Fama's Supermachines

In Brooklyn, NY there appears to be a flurry of enticing written work that is spreading far and wide. I was recently fortunate to interview one of the borough’s poetic practitioners whose work I greatly enjoy: Ben Fama. In an effort to try and place where the Brooklyn scene stands for the rest of the world, I put forth the following…

DJ: Since Whitman, Brooklyn has always maintained a literary heritage. In your opinion how strong is Brooklyn’s place in world literature?

BF: Whitman wrote at a time when everyone was focusing on the violence and injustices that the different social groups in the city were enacting on each other. But he remained open, and refused that cynicism. He saw through the violence to a city of pleasure; probably because he actually was in love with all the different types of people you could see around (and still can).
Right now, its hard to say how Brooklyn is affecting world literature, however, I think it is the best city in the nation for writers. So in that sense, it’s the most important place for American writing. And as much as American writing influences what else is going on, Brooklyn rules; though it seems like we’re taking influence from other places, like Berlin, and the eastern European countries.

DJ: I have heard your work compared to Frank O'Hara’s. He seemed to draw his material from the people and landscape in which he thrived. In your new book, "Aquarius Rising" do you feel that your influences were more celestial or culled from the city around you?

BF: I remember reading that most people don’t read their own work, so I got nervous and then tried to start doing this. I’ve realized that the biggest influences on me are the intimate friendships and relationships I’m a part of, and enduring in the present that we are always trying to make something from. I guess I’m just saying that there are deeper things that have an effect on you whether you accept that or not, and for me that idea is a source for my primary imagination to understand what I think about things. Skeptics will say, there are so many contradictions around us, they mean nothing. Mystics say, there is so much, something has to be true. For me the most fun is to get in there and fuck with that. My influences are private desires, and my poems inevitably voice collective concerns.
About Frank O’Hara: I always thought his biggest lesson was in the way he could turn out a poem without taking it too seriously, even if the poem was thematically serious. I also think that when people talk about “The New York School” they really mean Frank O’Hara. He died 44 years ago, which is 4 years longer than he lived. When I think about the most exciting writing happening right now, I usually look a little outside NYC. For instance some of my neighbors, Christian Hawkey and Uljana Wolf split time between Brooklyn and Berlin. Uljana has just been featured in the Chicago Review as part of a portfolio of Berlin poets. Also my favorite poet, Tomaz Salamun, is Slovenian. I would take him over Ashbery ten times out of ten.

DJ: One of your lines "Try doing something beautiful / it's like wrestling yourself out of an executive headlock" stood out to me. Do you feel that your work is beautiful, and if so, what did you have to break free from?

BF: Sure; the influence of the past, and the limits of my own imagination. Every time I try something new in a poem I suppose it is like breaking out of a headlock.

DJ: The book is out now on Ugly Duckling Presse. They also dedicate a lot of energy to re-discovering and translating foreign poets. As a writer, are these translations of value to your craft, and do you hope to have your work treated with the same consideration elsewhere?

BF: Two of my favorite books by Ugly Duckling are Marina Temkina’s WHAT DO YOU WANT, and Tomaz Salamun’s POKER. Both still in print. Both of these books were formative to the way I think about the architecture and vibe of a poem. They also published a translation of Elena Fanailova’s THE RUSSIAN VERSION and won a big award for that. Genya Turovskaya, one of the best poets writing right now, co-translated that book. She’s one of the editors of the Eastern European Poets Series, along with Matvei Yankelevich, who is sort of the de-facto face of UDP, and quite a good poet too. If my work ever received the same treatment that this team gives to their foreign language translations, I would be getting the best kind of treatment possible.

DJ: Is there any advice you'd impart to those who are interested in translating and discovering new work?

BF: Send Facebook pokes relentlessly to your favorite poets, even if you don’t know them. Eventually they’ll listen.


Ben Fama is the author of the chapbook Sun Come and co-author of the chapbook Girl Boy Girl Boy (Correspondences, 2010). He is the founder of the Brooklyn-based Supermachine Reading Series and poetry journal. His work has appeared in GlitterPony, Pank! and No, Dear Magazine, among others.

