Housing Works

"

“Are you a poet?” the main one finally asked, hopefully. “I ask because you wear very … strange dress.”

I admitted I was not. They seemed disappointed. “We are,” he said.

“Poets,” clarified the glum Scotsman.

The main guy produced a worn paper bag, thrust it into my hands, and regarded me expectantly. “Poetry!” he said.

"My poetry novel and then my sci-fi apocalypse trilogy—or should I switch the order? It’d be nice if they could somehow be the same project: a future-primitive world where poets are the only ones who can fight off the nuclear werewolves that plague our mud hut villages—or where the nuclear werewolves are all poets, and civilization’s last hope is to rediscover the printing press and placate the werewolf-poets by publishing their chapbooks."

"Poets are human of course and have disavowed plenty, but to stand behind this nonetheless significant or foolish act – it’s a kind of self identifying, self categorizing act (like language itself) that enrages people exactly in the place where they’ve made choices and need to assume you haven’t. This – to be a poet – was the biggest choice in my life, and I suffer fools gladly and have a great life. Look at this. I just wrote a book called snowflake, for god’s sake."