Rachel Marie Patterson (Radar): How do you handle “the truth” in your poetry? In other words, do you feel obligated to tell the truth or do you adhere to another principle or use a different approach to your narratives?
Josh Exoo: I’m going to try not to sound pretentious here in answer to such a wonderful question, but low key I won’t succeed. Voltaire wrote something like “One owes respect to the living; to the dead one owes only truth.” I’ve always thought that’s great writing advice for poets who use real experiences, or people, or even kind of the basis of real people as characters. I think it can be good for poets to be merciless with themselves, but always kind to others, at least living others. It's why I write primarily about dead people or cats: I know I won't hurt their feelings.
R: What is your writing practice like? How has it changed over the years you've been writing poetry?
J: I let poems come to me now. Poetry workshops can be really helpful in forcing a poet to really wrestle with craft and pin something down, even if it’s really, really bad. Now I have no deadlines or expectations, so it’s easier to wait for a poem to come to me. It's almost like working with a scared animal: you have to move slowly and listen to what it's saying. Hopefully, it will calm into some kind of structure, which is a poet saying “I see your pain, but you have a place with me. We belong to each other now.”
R: What advice do you have for emerging poets?
J: Be kind. Even if your poem is ruthless, make sure you can still see the shadow of compassion there. If it doesn't have that, it’s not worth your time. When poetry actually works is when you clearly see the other, and then become it. Also, it’s not a competition, though sometimes it gets pitched that way. But what do those miserable bastards really know?
R: Are you currently working on a manuscript? If so, can you share some of the larger ideas and themes of the work?
J: I’ve only been working on it for the last 20 years. It has something to do with death, and maybe some birds, if I recall.
R: Who/what have you been reading and why?
J: I teach a lot of George Saunders’ stuff, and just finished Liberation Day, just for myself. Though he writes prose, I love his lyricism and structure, which I can unkindly steal for my own poems.
About the Poet
Josh Exoo lives in Canton, NY with his wonderful wife Kathryn and five mischievous fur goblins. He teaches at St. Lawrence University and holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Read Josh’s work, featured in previous issues of Radar:
Springtime Joint (Issue 29)
Crystal Ball (Issue 9)
A Light Wind in Winter (Issue 1)
Read new work by Josh below.
Dream with my Dead Mom Beseeching
Why is it I’m always at a buffet,
But with nothing to eat? Strange halls of disappearing,
Displayed, and pretty food, taken up
Again, by strange hands, all the dishware breaking,
Then dumped outside a dreamworld’s trash.
When my Mom comes to find me, I am hungry,
But her eyes are glowing, knock me back. She is golden.
I am older. Still, somehow she found me, mute, but brings
A note that I must read with all my clarity:
“I cannot go out too long into the city, at night. I’m sorry.”