The trailer for "Aquarius Rising" can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McLSGG6ABMQ

EARS OF THE NATION

SETTING: The Oval Office, Midnight. Early spring.

AT RISE: We see PRESIDENT SMITH pacing around

his office. DAVID TAYLOR, his senior

advisor is sitting quietly. After a

moment, he opens his briefcase and places

a small zip-lock bag on the end table.

TAYLOR
I didn't want to show you this but you've forced my hand.

SMITH
What is that?

TAYLOR
Another dead bat. Yet, another...we're losing them by the gross. At this point we don't know how long they'll last. The mosquitoes are already on the rise, Sir.

SMITH
...One blood sucker for another, Damn. I just don't understand it!

TAYLOR
DAMMIT Mr. President, I've told you! The emissions! This is the result of your decision make alternative fuel with okra instead of--

SMITH
Don't you say it--

TAYLOR
Corn...Corn, Mr. President. It's the only way. Now, I suggest you call Nebraska before it's too late.

SMITH
I can't. I won't. There has to be something else.

TAYLOR
Why can't we use the corn sir?

SMITH
BECAUSE IT'S DELICIOUS! (Pause) It's precious, and as Americans we can't afford to waste it.

TAYLOR
(Pause, deep sigh, rubs face.) They're may be one way. But it's risky and I don't think you'll like it.

SMITH
What, please god, anything. Just don't take my corn. Not for fuel. Anything.

TAYLOR
They call it Churnolium... It's new, but it works. Only it's made of butter sir. We'd need it all, too.

SMITH
(Drops to his knees) NOOOOO!


CURTAIN

Those Using Used Books

I have been voraciously reading used paperbacks for as long as I can remember. Everything from a torn and tattered copy of “The Crying of Lot 49,” from the initial print run, to modern classics like Joyce and Camus, in French. These small gems of joy have always held a certain air of fascination for me, and only lately am I finding that this is more so based on the fact that in many cases, I am certain that these volumes —my volumes— have already been poured over and studied by others; and I truly believe that the reader's influence still lingers on each and every dog-eared page and underlined sentence.
Recently, I saved a few paperbacks by Graham Greene from the bargain carts outside of the East Village bookstore where I work. At the time, this discovery seemed to me as little more than a coincidence. Given the nature of bargain carts, and their intended disarray, I felt fortunate to find two novels by the same author side-by-side. But it wasn't until I had purchased both, for a total of 50 cents, that I realized the true significance of my finds through the subtle inscription on the title page of each: 'Markson, Mexico '61.' These were the books of our recently deceased bookshop acquaintance, novelist David Markson who passed in early June of this year.
In setting out to place the relevance of these particular works to Markson's career —a man credited by David Foster Wallace as penning “the high point of experimental fiction this century”-- I was glad to find an interview in which Markson explained his time in Mexico and the genesis of his exploration into the possibilities of fiction. And, of course, who better to guide him than the masterly Greene. From this summation, I have become drawn into the idea of all of the questions I would have asked the novelist were he still alive and stopping into the store. I cannot help but feel that I somehow slighted myself from not realizing that this man I looked up to was not some intimidating, distant figure who drank with Dylan Thomas, but just a person who, like any, relied on influence and conversation to fuel his work and get him through the day.
A good friend once told me that “there is no use in competing with the living; only the dead.” and now I believe that I understand his point much more clearly than I ever could have before. Had I taken the time to speak with Markson on a more personal level, perhaps I would find a new sentiment behind the books we've now shared. Instead, I am left with pages of ominously unmarked text. Two books that I am having a hard time finishing, because I want to discuss them with someone who's read them and been influenced by them. As my bibliophilic mania continues on, this episode has served as a strong reminder that those who are living and creating around us, or even trying to create, must be chatted up; must be celebrated for their efforts; and most importantly, must be appreciated in their lifetime and given an honest chance to defend and express themselves without fear of unhealthy competition. This is a lesson I've yet to come across directly in any paperback, but one that I will gladly share with anyone who'll take the time to listen.