Demaree === [00:00:01] Darren C. Demaree: *success is gauged by me and whether or not I was able to pull off the project, as opposed to, did it get published? Did it win an award? And if those things happen, that's always something you're incredibly thankful for, but that's not my impetus to write. * [00:00:20] Doug: From a secret location in room 100 of 540 Jack Gibbs Boulevard. This is craft. I'm your host, Doug Dangler. Columbus poet Darren C. Damari's latest collection, his 23rd, is so much more, abstracts, unfinished sequences, and political prose poems, and it takes on death, fatherhood, nature, and empathy, along with other topics. He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council grant, An Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Doo Taylor Award from Embry's Journal. He is the Editor in Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. Welcome back to CRAFT, Darren C. Demaree. [00:01:04] Darren C. Demaree: I appreciate you having me. It's good to talk again. [00:01:06] Doug Dangler: Yeah. So tell me about your latest, So Much More. This collection follows a rather unusual structure of mostly naming poems by number, although they're not in sequential order or anything like that, and using section headings like, I have no intention of burying my body if there is a river, and ward commentary. [00:01:26] Darren C. Demaree: Yeah, so they all started as book linked sequences themselves. And they were all sequences that had parts that I loved and parts that I, I really clung to, but never quite worked to stand on their own as, books. And so. I kept returning to these poems and they kept finding their way to each other and sort of came together in almost a quilt like fashion where a bit I loved here and a bit I love there along with some, prose poems which is not my default setting and it really came together in a way that I think they spoke to each other and spoke louder than when they were apart and for someone who likes to espouse preferring to write a bad poem to to not writing a poem at all. And trying to show that interconnectedness that the through line that your work presents, even if part of it didn't actually work. [00:02:15] Doug Dangler: Okay. So tell me about that. Rather interesting comment. Writing a bad poem is better than , not writing a poem at all. I think a lot of people would be Confused by that, as I am just a little bit maybe no poem is better. [00:02:33] Darren C. Demaree: Well, and it goes back to the part of the practice that feeds you as the artist. And making sure that you're setting the time aside to write and be creative and try to be generative, and that that time itself, even if it doesn't give you something valuable to take forward in terms of a finished product or a poem that you're proud of, you're still flexing those muscles, you're still working on your practice, your tone, your voice and sometimes if you're challenging yourself the right way, you're gonna fail. As you're learning how to write that kind of Poem or that kind of form or that kind of topic or theme and it's worth it to me to spend the time, even if it's time that doesn't lead me to a finished product. Because , it's the process and the time spent doing it, that means more to me, even than if the Poem is brilliant. If the poem gets published, if the poem wins awards, things like that .It's the routine of it. It's getting to express myself that way and be challenged as an artist that way , that has the value to me. [00:03:35] Doug Dangler: Okay. So tell me about your writing process then, since you're foregrounding the process here, right, saying it's the work itself and not necessarily the end result. So how do you get into that headspace? What do you do to start writing, say, and then continue? [00:03:55] Darren C. Demaree: Well, some of it's very practical in terms of the only time I ever have sugar is when I'm writing. it's a little bit of Pavlov's dog kind of thing where I work full time at a, library and I don't always have time to write, but if there's a morning I do I'll have a piece of pie and a cup of coffee or something like that. And then challenge myself with , something new. I think we all have, or you work towards trying to develop your voice as a unique artist. And I know what that is for me. And it's, the Emily as poems. If you've ever read one of those But if I'm not writing one of those, I like to challenge myself and try to force myself to try new things. And sometimes it's these book length sequences that you got to plot out the same way you'd plot out a novel's plot. Because if you're gonna write something that's 72 poems, 142 poems, 220 poems, you've got to put a lot of care and planning into theme and development and energy the same way you would with a novel. And so it depends on what the project is, but it always starts with me with a little bit of sugar. [00:04:54] Doug Dangler: Mm hmm. Okay. So when you see a bag of sugar, do you begin immediately reciting poetry? Is that, uh? [00:05:01] Darren C. Demaree: I'm known to start reciting poetry wherever I am. But in terms of actually writing new work you know, I might be challenged at that point. Yeah. [00:05:08] Doug Dangler: Okay. So actually that brings me to my next question because the last time you were on craft was at the 2016 Ohio and a book festival. And there's a really fun YouTube video that folks can go to with one of my students interviewing you and you discussed the 19 steps between us, which was your current collection at the time. So tell me how you've changed as a poet from then to now. It's in many ways, a large span of time in some ways, not that long of a time, but I think in the development of an artist, it can be a huge amount of time. [00:05:44] Darren C. Demaree: Yeah, well, and you put in if we're talking about 8 years of, writing, you're talking about a lot of different challenges and things that you're attempting to do, including I started writing with form for the 1st time in the book, the luxury, a book about nature, catastrophes I used a strict syllable count to sort of underline what the project was. Yeah. In terms of some of the book length sequences that have narrative arcs to them and trying to put in some prose elements, some sci fi elements and different things. I've really spent a lot of time even trying to bring in different topics and themes. then I would traditionally write about. And I think part of it is the confidence to go out on a limb. And to see where it's going to take me and and that's been, I think, the biggest change in my practice is the last time I got to talk to you folks, I was trying to figure out how to be a published writer in a way that I could keep putting out books. And