Interview # 4: Michael Griffith

 Sincerely Art – Interview Series
 

Sy Albright interviews Michael Griffith---poet/author/writing instructor

 

SA: The writer Mark Antony Rossi describes you as “one of the handful of English professors who actually make sense.” Besides the dark humor I believe what he’s getting at is you write what you preach or teach. Can you share your writing philosophy with us?

MG: That's high praise from Mark, who is also a respected writer and teacher in his own right. I need to set two things straight before going further, though: my official title at work is “instructor.” College students tend to call all their various teachers “Professor” and we teachers all adopt the title pretty generically, but I don't want it to seem like I claim to be something which I am not. Secondly, I teach courses in the field of communications at the collegiate level, courses like Public Speaking, Mass Communications, and Intercultural Communication. I teach classes in poetry, creative writing, confidence-building, and also communications to kids, teens, and adults in community education programs at the college where I teach, Raritan Valley Community College. 

 

Okay, on to your excellent question, Sy!

 

My basic philosophy to both life and writing is “can't” is the enemy to joy and therefore to creativity and therefore to expression.

 

Everybody can and should write or paint or draw or sing or dance.

 

People need to process and then express their emotions, thoughts, and experiences if even just for themselves. Few people “can't” write, just as few people “can't” sing, dance, play the oboe, ski, and so on. I can't do any of those other activities well, but I certainly can try to do them and train to do each of them better.

 

Think about it: Dance – moving with intention to the sounds and rhythms around us – comes naturally to us as toddlers. It's only once we learn embarrassment that we start to stumble from over-thinking. The same happens with talking and singing and writing. Too often a child gets a poor score on something and feels he or she should give up. We adults also get discouraged if we don't achieve results we'd expected and hoped for. We might not get the raise we'd hoped for at work, but that doesn't mean we can't ever get one.

 

Can't defeats true creation before it even begins.

 

Look at the best-known poems of E. E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams. They'd have gotten poor grades in standard English classes. Yet these are masterpieces and now are in the majority of high school and college Literature textbooks. Poetry “can't” look or read like a Cummings or Williams poem until those brave writers came and made a new “can.”

Can't write? Says who? Only you.

 

SA:  cold fisherman waits

his line will soon dip deeper

 

meal and death in one

 

These are lines (the only lines) from the poem “Cold” first published in 2/18 at Ariel Chart. That last line is a powerful reminder how micro poems can hit you right over the head. What was the thinking or inspiration behind this finely crafted poem?

MG: “Cold” is a titled haiku. Haiku “can't” have titles. Well, I chose to give it one when I submitted it to Mark's fine website Ariel Chart. Prior to that, it was rejected from a different website. Rejection is another form of “can't” artists deal with. Oh well, shrug off the momentary frustration of missing that trout and cast your line out again. That's the only way to fish and to get published. You might not catch fish one day and land ten the next. If you stop fishing, you never catch another fish again. The tiny poem's inspiration is the magic trick that the food chain can be. The fish thought the bait was its next meal, but alas... And once the cold fisherman is cold in the ground, he becomes food for worms and bugs which are then food for fish, so it all can happen again. No piece of writing ends with the last word.

 

SA:  Has the internet, computers and email changed the face of writing as we know it?

MG: WOW! This question is literally what I got my master's degree in (media studies) and what we spend 90% or so of the time addressing in the Introduction to Mass Communications course I teach at RVCC. Make sure you're in a comfy chair and have plenty to drink as I answer... 

 

No, no; I promise to keep this pretty brief and pithy.

 

Any technology changes the society that uses it. Writing has generally become much shorter because attention spans have been getting much shorter. Media, the media we all use and love, has done this to us at our bidding.

 

Media is also a mental cornucopia giving us ample ability to have a never-ending feast. We choose the menu and quality of what we create and consume. Self-publishing, blogs, websites and more give writers incredible opportunity to become read, opportunity that did not exist a very few generations ago. Because nearly everyone can become published in the broad sense of the word by posting their writing online or self-publishing their book, we have a tremendous glut of material out there, all-too-much of it pretty bland, featureless, and trite. Everyone feels they have something unique to contribute, yet if we're all contributing, how can we know what's really outstanding in the vast garden we've mutually created?

