FANZINE

Bruce Covey’s sixth book of poetry, Change Machine, was published in 2014 by Noemi Press. Earlier books include Glass Is Really a Liquid (No Tell Books), Reveal: All Shapes & Sizes (Bitter Cherry), and Elapsing Speedway Organism (No Tell Books). He lives in Atlanta, GA, where he publishes and edits Coconut Magazine and Coconut Books and serves as the Small Press Editor for Boog City Magazine. Covey also ran the What’s New in Poetry reading series at Emory University for the past 12 years. Through his work with Coconut and the reading series, Covey has been instrumental in bringing a community of contemporary poets together, connecting them and making them accessible. He is also a wonderful poet himself.

In this interview, Daniel Beauregard talks to Covey about Claudia Rankine, poetics, books, Coconut, and a host of other things.

 

 

DB: Are you in a room with a window right now?

 

BC: It’s gorgeous out, but not super exciting––my window looks out over kind of a quiet, less-traveled sidewalk and a medical building. Let me look out another one. Still gorgeous and sunny and quiet; I should open my blinds more often except the sun bleaches out the books on my bookshelf. Do you have a window?

 

DB: I don’t. I’ve got a big retractable skylight though that opens up. Kind of makes up for it.

 

BC: Oh man I love skylights. My old car had a moonroof.

 

DB: I want to talk to about a poem about the moon from Change Machine, actually. One thing I love about your work is that you seem to be able to digest all these different types of poetry––forms, styles, tones––then spit something out that often plays with these things, but it’s always entirely you. “A True Account of Talking to the Moon in Atlanta, GA” is a good example of this; like a meta poem in its references to Mayakovsky and O’Hara; and it is, after all, a poem about talking to the moon; there are several conversations taking place. Could you speak to this a little?

 

BC: Well, I read and love a ton of poetry and really see myself speaking to that NY tradition––very much in the present, but part of a lineage. It made sense for me in Change Machine to write a series of homages to writers I love––O’Hara, Berrigan, Notley, Giorno, Cage––I’m still writing them, in the same way that Berrigan and Padgett and Mayer and others of their generation wrote poems for, and in response to each other.  But I guess in terms of the variety––coming from that NY tradition––it seems easy and true to me to do. I mean, I like the poems I write, but I don’t see the point in getting trapped in a single voice or style or particular type of gesture.  I’m thinking of Ron Padgett’s poem “Voice”:  “perhaps they were referring to his newspaper, the Village Voice?”  For me, I think of the “constant” (in a mathematical sense) of my poems being more me, rather than a “voice” or poetic persona.

 

 

DB: Talk to me about the importance of conceptual poetry in your work. REVEAL is made up of a lot of found-text poems right?

 

BC: Yeah, REVEAL was a concept-based book from beginning to end. I started writing it before Jordan Davis started flarf, or at least before I’d heard of flarf. But I don’t consider myself a flarfist or a conceptual poet but I do feel that most of my poems place a strong emphasis on concept. I think of myself more as a dadaist, I guess.

With REVEAL, I decided to write a poem in which I googled a cluster of keywords all around the theme of baseball. Then, I used the “I’m feeling lucky” feature and used the resulting page as a palate for the line I picked.

Then one poem kept going and turned into like 180 of them.

 

DB: I’m always interested––because I play with this stuff myself––in the way the overall aesthetics of a poem, or series of poems, intersect with the concept behind it.

 

BC: Concept was always a part of poetry.  I mean, like the guy who had the crazy idea to write a narrative poem in the form of 14-lines with rhyming couplets at the end; or the guy who decided to write a series of barely parallel poems in sections about innocence and experience.

I’ve never found “conceptual poetry” as a category to be very interesting––we’ve been doing it all along, you know, we balance form and content, process and concept, etc. Poetics are really just a function of where we fall on all of those spectra.

In some ways I think it’s hard not to write from concept––I mean, it would be all process, right? No preconceived notion.

 

DB: That’s a wonderful way to think about it; and I suppose the intention to write a poem makes it conceptual anyways, right?

 

BC: Ha, yeah, it does.

 

DB: So there you go, a poem is never just a poem––it’s like a little machine…

 

BC: Yeah, for sure, it’s a machine with input and output.

REVEAL is my only book that’s 100% concept, but each of my books has some concept-based poems in them. Well, I should say REVEAL is my only book that’s 100% aligned with a concept. I think it ends up doing something in addition, despite my initial intentions.

