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Poet Myles Gordon
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Interview with Poet Myles
Gordon: A poet who explores what it means to be human.
With Doug Holder
At our table in back of the Bloc 11 Cafe in Union Square, Somerville I asked Poet Myles Gordon what
he felt it meant to be human-- a theme his poetry is deeply involved with .
Gordon hesitated and seemed to be wrestling with the question. He finally
opined: " We have great thoughts and deep emotions but we have to live in the
real world, pay taxes, feed parking meters-- all this at the same time." Gordon is a poet
of the profound and banal--and he is indeed a very human poet.
Myles Gordon is a writer and
teacher living in Newton, Massachusetts. Prior to teaching, Myles worked as a
television producer, earning four New England Emmy Awards for his work at
Boston's ABC Television affiliate. He also co-produced the independent
documentary Touching Lives: Portraits of Deaf blind People. He holds a
Master of Education from The University of Massachusetts, in Boston, and a
Master of Fine Arts from The Vermont College of Fine Arts. He has published
poetry in several periodicals and is a past honorable mention for the AWP Intro
Award in poetry. He is winner of the Grolier Poetry Prize, and the Helen Kay
Chapbook Competition from Evening Street Press. His latest collection of poetry
is Inside The Splintered Wood ( Tebot Bach)
Doug Holder: Myles--you worked for Channel 5
in Boston, an ABC affiliate for many years. Can you tell me about your Emmy
Award winning documentary Touching Lives: Portraits of Deafblind People?
Deaf and Blind people have heightened senses of smell and touch to
compensate for what they lack with their other senses. Do you think they are similar to poets in that
poets are viewed as having heightened senses as well?
Myles Gordon: That is an interesting
question. I think poets have some sort of innate heightened awareness of the
world either internally or externally. I know for myself there are things that I
focus on or obsess over. I have themes that keep coming back that I am keenly
aware of.
In terms of the documentary--I was working at
Channel 5, but I made my own independent documentary. It concerned a number of
folks that were deaf and blind. I got into doing this because of my wife. She is
an interpreter for the deaf. I met a lot of deaf and blind people through her. I
thought it was a very fascinating world. I wanted to explore it. We profiled 4
individuals and one couple We followed these deaf and blind people through their
lives. And we watched the challenges they faced. It took about 3 years to
make.
DH: You are a child of Holocaust
survivors?
MG: Well-my mother came over from Poland in
1938 to the States with her small immediate family and everybody who was left behind was
killed in the Holocaust. They were from the town of Brestlitousk--that was part
of Poland at the time. It was a shtetl. There was a large Jewish population,
and it was a real hotbed of Jewish learning, and had been for hundreds of
years.This is where my mother's people were from. My father was born in this
country, but he was a combat veteran of WW ll. He was involved with the
liberation of the concentration camps. He was involved in the liberation of
Buchenwald. So I grew up hearing a lot about the Holocaust.
DH: I have talked to other authors who have
shared your experience--it gets into your blood. It gives you a certain view of
the world. I remember interviewing Alan Kaufman, the editor of the Outlaw
Bible of American Literature. He was a child of Holocaust survivors. He said
this left him with a legacy of pessimism, paranoia--and he always felt his very
survival was constantly on the line. Has this entered your work--your
sensibility?
MG: Yeah. It is a big part of my identity-
and it is a big part of what I write. It has been widely accepted that my own
family, before the death camps, were led to a certain location where they laid
down in pits and they were all shot to death. Every now and then I think about
that and how disturbing and angering all of this is and how it has created a sense
of grief.
DH: In your chapbook Recite Every Day
you deal with the illness and the subsequent death of your mother. Did you
ever think that you might have exploited your mother's misfortune for your
art?
MG Sure. I wrestled with that concept.. I
find that it is in my nature to wrestle with every concept. Hey--that was the
reality at hand. I have been writing a long time. I never did one of those MFA
programs until I was in my 40's. I was doing a low-residency on top of my job.
At the time my mom went into hospice care. I was writing prolifically for this
program and this was what was going on in my life. So I went with it. I think it
was a loving tribute. I had to write it. I didn't have a choice.
DH: In your poem Passing another client
at the psychiatrist's office you write about your embarrassment when you
pass a fellow patient outside your therapist's office: " That's why we turn/
away to avoid in each other/ the truth of our inadequacy:/we must come to this
place/ not our homes not our wives not our/lovers not our friends not
ourselves."
MG: In the poem you reference I was actually
leaving the psychiatrist's office--walking upstairs, when I passed a client
coming from the office. And this is a very awkward moment--when neither of us
look at each other because of embarrassment. I wanted to capture that. In that
situation I am communicating inadequacy because here I am a grown man and feel
like I should deal with my life without a crutch.
DH: There was another poem where you came
outside from an appointment with a Rabbi and cried at your car, and the relief
you felt at your psychiatrist office was short lived. It seems there is only a
short respite from the maelstrom of life?
MG: I think that is a good observation.
Everything is good for a time. Then we go back to the down swing. A lot of my
poems go in that direction. Even with my poems I never feel they are good
enough.
DH: The poem is never finished just
abandoned, huh?
MG: That's true. You say to a poem "we are
done"--and then you have to send it out to the world.
DH: I like your poem Here
Comes the Sun in your new collection Inside The Splintered Wood . Your father tried to instill a love
of Benny Goodman in you, and you tried to instill a love of George Harrison in
your kids. Using music is a good literary device--here it explores the
continuum.
MG I just got into this thing where certain
songs got into my head. And from there poems would spring up. And Here Comes
the Sun is such n lovely and optimistic song. The music inspired me to
create the poem. To my kids the Beatles are archaic--the same way I thought my
dad's 78s were. I tried to explain to my kids about the importance of the music.
Music and poetry are intimately related. I turn to music the same way I turn to
poetry.
MG: In a blurb on your back cover of your new
book it states that your poetry tells you what means to be human. What does it
mean?
DH: For me being human consists of
randomness, illogicality --and we take ourselves too seriously. We have great thoughts
and deep emotions but we have to live in the real world--pay taxes, feed parking
meters--all at the same time. One time I went to see a Rabbi. And I had all
these deep questions. He was running a summer camp for kids. We had an appointment to
talk. But there was a problem with the buses transferring the kids--so he
excused himself because he was on the phone. When it came down to it it was
these kids' safety that was more important than the profound conversation I had envisioned.
Here
Comes the Sun
I wonder, when
my two sons
totter into the
kitchen bleary eyed
and I am
listening to Abbey
Road
while packing
their school lunches,
if the music is
as exotic to them
as my father’s
music was to me
those times he
would turn on the 78
or the station
he liked,
taken to a world
of Kay Starr
and Benny
Goodman; and sometimes
even dance a few
steps
around the
living room
and I could
smell his cologne,
the tobacco on
his shirt.
Do my children,
already able
to click and
drag MP3s, see me
as I saw him - a
man with
his own life and
music before
I came along,
who had a father
I never met who
shaped him,
just as my
father shaped me?
I spread the
peanut butter and jelly
and wrap the
sandwiches in
cellophane, put
in the carrots and chips
and cartons of
chocolate milk
listening to
“Here Comes The Sun”
and tell my boys
that that’s George Harrison
and no one ever
played guitar like that before
and no one will
ever play guitar like that again.
- Reprinted with
permission from Tebot
Bach