 

Tucked in my question is a can't: we can't tell what's really great if we don't get out of the over-crowded garden of the new media, the internet, and go back to the more selective and exclusive garden of the older medium of print. I regard e-publishers like Mark's Soma Publishing as “print,” since they are crafting books and have editors serving as master gardeners guiding the creative talent to fruitful harvest.  

 

SA:  Editors supposed to help writers, I daresay, shepherd writers to improve their craft and gain an audience. I hear mostly that is not the case. Can you share some stories you had good and bad with editors?

MG:  Before writing poetry, I was the content editor for a professional newsletter, so I have sat on both sides of the curtain in the land of Oz we call publishing. As an editor, I had a writer complain bitterly when I removed several lines from his article, saying I'd “ruined his artistic vision.” My reply to him was that since he'd read, signed and returned the contract which stated that his article could and may well be edited for space and/or content purposes and he'd cashed the check we'd sent him for his article, we have no need to argue. His “art” became our “property” which made it commerce. Any time an audience becomes involved, art becomes a transaction. Transaction begets commerce. Editors determine yes/no/can/can't.

 

So I have had to dole out some “No, you can't” statements in my time. I still do with my own twice-yearly poetry website Hidden Constellation, where I regrettably must sometimes reject poems I don't feel are quite ready for public consumption. I have been that wizard in Oz. On the side of innocent Dorothy and spunky Toto I now stand as poet. 

I was blessed with helpful advice from an editor. My poem “The Dreams of Beasts,” found most recently in the anthology Warriors With Wings, was submitted to Charlie Bondhus, Poetry Editor at the website The Good Men Project. Charlie advised I trim off about a third of the poem's original content. At first I was shocked and a bit affronted, but once I cooled-off, I sent the revised version in and the poem now feels like one of my “greatest hits,” having been republished in several anthologies. Without Charlie's very able eyes, “The Dreams of Beasts” might still be in my file of rejected poems.

 

I feel that too many writers dig in their heels and refuse to alter their work at the request of an editor. THEY, the artist, affirm that they can't change. Or their precious creation can't be changed. I feel both are wrong-headed opinions. “Kill your darlings,” basically meaning to edit out even your very favorite word or lines from a piece, has been standard creative writing advice since 1914. Change your work to make it stronger, more concentrated, or more fitting for your intended audience. If you cannot, then create only for yourself.  I have had no bad experiences with editors, but maybe I can sense an iffy editor pretty easily, having had experience as a professional editor. I've seen some typos here and there, but nothing I choose to fret over. The truth is that at least 95% of any new to mid-range writer's experiences with an editor will be a “form letter” rejection email, which is never helpful.

 

SA:  I’m told you have a poetry project forthcoming. Please elaborate on it details.

MG: Thanks for asking, Sy. I have a chapbook coming out later this year from The Blue Nib. It's my first, so I don't know that my case is typical. I'd had a lot of success placing poems and essays with The Blue Nib website, so I took a shot and pitched a book to them. I sent in a group of about 30 poems of various lengths and themes, moods, and voices. The editor and publisher accepted my manuscript idea and came back with a list of 21 of the poems they selected for the book. I formatted the 21 to the preferred page size (6” by 9”) and placed my poems in the order I would like them to appear. The final decisions rest with the editor and her publisher, and I am fine with that. They are also working on the cover design and title, with some input from me, but we're not at that stage in the production yet. I'm working on a second chapbook manuscript and hope to edit or co-edit an anthology around the theme of recovery – physical, addiction, psychological recoveries – soon. And there's issue 3 of Hidden Constellation coming out in September. The reading period is on now, so I'm pretty busy. 

 

SA: Someone said recently foreign writers take writing more seriously than American writers because they are less entangled with the tentacles of the mass media. Is there really a connection between passion and staying away from modern entertainment?