 

DB: Tell me a bit about the history of “What’s New in Poetry.” It was a very influential reading series for me, as it was for many in Atlanta––it brought some of the most cutting-edge contemporary poetry from around the country to our city, and had a great way of really bringing people together.

 

BC: When I was teaching at Emory, a lot of my students expressed frustration at the poets we were bringing to campus. Most were older, established writers, and my students had trouble picturing what it might take to get from where they were as students, to what these poets had achieved.

We, through those readings, were in essence enacting the myth of the “anointed poet”––that poets were somehow better and unreachable.

I wanted my students to experience something different and so started inviting younger writers––poets with 0-2 books who would hang out and talk after the reading.  Real people, and then some “featured” poets who were a little more established but who came from small presses or wrote in more experimental styles.

Originally the series took place in campus residence halls––bringing poetry to where students lived––but through the twelve years of the series we were in different places––auditoriums, a black box theater, the bookstores, etc.  This year I just realized the series had gone on long enough.  I wanted a different format.

The new, online What’s New in Poetry will feature 2-4 readers every two week, not as produced video art, but as great poets just reading their work.  I’m really excited about it.  Lots of awesome poets have already signed on.

 

DB: Claudia Rankine read at the last “What’s New in Poetry” at Emory right?

 

BC: Yes, she read for us!  It was a great way to end the irl series!  She was amazing!!!

 

DB: Tell me about it––how electric––and what necessary timing.

 

BC: The timing was necessary/amazing––it was, I think, the night after the Garner decision. It was a great turnout––the work from Citizen, which really should have won the National Book Award for poetry (NBA). In fact, I think her reading was only a week or so after the NBA was announced. It was the longest-ever line to sign books at the end of a reading; I think the longest I’ve ever seen.

 

DB: I was going to ask you about the NBA decision, your thoughts on it anyway.

 

BC: I think it turned out like a lot of other awards––they almost never represent what people love or are even reading. Except, in this case, the nominations were better than average.

Gluck has been an influence for sure––not an influence on me, but on a lot of poets––but she isn’t vibrant today in the way that Rankine or Fred Moten are.

 

DB: I want to say something about gatekeepers here and hungry ghosts but I can’t articulate it.

 

BC: Well, it’s definitely about gatekeeping––a holdover from the 50s-70s or 80s in which high printing costs meant only a limited number of books could be published. So, there was a “rush for canonicity” that wasn’t at all pretty and publishers were sort of in a bind because print runs had to be larger so publishers had to sell a lot of copies. Publishers were looking for “known quantities”––the self-perpetuation or canon formation had economic roots.

But now, there’s really no excuse, except a small number of poets want to maintain the idea of elitism. A small number of “great poets,” who write in a traditional style or voice, as if such a voice was transcendent––as if a “great poet” wasn’t socially or culturally defined and of a particular moment. I get really frustrated with that desire to self-perpetuate elitism–the “self-proclaimed elite” I call them.

 

DB: I think you make a good point by saying, “now there’s really no excuse.” Hopefully this episode forces a change.

 

BC: I hope so––Claudia seems like a shoe-in for the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) award.

I mean there doesn’t have to be so many aesthetic lines. I think we need to get to the point when we can respect each other, even if we don’t necessarily share the same aesthetic.

I know a poet who claims to have a unique skill of “knowing a great poem or poet” when he sees one. What bullshit. We all have biases but the whole idea of “greatness,” which arises out of a white male tradition, is so awful for poetry and for people. It’s not like we go around policing painters, saying, “You need to stop because I know a great painting when I see one and you don’t make them.”

Well, actually, I think painters probably have their own challenges & they’re equally gross.

 

DB: Of course. What is art anyway? Let’s talk about Coconut!

 

BC: We just sent Ginger Ko’s book to the printer and Arielle Greenberg’s book should be in print soon–over the next couple of weeks. I’m so thrilled with all of our books.

 

DB: I loved seeing this year’s lineup. It was like an explosion. Let’s do a “where are you now thing,” as a press: I know the magazine came first but I’m interested how the book arm has grown over the years.

