Interview #15: Hugh Cook

Sincerely Art --- Interview Series

Sy Albright interviews Hugh Cook -- poet/author 

His forth coming poetry book "The Day It Became a Circle" is soon to be published by

Afterworld Books.

SA: I am fortunate to be privy to your first and forthcoming poetry title “The Day It Became a Circle” soon to be published by Afterworld Books. I, too, share the same adherence to poetic titles as poets Mark Antony Rossi and Linda Imbler in that it automatically sets the right literary tone. This is a perfect title. Explain how you came about it and why it connects to the material contained in the book.

HC: The title is symbolic of both the experience of travelling away and returning home and of the knowledge and renewed perspective I gained through travelling. In my experience literature and poetry that explore travel often don’t consider the return home, the place where the journey begins, and ends, in a circle. Then life goes on. What I hope my title captures is the way that a familiar place, like home, can be changed through internal shifts in our understanding of place. What I found was that the mindset and freedom I felt during my time abroad opened my eyes to new opportunities, and encouraged me to take chances I had never trusted before. I knew then that the most valuable and lasting effect of my trips would be the travelling mindset, and when I went home, I looked for ways to bring my new perspective into my life at home. Of course, upon returning home I discovered that the space of home can never be the same the space of travel, but being open to opportunities I hadn’t seen before, and taking chances that I wouldn’t have before created a new way of living in my home.

SA: Through the years I have had to separate “travel” writing from the tourist perspective versus a literary vision that usually reveals changes to the writer due to their travel. The latter entirely fits your project. Your travels opened your eyes and helped you grow. Please elaborate on this further.

HC: When travelling, the writer encounters new cultures and modes of thought rapidly, but most importantly our own assumptions about daily life are brought into question. When I left America, my hometown, and my friends behind I saw that most often the faults in my thought were revealed by changing the circumstances that travel offered. What I was left with were the genuine parts of my character, the wishes and needs so true to my existence that they continue to motivate me whether I am in El Salvador or Oslo, whether people like or dislike that I am from America. No matter where I am, I love seeing art. Paintings like the Mona Lisa are charged with sentiment and preconceived notions in our culture, and these inhibit our ability to see the works through our own eyes. Upon encountering the Mona Lisa, I was able to see it without assumptions, it felt as if my social lens was cleared. To be motivated each day only by my deepest wishes and truest feelings was a dream come true. I think having this experience has allowed me to realize a deeper self, and when I listen to my intuition, and follow my instincts I am happier, I create new pieces and conceptualize new artworks, and I soak up the inspiration around me. Although during part of my travel I had access to the world’s foremost museums, I found short conversations on trains, the books in my hostels, and even the changes in food and advertising became part of the new worlds I was able to explore. My growth came from finding things I liked in places I was completely foreign to, and this strengthened my reflections upon myself, and offered me new avenues of interaction with the world. All of this opened my senses and widened my eyes to new possibilities, in art and in life.

SA: You are the first writer I have asked this question: Why Poetry to carry your thoughts and dreams? Why not a series of essays? Or a collection of short fiction? I do not ask in criticism. After all poetry is historically the earliest form of artistic writing ever recorded.

HC: Language is a representation of our desire, to be understood, to communicate ideas and perspectives, to share our humanity. I have always found that when I am seeking to share my world with another person, poetry offers inherent creativity and flexibility, allowing me to take risks with language and to break typical narrative forms so as to create the sensations or share the ideas as they feel to me. Poetry has many rules and so when a rule is broken, or reinterpreted I feel that I am experiencing a new sensation. I also find that in poetry, I expect the pieces to come from the author’s core, to see writing from a perspective or exploration of concepts that are genuinely important to the artist and directly relevant to shared experiences or ideals. While I do write nonfiction and essays, my poetry has always spoken to me honestly about things that are most important, like joy and pain, and from both of these, the process of growth and joining communities and people.

SA: In writing we have had a series of writers, Baldwin, The Beat Poets, etc., who used alcohol, drugs, religions, philosophies and travel as mechanisms or catalysts to find themselves. Sometimes this was a crisis of faith, family dysfunction, political upheaval or other more personal reasons. Explain how travel changed your depth of art. Are you a better writer for it?

HC: I am certainly a better writer because of travelling. There are many possible catalysts, but ultimately writing comes from the ongoing evolution of the self, a relationship between the writer and the experience of being alive. Everything from family dysfunction, drugs, and religion are touched upon in my collection “The Day It Became a Circle,” but I think they all clearly take a backseat to a more powerful, more personal experience of travelling. While I am proud of the variety covered in this collection, ultimately my experience of travelling and my realization of a core self which I deeply value allowed me to interact with the world, and therefore write, with a keener eye and new conceptions. Travelling allowed me to shed parts of my personality that can inhibit me from the most genuine connection with the world around me. For a writer, for an artist, for all of us I think the only catalyst that matters is the genuine connections we make in the world, whether those connections be made in our home, with books and words, or with strangers who feel just like us halfway around the world.

SA: The notion of community seems to be shattered in the 21st century. There are theories that modern technology plays a role in this societal division. But without trying to be controversial are not problems of society still prevalent because of people rather than machines are less than reliable in offering solutions. Is there a real sense of community out there for writing or is it more than ever a lonely pursuit?