then you figure out, well, this is something that I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I'm going to be a lifer. I'm going to spend this time and dedicate it to this art. And then the pressure goes away and you feel more confident because you've had successes and you've challenged yourself. And that changes a lot of the perspective and gives you freedom to try new things. [00:07:00] Doug Dangler: that's a really interesting way to look at it because it sounds like you're saying that when you decided to commit to being a poet for life, you felt less pressure. I feel like that's a little almost paradoxical because I would feel more pressure if I said, well, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, because then the next thought might be, and it better be really good. [00:07:24] Darren C. Demaree: I have friends that work in that way where they are crafting things slowly methodically with the type of purpose that speaks to a more classically honed poet. And I, came from academia. That's where my, training began. But the way my practice as an, adult and a poet and an author has been is to spend as much time as I can to write as much new work as I can because I'm trying a lot of different things. And the *success level is gauged by me and whether or not I was able to pull off the project, as opposed to, did it get published? Did it win an award? And if those things happen, that's always something you're incredibly thankful for, but that's not my impetus to write. * [00:08:12] Doug Dangler: Let's turn to some of the poems now and look at that. And Ohio gets mentioned a number of times, and there is one in particular I wanted to talk to you about. It's poem 64, and I hope to present this correctly. There is a lack of capitalization and punctuation that makes an old English major like me, you know, a little uncomfortable. so. The poem goes, climb out, climb out of the revelry before they fill the hole. That is the difficult thing. We've played in this dirt for generations. I wonder just how welcoming our throats will be when we refuse to close our mouths during the burial of Ohio. Well, we want to talk about it then. Tell me about this poem, because you seem to teeter between saving Ohio and I assume by extension the country, and simply abandoning it, maybe. Climb out of the revelry. Before they fill the hole, before the hole that is, I think the, the problems with Ohio, if I'm understanding it correctly. [00:09:11] Darren C. Demaree: Yeah. Well, and , the challenge of a, book like this is to work through the hard parts of home. To work through the hard parts of preparing children to leave home. And what is that experience going to be like? it feels very much to me right now, like you're wanting these people to be full of empathy and energy and to go out into Ohio, the, the only state I really lived other than a couple months in Tuscaloosa and to be the kind of people you want them to be in the face of what's coming in the face of a difficult landscape politically, ecologically speaking and a lot of an environment that is going to try to punish empathy and change the kind of people they are. And so in that process, and in the poem you cited, it's, are we going to get loud and fight back for that kind of world, the kind of world that encourages empathy in children and in adults? Or are we just going to get buried with what Ohio has for us, because I think it's possible to love a place as much as you love it and to show a mirror to the parts of it you wish were different. And I think it can be both things. [00:10:26] Doug Dangler: as I mentioned in the introduction, you write about empathy as well, and we're just talking about it, poem number eight seems to be the one that for me, went there to look at empathy as much as anything else, and it goes like this. I didn't have to have kids, once I did, I didn't have to teach them empathy. I did , so they are a small piece of the whole heart that might not feel them, their belonging in the beat. So, again, this is sort of an attraction and a worry about the same topic, right? Do we teach kids to have empathy? You may be, in some ways, in a cruel world, better off without it. That's tough to wrestle with. [00:11:07] Darren C. Demaree: Well, and to look at a world and say, if you're vulnerable, you could lose things. You could lose parts of yourself. You could lose, you could be injured. But that that's the only true way that humanism, that a society can thrive and sort of overcome some of the challenges that we're being faced is to be vulnerable, to live with empathy. And it's something that's part of my daily practice as someone who works in a public library is you've got to have as much empathy as you possibly can every day. And that's, a challenge. And as someone trying to teach children it's a difficult bargain to make if empathy is going to make them vulnerable. But I believe it's ultimately worth it, but there's a lot of turmoil in that decision. [00:11:53] Doug Dangler: And when you talk about that with your children or with your partner or whomever, what kind of responses do you get when you say one of the things I'm thinking about is the value of empathy. Do you get a lot of views that surprise you maybe? [00:12:13] Darren C. Demaree: Well, and what what always surprises you in the best way is when they respond with they were thinking that way anyway. They were considering a friend. They were trying to help out . I've got 2 daughters and a son and he was trying to think through how it affect his little sister. And sometimes it's this is scary. Right. Sometimes it's and a lot of the fear is just as the parent where I'm trying to raise this kind of person. And instead of them being aggressive or hard nosed I think you try to teach survival and overcoming difficulties, but you're wanting them to be open to the experiences before them. And so a lot of the fear, I think, comes from parents and being willing to raise that kind of child. So it's, difficult, but I think it's worth the effort. [00:12:58] Doug Dangler: Darren C. Demery, thank you very much for talking to me today about your latest collection of poems, so much more abstracts, unfinished sequences, and political prose poems, I will link to your website on my website so that folks can go there and buy your book and, consider empathy, consider others, consider ohio. [00:13:21] Darren C. Demaree: Yes, sir. In [00:13:22] Doug Dangler: a general sense. So Darren, thank you very much. [00:13:25] Darren C. Demaree: Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. [00:13:27] Doug Dangler: For more information from my guests, visit www crafttheshow. com. This is Doug Dangler. Until next time be creative.