Grunge in Ohio: An Interview

Well, I’ve tried many different ways to get information regarding The Grand Rapids Literary Review, and so far nothing has worked.  The site may be gone forever.  It may just pop back up.  Who knows? 

I don’t know what I am going to do about the poems.  I may put them back on the market.  Or I may consider them published (since they were) and keep the credential.  I still have to think about that.

The interview I did, though, is a whole different story.  That was a GRLR exclusive, as it were, and won’t be being republished anywhere or used in any way by anyone except the editors of that journal, which as I far as I know is a journal that no longer exists.  So I am reprinting it here.  Should GRLR return, I will take this post off the blog.  Until then, enjoy!

 Grunge in Ohio: An Interview with Feature Poet, Anthony Frame
            by the editors of The Grand Rapids Literary Review

1. Tell us about your book manuscript in progress, Postmodern Guernica.

Postmodern Guernica is actually a chapbook (I hope). It began basically as an experimentation. I wondered about cubism and poetry. Could they be combined? I read some Wallace Stevens (especially “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”) and a lot of Gertrude Stein (especially “Picasso”) — a lot of modernist poets since they were working amid the cubist revolution. Then, as I experimented, I found my politics and my personal life merging. In later drafts of the poems, the personal vanished (a first for me!) and only the political remained. This is when I reviewed Picasso’s famous painting, Guernica. I read about it, thought about it and tried to see if I couldn’t do poetry the way Picasso did Guernica. It has been a strange journey working on this chapbook and it has pushed me to rethink what I write about and how I write about it. And it has been a lot of fun.

2. We loved the 90′s grunge rock references in your work. What do you think that particular music movement was all about?

Change. Youth. Politics. It was a turning away from the glamor and glitz of the 80′s and it was a reaction to the lived experiences of the 80′s (as opposed to the decadence and privilege that 80′s rock and roll claimed was real). Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Bush, etc… all seemed to have real resentment toward the fact that their lives were very different than the lives being shown in Poison videos, for example. So they wanted to talk about what it was like to live in the real world. Bush examined sexuality. Pearl Jam examined violence. Nirvana examined drugs and the subconscious. Smashing Pumpkins examined childhood. It was all personal, but in classic artistic fashion, the personal quickly became the political (as in “Jeremy” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit”).

3. How do you balance teaching and writing in your life?

It can be difficult, to be sure. This is especially true for those of us who are part time college instructors and therefore have to teach, write, likely hold a second job (I am a writing tutor, for example), and worry about money and on and on. But luckily I get to teach what I love and what I do: writing. So in addition to forcing myself to set aside a little bit of time each day (even if only a few minutes) to write, I also get to think about writing all the time. The work my students do also push me to write. Their narratives make me think about my narratives. Their research makes me rethink how I research (and sometimes inspire lines in my poems). So, basically, I don’t balance teaching and writing. I merge them.

4. What have you been reading lately?

A lot of nonfiction. I’ve just finished Bill Clinton’s biography (what a tome!). Before that I read Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. But I’ve also been reading poems by Rane Arroyo (he has a few new books coming out in the next year or two), Maya Angelou, Naomi Shahib Nye, Tony Hoagland, and on and on. I’ve also been checking out a lot of online magazines on a regular basis: No Tell Hotel, The Pedestal Magazine, DIAGRAM, H_NGM_N, Front Porch. Oh, there is so much!

5.Tell us about living in Ohio–

Well, what do you want to know? I live in NW Ohio, which has been in the news a lot lately because of all the storms. There has been a lot of flooding, especially in Findlay, Ohio. I live near the Maumee River, which is quite high right now (higher than I’ve ever seen it). Earlier in the summer, we were having a drought and the river was lower than I had ever seen it. Which is a good metaphor for Ohio. What do you want? We got it. You like cities? Visit Cleveland, Ohio, Cincinnati. You want something more rural? There are plenty of areas like that. We have hills and valleys and flatland. Cornfields, soy fields, tomato fields and asphalt fields. Political hotbeds and places where apathy drips from the trees. Anywhere in Ohio is pretty close to a major area of another state (Toledo is quite close to Detroit, for example) so even if you can’t find what you want, you need only drive a few hours to get to where you want to go.

6. If you were on Death Row, what would your “last meal” be? (Describe in detail)

Hmm … my wife’s chili. Because it tastes better than anything I’ve ever eaten in my life and it will clear my sinuses no matter how stuffed up it is. And I don’t want to be sniffing as I say my last words.