Ask the Author: Ross White

Two poems from Ross White appear in the April issue. He gives advice of the expert kind about his poetry career, describes the kind of nut he is, and his preferred bodyguard.

1. What would be expert advice for your poetry career?

I run across smatterings of expertise on the subject all over the place, but I think we lack a definitive text on the subject.  If Richard Hugo had ended his gorgeous book The Triggering Town with the sentence, “By the way, if you’d like a comfortable life where you can explain what you do to people in bars and not be pitied for it, switch to prose this instant,” I think we’d have one.

2. This is a gorgeous sentence: “Why the sport of hurt remains: what is beautiful must be beaten beautiful.” What inspired it? Was it the scene in Fight Club where Jared Leto’s face gets destroyed?

The central image of the boxing match wasn’t actually part of the poem in its early drafts.  I started with the idea that I wanted to draw a physical parallel for some emotional bit of violence that had been done to me, or that I had done to someone else.  I found the boxing match much later, though in retrospect, duh, how obvious.  I suppose it was influenced somewhat by the revelation that two of my favorite poets are also huge boxing fans.  I’ve never much cared for it, myself, but I’ve come to recognize the artistry inherent in the sport.  Not when you wander into the average gym, mind you, but when you see the greats.  Jared Leto doesn’t stir up the same kind intense response.

3. What kind of nut best describes you?

I have always admired Mr. Peanut.  It takes real courage to wear a monocle long after they’ve gone out of style.  I always wondered if the eyesight in his other eye is really good.  Also, I like that he wears a hat with his name on it.  As though you couldn’t tell he’s a peanut.

4. Why did you choose to frame these poems in the skin of prose?

I’d like to say that the choice for “Expert Advice for Your Boxing Career” was to have some square edges on the poem, like those of a boxing ring, but the truth is that the poem is part of a series of Expert Advice poems, and all of them are prose.  It seemed like the right move for “Pistachio” because the poem deals with guardianship and concealment.  I feel like the prose form can guard a poem from the reader, who doesn’t immediately encounter it as poetry, but also from its own worst impulses.  Which isn’t always a good thing.  But the form felt right for these.

5. Who would you like guarding you?

I have more angels than I deserve.  They’re doing an incredible job.

6. What is your fighting style?

Run like hell.