Hello
everyone, please welcome Duane Vorhees to Sensuous Promos today as he shares
with us a little bit about himself and his work.
Duane,
thank you for joining us today. I know the readers are eager to get to know you
, so let’s get started.
Can
you tell us a little bit about where you are from?
It
depends on how you define “from.”
At
a very early age, they tell me, I was born in Germantown, Ohio. During much of
my infancy my grandparents raised me, but sometimes I travelled with my mother,
an itinerant stripper, so I have childhood memories of upstate New York and
Chicago. I don’t really sound like someone from rural southern Ohio. But
through most of elementary school I was in Germantown, until we moved to Farmersville,
an even smaller burg 4 miles away. There wasn’t much for adolescents to do
there except watch each other grow. (And, in some instances, getting hands-on
experience with the results of some of that growth). After I finished high
school, I commuted weekly between Farmersville (and then, back to Germantown!)
and Columbus (Ohio State) or Bowling Green (as in Bowling Green State
University).
So,
I was more than ready to get away from the Germantown-Farmersville hub of the
universe. I “lived” (or at least resided) in Charleston, South Carolina;
Jacksonville, Florida: Nutley, New
Jersey; and Montreal. For much of that time I was a door-to-door salesman, so I
was on the road a great deal. For instance, I know (or knew, at any rate) all
the spots from Louisbourg to Moosonee to Brandon, and I also drove extensively
throughout the American South and from coast to coast. This was all mile by mile, behind the wheel
of a car.
Eventually,
I ended up in Korea (didn’t drive there), where basically I “settled down” for
a quarter century, but in a typically rather unsettled way. Periodically, I visited Rio de Janeiro,
Copenhagen, Naples, and India and most of the countries in East Asia, and I
plan to move permanently to Thailand someday. Right now, however, I reside in
Iwakuni, near Hiroshima, Japan.
So,
you see, it’s hard to give a simple answer to the “from” question.
Do
you write about things similar to your own life experiences?
Personal
experience is at the heart of writing, but it’s a multi-chambered heart. Observations
of others’ experiences, vicarious experiences via books and movies, and
imagining other people’s experiences are also part of the writing anatomy. But,
by the time the work gets to the page, in my case very little of the personal
remains. Writing has as much to do with concealing as it does with revealing;
both aspects are vital to the exploration of truth and passion.
What
book would we find you reading right now?
I
just finished the Sylvie Simmons life of Leonard Cohen and am midway through
the Jon Meacham bio of Thomas Jefferson.
Both subjects have long battled for acceptance by my moral intellect,
Cohen as bewildered truth-searcher and Jefferson as seer-cum-hypocrite. After reading Simmons, I now find Cohen’s
character more accessible than previously, as a triumphant failure if you will,
but Jefferson’s paradoxes are still a puzzle to me. Maybe by the time I get to
the end of the book they will be more comprehendible.
But
we are all enigmas, of course, to others and to ourselves. The only difference
is that LC and TH spent decades minding their accounts in very public, and very
readable, ways.
Do
you see writing as a career?
Writing
is the opposite of a career; it is a slow, painful, necessary process, ending
eventually in exhaustion rather than accomplishment. At some level, worthwhile
writers are plodding masochists and unredeemed liars, certainly not speedsters
and honest medalists. But, still, these are useful masochists, prophetic liars.
They help us struggle toward self-apprehension.
Can
you share a little of your current work with us?
Sure.
I
hope three short selections are not too much of an imposition.
I’ll
start with an excerpt from “We Within the Wheels: Dalit”
Now
my beauty r e
a c h
e s o
u t in search of your moist and hidden cottage.
(Remember the crisp sunflowers asmoke unkempt against the steep/&damp
scampismelly dirt path. Recall the rose-of-sharon labyrinth oft-credited –
before and since – as the soul’s taoWay, eelslick & serpent straight, into
the nirvanic heart of notUnbeing.) Your thatched and pointed little house….
It’s not where last I fingered its locks. The knobs now, I;m told, are handled
some other where.
But
even so, blind and blind, my beauty reaches out
reaches out
my
blind beauty reaches
out into cold
and empty vacuum.
************
AH!
NIGHTS
Ah!
Nights you were a harem
and
I the unmade Bedouin too long in the thirst—
past
the black eunuch of the night
I
would steal to your tent,
unarmed
save a single arrow in my quiver,
would
draw back your damascene veil,
and
let fly my shaft deep into your bulls-eye arabesque---
Or:
you were queen of the hive
and
I a drone among the honeys
getting
a buzz on and doing my job,
plunging
among the dusky clover
trying
to pollinate the skies,
to
flower the night with stars---
(to
lose my only stinger would be to die….)
Or
else you were Madonna
awaiting
a Jealous Commanding God,
The
Spawner Of The Cosmos,
A
Beam Of Light Made Flesh to hold you in your place.