HC: I am very grateful for the community I have found in my Writing & Literature program, and that community grounds me and offers my writing structure. I think that the writing community, especially when seen through the lens of the screen and the internet, can seem very lonely. I also think that many writers are lonely, and that this is a mixed blessing. Part of my process of escaping loneliness is to write and create and hopefully share these creations and that side of myself with members of the community. The 21st century is demanding a reset of the notions of community-- the families we are born into are one part of our life, and the families we create by going out in the world are another. There are excellent forums online to give and receive feedback about writing and poetry, many on Reddit.com, as well as classes and clubs that I think more young artists should be aware of. But technology is a tool-- we choose how we use it. I’ve felt like a slave to social media and I’ve also felt immensely satisfied with the freedom to display my artistry on sites like Instagram, Portfolium, and of course FaceBook. Ultimately, we control how much technology isolates us. The days that I spend watching Netflix, no matter how good or compelling the content, feel much less fulfilling than the days I spend wandering. When I was travelling I found that over time my use of screens decreased until I was just checking my email and writing. I continued to write as I went outdoors and lived the stories I saw on Netflix. For many of us, the easy thing to do is to fall back on screens whenever we feel challenged or lonely. I’ve learned that I’m happier and closer to myself when I break these patterns of reliance on screens and struggle to jot down some thoughts or draw in my notebook. Loneliness is part of writing, but writing is not loneliness.

SA: We have worked on a few projects together. Is Rossi’s literary theory correct?  The periodic immersion in other writer’s work is both a godsend to reset one’s perception and a release from swimming in the internal mire of Self.

HC:  Absolutely, I feel similarly when I read W.S. Merwin as I do when I meditate. There is a release of internal pressure, and an unfolding of the subconscious. When I lose myself in another world, whether it is a volume of poetry, or the peculiar, technical writing of a science fiction author I am free to wander about the mind of another author as if it were a TV set. I can slowly look at the main stage from every camera angle, and see the story, the words, and hopefully get to a deeper, underlying meaning offered to me by the prose or poetry. Matisse and Gauguin left to Polynesia when they needed a reset to their perception. As a writer I am lucky enough to release myself into the work of other writers without travelling, while gaining a little freedom from the ‘mire of the self.’ It is natural to experience plateaus, and while I don’t think a writer should stop writing in hopes of resetting their perception, it is always worth reading in hopes of that immersion that finally releases another piece of the puzzle we create.

SA: Some writers are nearly forced into the proverbial closet regardless of how supposedly tolerate this modern age. Writing are one of the few callings (professions) I have encountered where the Enemy is not the world as much as it is the Family that heaps the doubt and distrust. Where do you find yourself in this situation?

HC: My doubts and distrust were largely shaped by the family I have, and while my family is supportive of my art and loving, my childhood experiences have almost entirely determined the way I regard the world. I am learning new ways to interact with the world, and gaining new perspectives. As long as a human is doing that, then they are working toward the modern age. Very few people realize exactly how much any adult who looks at the world and sees the “Enemy” is seeing a part of their childhood in which they were unsafe, and “Family” is, by necessity, the largest part of childhood. My art is certainly one area where I resolve the problems of family, and I am very grateful that I can not only help myself grow past doubt and distrust, but that my art might offer someone else the kernel of a pathway through their own struggles. The real motivation for me to explore my own pain and my own family is to allow healing though the creative works I can offer, to anyone who may benefit from an open perspective on an area that is often closed in society.

SA: Please list all of creative forces past and present who have influenced your artistic endeavors.

HC: This is an exciting question and I am so glad you asked it. Like many writers, I fell in love with reading at an early age. I read eagerly, and of course read every dystopian world I could. I was drawn to children or adults who were isolated but surviving through some situation where the world they knew had fallen apart. I came across Ender’s Game in fifth grade, and have read it yearly since then. The story of a deeply sensitive boy, isolated, away from his parents in a highly competitive school registered with me deeply, and I think became my first map of my subconscious perception of myself, though I wouldn’t realize this until years later. I continue to read science fiction, I am a huge fan of Cixin Liu, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert A. Heinlein and Orson Scott Card. I didn’t begin writing until my senior year of high school, but when I did, I was writing for my school newspaper and was fascinated by Hunter S. Thompson. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer has stuck with me, and I think that Krakauer’s writing finally drew me away from the self-destructive style of Thompson, as I saw that a writer could be both emotionally involved and not an enemy of society. There are so many authors who I hope to draw from, but Viktor Frankl's Man’s Search for Meaning, the works of Ursula K. LeGuin, Edward Abbey and Albert Camus are all deeply meaningful to me and shaped my adolescence. I must also mention Aldous Huxley, but for his book Island, the perhaps lesser known ‘solution’ novel written as the alternate, hopeful path of society, a counterweight to his vision in Brave New World.

Because mainstream poetry wasn’t within my wheelhouse as a child, I found myself drawn to the most lyrically dense music. The first time I explored music on my own I dove deeply into the discography of Eminem, a name that conjures controversy, especially in my own mind, looking back on the masculine isolation and violence that some of his songs seem to glorify. But I’ve learned as an artist that what is an exploration of one’s own reality may seem to others like a glorification of a certain experience. While I am listening to less and less hip-hop as I try to move away from screens, the unique wordplay, exploration of pain, and dedication to creating unique poetry with complex meter and rhyme inherent to music will forever remain both admirable in the right hands and deeply influential to a young me. Artists like Isaiah Rashad, Denzel Curry, Joba from Brockhampton, and especially Sylvan LaCue create beautiful songs that explore unique cultures, while drawing on honest perspectives, and innovating language and creating new identities through their art.

Presently, I am exploring the Romanticists’ writing, like Keats, and their dedication to nature and love. The unique work of Georges Perec, like Things: A Story of The Sixties, A Man Asleep, and Life: A User’s Manual have shown me that the most interesting ways of creating and sharing often can use observation of the physical, consumption based world around us as a means of insight to our common humanity. The poetry of W.S. Merwin is purposeful, and his brevity is powerful. I hope to balance the overwhelming world of consumption, and my observations of beauty, with honest, empowered lines like those Merwin created.