 

BC: I spend almost all of my Coconut time on the books these days, so the magazine has temporarily become a little more sporadic. We did fourteen books last year, and we’ll do fourteen this year and fourteen next year. We have most of our 2016 lineup filled–only two slots reserved for the next contest. I’m really happy with the press. I like balancing first books with second and third and 4th & 5th & sixth books, you know, hopefully helping to facilitate a sub-community of wonderful poets.

 

 

DB: What was the first book Coconut put out?

 

BC: We started with free, downloadable chapbooks on the website––I think the first one was 2004, a year or so after the magazine started. The whole idea was trying to get free poems and books in readers’ hands.

The first full-length was Reb Livingston’s Your Ten Favorite Words in 2007. I did like two per year for a little while but then had to stop when my dad died, and then came back just wanting to do bunches, mostly because there are so many great manuscripts out there. I couldn’t turn so many of them down.

 

DB: Did you ever imagine it would grow into what it is today?

 

BC: Haha, no! I mean, when I started the magazine I was just hoping to publish some work by some poets I admired––I never expected anything big to happen. I’m still shocked and amazed by the press’s success–not that the books aren’t awesome, but it feels unreal that I’m able to help such great poets in a small way.

The press still loses money each year, but I put a little more in each year, which means more books.

 

DB: It’s a hell of a lot of work though, right? You’re lucky you love it so much.

 

BC: Yeah, I mean I rarely think of it as work. It’s really fun but time-consuming for sure. I spend a little Coconut time pretty much every night and weekend, on vacation, etc. It’s just become part of who I am?

During our last open reading period we had like 500 submissions, most of which were publishable, and I narrowed it down to like 100 that I would love to publish, and then to fifty I would kill to publish. So, fourteen a year, in that sense, is really easy.

 

DB: If you don’t do it who will? Maybe nobody right?

 

BC: These days there are so many great presses coming up–it seems like every day there’s an awesome new magazine or publisher. We’re all in it together–it’s the great community of poetry. We all just contribute whatever we can. Oy, I hope I don’t sound hokey, but I really believe these things

 

DB: I do, too. That’s why we’re talking about it. So, what are you reading right now and really digging?

 

BC: Gosh––I like so many things. I loved Claudia’s book; Matthea Harvey’s new one; Orange Roses by Lucy Ives; After Cave by Michelle Detorie; Sara or the Existence of Fire by Sara Woods; Lee Ann Roripaugh’s Dandarians; Meghan Privitello’s A New Language for Falling Out of Love and Gale Thompson’s Soldier On; and I have a whole other big stack. Plus, I get pretty enmeshed in all the Coconut titles–I really love them; all the Bloof chapbooks. I could probably just keep going.

 

DB: I’m trying to think of a closing question, do you have any more answers for me?

 

BC: You could ask me what I’m working on now? I just finished a manuscript. It’s called Clear the Range!

 

DB: No shit, are you kidding me? CLEAR THE RANGE? Please provide me with the backstory. Didn’t someone already write a Clear the Range?

 

BC: Yes, Ted Berrigan wrote a novel called Clear the Range–he took a popular western and substituted words. Mine plays with the words in somewhat different ways, but is still an homage to Ted. Ted Berrigan’s my poetry fave, of course.

 

———————

 

Two Poems from Bruce Covey’s Clear the Range

 

“One of My Favorite Ron Padgett Poems Colonized by Walmart”

 

I would never have wanted to see your sad face again

Hard candy glamoflauge heavy duty concealer

With concealer pencil, medium 313, $6

Your cheeks and your windy hair

Palmer’s coconut oil formula deep

Conditioning protein pack, 2.1 oz., 2 pack, $2.84

I went all across the country

Coleman cimmaron 8-person modified dome tent, $89

Under this humid woodpecker

WWW amazon birds backgammon

From fsc certified wood, $27.97

Day and night

Summer infant extra camera video monitor, $47.19

Under the sun and the rain

Aleko AW10X6 5 colors-3 premium yard shade

Blue and white, $341.23

 

Now we are face to face again

Garnier ultra-lift targeted line smoother

Tightener & cream, 0.5 fl oz, $14.47

What does one say to my face

Kiss 800011C the change ester c serum

1 fluid ounce , $13.57

 

Once I rested up against a tree

Cosco-scenera convertible car seat, $39

So long

See you tomorrow, $10

I got stuck to it

NBA live 15 ps4, $59.96

That kind of love is terrible

Belt envy m14besu Sunday cuff, $40

 

 

 

 

 

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

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