about Steve Goble?
SG: Hmmmm. If anything, I would emphasize that readers can’t really get to know me just by reading what I write. One poem might seem rather atheistic, another might seem rather spiritual; both are just snapshots of where my brain was when I wrote them. Things are always in flux, aren’t they? My short fiction can be quite violent and gruesome, but I’m really a happy and nice guy and wouldn’t hurt anyone — unless I had to.
I’ve had enough contact with readers to know that, sometimes, they’ll read your work and think they’ve got you pegged. Not true — reality is far too complicated and slippery for that.
EDP: Thank you for your time. We hope to see more of your work in EDP.
SG: Thank you. This was not as intimidating as I thought it would be!
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5 Responses to “Interview with Steve Goble”
Comments
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May 20th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Thank you, Constance and Steve for such a very entertaining interview. I really enjoyed reading it again. I loved A Buddha’s Walk too, Steve – which appeared on the 6th – in case any of you missed it.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Great interview.
–dj
May 20th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
It was fun to do.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:42 am
Great interview, Steve. And you’re becoming quite the poet, too. Congrats.
July 30th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Yes, this was a fine interview–thanks Steve! (And good job, Constance, with the questions–thanks for picking up the interviewing duties since my bambino was born!)