Poems for Frank O’Hara’s birthday by rob mclennan

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How did you come to write Poems for Frank O’Hara’s birthday?

I was working a loose structure of poems riffing off Jack Spicer’s Book of Magazine Verse, directing poems for particular venues and individuals, and this piece was composed during that particular period. I thought there was something interesting about the fact that O’Hara found out, once older, that his birthdate was actually different than what his parents had originally told him, as they’d originally attempted to cover the fact that he’d been conceived before they were actually married (being that they were of a particular generation and from devout Catholic families, etcetera).

You’ve been writing for many years. How has your writing changed?

I spent my twenties and thirties working dozens of daily longhand drafts, and my process has evolved since to far fewer drafts on paper (much more of an internal process, I suppose). I still work a variety of first and subsequent drafts longhand, before moving into printed drafts, although since working predominantly from home once our current young ladies emerged (after twenty-plus years of writing exclusively longhand in coffeeshops, pubs and mall food courts), much more of my compositional process now falls directly into laptop while sitting in my home office. I still regularly need to print off a draft and sit with it to be able to see it properly, needing to spend time scribbling all over with pen before returning to work a further printed version.

Once I began taking fiction a bit more seriously, later into my twenties, I did notice the narrative elements did tend to reduce in my poetry, as though that impulse had simply a different home. It allowed my poems to move in a direction (although, in certain ways, perhaps it has all met up again at a different point, now).

You have more publishing projects than I can name! Do you feel that these pursuits impact your writing?

Oh, completely. If writing is akin to study, then my reviewing, editorial and publishing projects are simply elements of that larger consideration. It’s all research.

What’s your writing process?

I begin, and see where it goes. Lots of time carving, carving, carving.

What do you do if you get stuck?

I move on to something else, and return to that particular piece the following day, as my whirlwind of projects and domestic considerations allow.

If I feel particularly stalled, I attempt to negotiate with household the possibility of a few hours with notebook, pen, and a stack of printed drafts and reading material (and no self-pressure to produce) in my favourite tavern. This past week, for example, I’ve been attempting my first hour or so (once children deposited to school) in a coffeeshop down the road, working longhand before returning to computer and attempting to continue that momentum upon my laptop.

Do you routinely get feedback from others on your work?

I have sought such over the years, but have always found it difficult to find anyone willing to really go through what I’m doing for the sake of feedback. If I’m working on a poem today, for example, I can’t wait six weeks for a response: I’m working on it today. There are times that if I’m really pushing to get a poem done, I might even rework and print off a dozen or more drafts across an afternoon. If I’m really stuck, I do attempt to prompt dear spouse Christine McNair to look at a piece, as long as it isn’t too lengthy (her own considerations of employment and household mean I don’t attempt this unless absolutely necessary). Last year, I did hire Stuart Ross to edit my manuscript of pandemic essays, and he was a remarkable editor; it was an extremely positive experience having him go through my work with such fine detail.

How do you know if a project is finished?

Experience.

Could you talk a bit about your sense of community with writing?

I hadn’t really understood that my approach was considered unusual until I was already a few years into it, which in turn, has made me more deliberate in moving in similar directions. This is what I can do, and I do in part because others can’t or won’t. I was raised on a farm, so the ways in which everyone would help each other when needed was a model I hadn’t even realized I absorbed: you do the things you can for others, and what you aren’t able to do, someone else might take on. The best thing we can do for all involved (including ourselves) is to hold each other up. Be the change you want to see in the world, that sort of thing.

Are you inspired/influenced by other disciplines or art forms?

Really well-written television and film, I’ve noticed, has prompted my considerations on fiction. Every new episode of Mad Men, for example, pushed me into thinking about how fiction is constructed. A wedding episode that held the wedding ceremony itself as background? Excellent. I felt the same way about the movie Smoke (1995), which I later discovered was written by the Brooklyn, New York novelist Paul Auster, so that just made sense. As well, music is a constant in the background, both in our wee house and at my small desk. I seem to have spent a great deal of time since the original moment of pandemic lockdown listening to Berlin-era David Bowie, Brian Eno, Tycho, Sigur Rós, Nils Frahm, etcetera. I tend to simply put on a YouTube mix and let it go until it starts moving into pieces I’m less interested in, returning back to the beginning once every week or two. Which means I’ve been listening to a variation on the same, single playlist (as YouTube allows) for at least two years now. Possibly more.

What are you working on now?

I’m three years into poking at a novel that furthers some threads from a collection of short stories I’ve got floating around at the moment, which in turn furthers a thread from my second novel, Missing Persons (The Mercury Press, 2009). Odd to think I’ve been writing this one particular character now for more than a quarter century. I’m working near the ends of a poetry manuscript titled “Autobiography,” continuing a structural thread from the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022), and the openings of a further, “edgeless,” which plays more with the jagged edge of fragment and sequence. There are some short stories I would like to get back to at some point, and most likely will, once I’ve another slew of poetry book reviews completed. I’ve also been working the past couple of months on a book-length essay on literature, reviewing, community and other ideas I’ve had in my head the past couple of years, titled “Lecture for an Empty Room.” I even started a substack recently to help prompt the project.

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