MG: Uh oh, more on the mass media!

I use a textbook that has the phrase “the media that invade our lives” in it. Let's be clear: mass media does not invade our lives; we invite it into our lives. It might become an obnoxious guest, but we invited it. Media is not the enemy, for why would we invite an enemy to be in almost every room, to be next to us as we sleep then wake? Most countries use media as much as we do in the USA, if not more so. Time spent in TV viewing in most countries is similar to that in the US. The US ranks 7th in smartphone use penetration behind Taiwan (#5), South Korea (#4) and the top-ranking United Arab Emirates.

Okay, before this gets too much like class, I'm not aware that media use deadens the passion to create, but we may need to change how we perceive creativity. A person doesn't seem to create much while she is playing a video game or posting tweets. Regardless of where she is from, she IS creating or at least enhancing her own mood and experience and expectations. These may one day come out in the form of cosplay at a convention, as fan fiction, a drawing, poetry, or a story told to a friend. All this is creation. If we portray something in art, we are feeling it, maybe passionately.

 

We all learn major aspects of language from mass media, be it from books, the 'net, DVDs, TV shows, or the radio. We learn poetry's basic flow from nursery rhymes, commercial jingles, hymns, lullaby songs, and so on. Some of these are transmitted to us through media even before we can speak. We expect media to offer us poetry as much as we expect entertainment, explosions, and exploitation from media later on in life.

 

Humans are tapped-in to universal moods and experiences: pride, shame, love, hate, hunger, satisfaction, happy, sad. These exist in the media messages we consume and they existed long before electronic media were created. A person's need to express may well be strengthened by exposure to media messages, not deadened. Starting artists mimic with great enthusiasm what they have been exposed to in the media. Linda Imbler hits on this in Interview #3.   

 

SA: Writers are a peculiar bunch. Some swear by writing clubs, literature courses and community outings while others believe such familiarity undermines their objectivity. What are your thoughts on this debate?

MG: Both the private and public aspects of being a writer are important to my growth.

I read and have read many “how-to” writing books and articles, read countless poems and stories. I scribble notes, keep files, bang out drafts, mutter and forage and do all the other things artists do in private. On the public side of being a writer, I thrive from attending poetry critique group meetings, enjoy meeting fellow writers, and share advice and camaraderie with those I know. Attending open mics and poetry readings and performing live have helped me reach new audiences and hear when a line works and when it needs revision my eyes never caught. The mouth is a great editing tool. If something is hard to say, it's probably hard to read. 

 

Most of the above goes on face-to-face, but there are many chances to learn writing online and to join online discussion and critique groups. We tend to write mainly what we'd enjoy reading. Fine. But our own eyes are often blind to our own missteps and faults, our over-worked habits and tied expressions. Fellow writers can help us see these aspects we'd never realize are present. In this way critique groups are wonderfully helpful. Here a writer can find the guidance so lacking in their interactions with editors.  

 

College classes and MFA programs are great, but they tend to produce what the instructor and class cohort want to see produced. Colleges are governed by several powerful sets of rules. At the bare minimum, a student needs to create as the instructor has set forth in his or her lesson plan. Anything going outside this plan will probably be given a poor grade. Again, a “can't.” Again, I play the role of the Wizard.  

SA: Do you have past and present writers who have influenced you?

MG: Past: Robert Lowell, Ray Bradbury, Sylvia Plath, John Cheever, Marge Piercy, William Carlos Williams, Anne Sexton, Langston Hughes, James Thurber, John Steinbeck.

Present: Patricia Smith, Jee Leong Koh, Ted Kooser, Billy Collins, Stephen King, and many of my writer friends from Hello Poetry, Facebook, and the U.S. 1 Poets' Cooperative.

I am terrible at keeping writers' names straight with poems. I remember the poem, not the person. Yet our persons can be revealed in our poems. 

Thank you for the chance to answer these thoughtful questions, Sy! It has been a sincere honor.