Clint Margrave recently celebrated the release of his first book of poems, The Early Death of Men, published by NYQ Books, an offshoot of the well regarded New York Quarterly Poetry Magazine. Clint is one of several local poets who will be reading this Saturday at Gatsby Books as part of a fundraising event for the upcoming Beside the City of Angels: A Long Beach Poetry Festival. The fundraiser, which starts at 7PM, will feature all of the festival’s organizers who, sadly, do not read at the festival itself.
The book arose from a long process spanning several years.
“I revise obsessively,” Margrave admitted. “I’d say an individual poem may go through 30 to 40 drafts. Some poems, of course, just spring up out of nowhere in their entirety, but those moments are rare and not the usual. I don’t begin by writing verse, but rather a long freewrite [sic], maybe a couple pages, that I eventually bring the ax to and try to carve something worthwhile out of.”
The free writing process is usually, but not always, without focus, a free association process.
“Since I do this everyday, it depends on the amount of inspiration I have. Some days I have an intentional focus. Some days, I’m just trying to get through it with the hope that something will emerge by the end of it. Usually, it’ll be a few months before I even return to these free writes. The results are often surprising in both directions.
“I should add, of course, that this 20-30 minute free write is only the initial step. I may devote hours, days, months to actually crafting what I have into a poem. The accumulation of material is daily, but the crafting usually takes place over specific periods of time. I may go months with only free writing and then months of crafting after that. I think I’ve created this process to coincide with my work schedule since I’m a teacher. The bulk of my real writing is done over the summer months. But it’s not enough for me to wait until summer, of course, which is why I write everyday.
“For many years, I was a fiction writer, always thinking I’d end up a novelist rather than a poet, so I think I’ve also developed the daily habit of a novelist. Poetry doesn’t work in the same way, necessarily, but I force it to because I don’t believe in waiting around for inspiration. When I’m not writing, I feel like a waste, so even those free writes, I suppose, keep me sane when there is little time to do more. I should also mention that I go about my day taking notes and collecting ideas for the next morning’s work. So, in a sense, I’m always writing even when I’m not.”
Once all the writing was done, Margrave then had to face other struggles.
“Like most writers, I have my obsessions. In this case, thematic ones. So when I sat down to put a manuscript together, it was easy. I mean there were those poems that you put in then take out then put back in, then wish you hadn’t, etc. The real trouble was trying to put them in some kind of coherent order. It’s really hard with poetry because each individual poem is its own separate entity so when it does come time to put it all together and start thinking of it as a whole, you have to look at those individual poems not as unique pieces which they previously were, but as part of the larger whole.
“It was a matter of putting everything together and seeing what would happen. I still don’t necessarily have a larger sense of the whole. I can’t remember who it was, but I once heard a well-known poet talk about how arbitrary the order of poems were in a collection, since most people don’t read a collection from start to finish, but skip through it. So, in a sense, it doesn’t ultimately matter. I know some people might disagree with this idea, but I think there’s some to truth to that statement.”
One of the poems, ‘The First Time Books Saved My Life,’ tells the childhood story of avoiding a spanking by shoving paperbacks into his pants.
“This particular poem, since it was so inherently autobiographical, was one of those quick ones. It did not come about in the process previously described. In fact, I think I wrote it all in one sittng, and didn’t change it that much after. I remember being at a bar the previous night telling this story to my friend, thinking, ‘This could make a great poem’ and, by the next afternoon, I think I had sent it to him. I do find that humorous work it goes much faster, and is easier to write than some of the more serious stuff. I guess you could say, in this case, the whole thing really did just form in my head. Oftentimes, it’ll be a title that comes to me first and, in the case of this poem, the title brought everything together so clearly and easily.”
While he categorizes the poem as humorous, I felt it depicted a rather aweful experience.
“I think a lot of my work walks that thin line between the comic and tragic. There’s another poem in the collection called “I Don’t Believe in Ghosts” which I never thought was funny but deadly serious, until I read it in front of a crowd and they all laughed. You just can never tell how someone is going to perceive a work. I suppose I lean towards dark humor in some of my poems. I have to admit I kind of like that people can either perceive the same poem to be entirely humorous or entirely tragic. I’m not sure why, or what that means.”
The significance of having a book of poems published by a respected publishing house is not lost on Margrave.
“I feel like I’ve spent my whole life working toward this moment. And it’s just doubly gratifying to have my book published by NYQ since I have so much respect for the magazine and its editors, both founder William Packard and now Raymond Hammond. I don’t think I could have asked for a better publisher and I’m not saying that kiss anybody’s ass. They’ve had such a great history of publishing the writers I love, and have maintained their integrity and spirit, which is most important to me above everything else.”
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Clint’s book can be purchased at all the usual on-line book retailers, and at Gatsby Books, which is located at 5535 East Spring Street.
Learn more about this Saturday’s fundraising event.
For more information about the poetry festival, visit the facebook page.
Read an interview with Kevin Lee, one of the festival’s organizers.
Read an interview with Donna Hilbert, one of the festival’s organizers.