Word has it you’ve been really sour on poetry recently. Is that true?

Probably.

You think poetry is narcissistic fluff? Self-indulgent, elitist drivel?

I wouldn’t say that. I’d say that I get a little bit distressed at how insular poetry is, and how little it really does. Poets talk to other poets and poetry readers, not to the world, and poetry readers read poetry instead of saving the world. Poetry is not the breath of the world. No one is saved by poetry.

So you don’t think poetry effects change? Even in your own life? Really? Where is the first place you go in times of lust? Where do you go in love? Linda Smukler. Anne Sexton. Don Marquis. Poetry. Do I need to keep going on? Do I need to remind you of the girls who told you about being raped after they heard your poem? That their world was changed? That this was their story, too? What about the cutter who wrote to you, telling you she stopped cutting because of your poems?

Okay, okay. You win. Poetry can effect change. I suppose there’s no such thing as a small change and revolution has to be won on a personal level, yadda yadda. I know. I do. But I just want it to be bigger and faster and louder and more chaotic change than it is. But yes, poetry can speak to the parts of us that are unreachable through linear, functional language. Poetry can save the day. Even when Love can’t.

Do you really believe Love can’t save the day?

Ask me after my next date.

When is it?

Tomorrow.

Okay. Good luck with that. Now, enough gossip. Back to the interview. If you believe everything you’ve said about poetry and change, why isn’t your work more political?

Everything is political in a search-and-rescue mission. You haven’t been paying attention.

Speaking of search-and-rescue, you’ve been working on a pretty special one, yes?

With Lisa Kester, I’ve been co-editing a book by the “first female serial killer” and subject of the movie Monster, Aileen Wuornos. It’s her letters from Death Row to her best friend. It’ll be out from Soft Skull Press in (I think) 2011.

Hmmm. So this is a real leap in terms of content and tone for you, huh. No dark subjects, no death and horror, no feminist politics. A complete departure from your poetic work.

What is with you? Why do you have to be mean?

I think that my background really helped prepare me for work on this book. The point of the book is to see this woman as exactly that – a woman – not someone overwritten by someone else’s agenda, whether it’s Jeb Bush demonizing her or the Left canonizing her or the movies Hollywoodizing her (though for what it’s worth, I think Monster did a great job). She finally gets a chance to speak for herself.

You’ve sort of spent your poetic life doing that – trying to give people’s voices back to them. I guess it’s not surprising that this would follow you to nonfiction. What’s the difference to you between poetry and editing?

Poetry is putting things together with hand grenades and duct tape. Editing is gently ripping things apart with butterfly wings and sticking them back together with barbed wire.

How long has it been since you did your time with hand grenades and duct tape?

Since I wrote a poem? A few minutes. Before that? Months that felt like years.

Really? That’s a long time. Does it make you worry when you’re not writing?

Sometimes, but not at the moment. I’ve been putting finishing touches on my new poetry manuscript, so I’m actually knee-deep in poetry, and I’ve never been good at editing and writing at the same time.

What do you think it would take to get you to write a new poem?

Right now? Falling in love.

Is falling in love a political or poetical act?

Yes.

Why would falling in love get you to write a poem?

I don’t know how to write otherwise. It all comes down to passion. It’s really hard for me to write an “I think you’re kind of cool” poem, or a “Thanks for that second date poem” – I don’t do much half-assed — but it’s pretty easy to write a love poem.

When do you think you might write a poem again?

I don’t know. Soon, I hope.

So Love saves the day after all?

Or Love saves poetry. Or poetry is Love. Or yes.

TAGS: Daphne Gottlieb, poets

San Francisco-based performance poet DAPHNE GOTTLIEB stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter using just her tongue. She is the author of four poetry collections including Kissing Dead Girls, Final Girl, Why Things Burn and Pelt, as well as writing the graphic novel Jokes and the Unconscious with artist Diane DiMassa. Final Girl was the winner of the Audre Lorde Award in Poetry for 2003 from Publishing Triangle. Additionally, Final Girl was named one of the The Village Voice's Favorite Books of 2003, and received rave reviews from Publisher's Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Village Voice. Why Things Burn was the winner of a 2001 Firecracker Alternative Book Award (Special Recognition — Spoken Word) and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for 2001. Her work has been translated into Turkish and Greek, and has inspired theatrical adaptations and DJ-remixes. Recent press has praised her work as "fierce," "unapologetic," "scorching" and "deliriously gutsy." She has been widely published in journals, including The Utne Reader, Tikkun, nerve.com, mcsweeney’s.net, Exquisite Corpse and Instant City. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies including Live Through This: The Art of Self-Destruction, Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders of the Spoken Word Revolution, Don’t Forget to Write!, Half Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes, With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn and Short Fuse: A Contemporary Anthology of Global Performance Poetry. She is also the cover girl on San Francisco Noir (Akashic Books, 2005). Besides anchoring three national performance poetry tours, featuring with Maggie Estep, Hal Sirowitz and Lydia Lunch, Gottlieb has also appeared across the country with the Slam America bus tour and with notorious all-girl wordsters Sister Spit. She has performed at festivals coast-to-coast, including South by Southwest, Bumbershoot, and Ladyfest Bay Area. Gottlieb is also the editor of Fucking Daphne: Mostly True Stories and Fictions, and Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader. Until 2006, she served as the poetry editor of the online queer literary magazine Lodestar Quarterly. Also, she was the poetry editor of Other Magazine and a co-organizer of ForWord Girls, the first spoken word festival for anyone who is, has been or will be a girl, which was held in September 2002. Gottlieb currently teaches graduate-level creative writing, and has also performed and taught creative writing workshops at all levels around the country. She received her MFA from Mills College.

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