(while
you waited in rapture for the coming of your lord,
i
a small choirboy would steal into your unguarded churchyard
to
send a solitary firework into the cathedral’s secret hole
in
hopes it explodes high up in the beribbe’d vaults,
surprising
celebate fathers from their sleep.)
********
ALL
PROPHECY IS HISTORY
Blind
men at dusk predict
the
next day will bring light.
No
past dies completely.
Its
bone cements my wall, and its ash
congregates
in these porcelain dolls;
all
history is prophecy, and harvest, blight.
And
so my tomorrows are today’s mystery. Yes,
“the
future looks bright.” But it’s too bright to see
the
soonest cloud bringing its silver and its stain.
I’m
in Hiroshima, just waiting for the plane.
Is
there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Balance
is hard. I always want the “right” word embedded in the “right” phrase in the
context of the “right” poem taken as a whole. I want a structured statement
that expresses organic reality. Rhythm, rhyme, assonance, consonance, meter,
pattern: these are all important qualities that a lot of contemporary poets
neglect, but none of these should become a mechanism of enslavement (of either
writer or reader). Concision is a virtue, and over-elaboration can be a
vicelike grip on the reader’s engagement, but minimalism lacks affect. By the
time I’m done with something, or as finished as I can get at any rate, I want
ordinary people and verse junkies alike to both feel and understand what the
poem’s message is, not admire its guidebook architecture or throw up their
hands in confused despair.
Who
are your favorite authors and what is it that really strikes you about their
work?
I’ve
read thousands of books in my lifetime, not a remarkable figure by any means.
Most of them are not even distant memories. But some writers manage to take up
residence within. Some of them are ill-mannered enough to pound on the doors of
consciousness at all hours, and some of them have the decency to be quiescent
until you need them.
The
best book I never read is James Joyce’s Ulysses; I like the theory of that book
but can’t follow its execution. But I like the innocent depravity of e. e.
cummings, his enthusiasm for the destruction of propriety that manifests itself
visually as well as rhetorically. I like William Faulkner’s non-innocence that
manifests itself in the same way but is deeper and darker than in cummings’
case. I like Mark Twain’s late musings, so cleverly wrapped up in hilarity we
don’t see their actual import at first
blush, they sneak up on us later and pound us in the head; and I thoroughly
enjoy his wonderful aphorisms, more cynical and less clinical than Benjamin
Franklin’s. I like the early Ernest Hemingway, who somehow manages to be a
minimalist while leading readers to know what they need to know without being
told and without losing them to ennui. I like Isaiah’s over-the-top imagery in
the service of his inhuman righteousness. I can appreciate the Karl Marx of the
Manifesto, in its idyllic, dynamic
expression of the wonders of industro-capitalism (and I hate the later grind
who proceeds to unravel it all). I like
the paradoxical absurdity of Joseph Heller and the straightforward clarity of
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. I get swept away by the majestic
prose and messaging of Herman Melville and the straightforward metaphors of Ray
Bradbury. I like the tart verses of Stephen Crane, but also the byzantine
labyrinth of Wallace Stevens’ best work.
Herbert J. Muller engages my intellect while showing me the uses of the
past. Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan manage to puzzle and enlighten
simultaneously, while keeping step musically in their lyrical dance with Paul
Simon, Eric Andersen, Tom Waits, John Lennon/Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, and
pre-celebrity Kris Kristofferson. I’m
also a sucker for Philip K. Dick’s elaborate plotting and Emily Dickinson’s
cryptic simplicity. Theodore Sturgeon never impressed me as a stylist, but the
chutzpah of his subject matter is admirable.
But
these are only a few, of the thousands. These are among the ones who have
taught me how to write, and what to feel, even if their lessons are
contradictory and complex, and even though their teachings never really took.
Do
you have any advice to offer other writers?
The
only advice I have is: Don’t listen to me. Grow ears for yourself.
Do
you have anything else you’d like to add?
All
too often, readers are trained to think they don’t like poetry, but when they
accidentally encounter the genuine character they can’t escape its grip. It
goes into the soul and it lives there.
But don’t rush through it. Don’t force it. Let it gestate on its own
terms. It’s possible to enjoy the butterfly (or the volcano) with no
premonition for metamorphosis. Don’t be afraid of poetry; don’t
underestimate its transformative yeast. (Repetitive dosages enhance
efficaciousness. )
Where
can our readers find you on the world wide web?
I’ve started a blog at
poetrybyduane.wordpress.com, but I haven’t really put much work into it
yet. I have a facebook page (Duane
Vorthees), and I check in every day at duanev@hotmail.com.
My books are available at xoxopublishing.com.
Thanks for joining us today, Duane. It was a pleasure getting to know you! ~ CJ
