Interview with Publisher and Authors

View from the Middle of the Road IV: Pathway to Dreams
Xavier Clark, Daniel Y. Harris, Pete Klimek, Clifford D. Ponder
P.R.A  Publishing (2009)
ISBN 9780982140703
Reviewed by William Phenn for Reader Views (11/09)

Today, Tyler R. Tichelaar is pleased to interview the authors of “View From The Middle of The Road, Volume IV: Pathway to Dreams” an anthology by four authors, Daniel Y. Harris, Pete Klimek, Clifford D. Ponder, and Xavier Clark published by P.R.A. Publishing and arranged by its owner, Lucinda Clark.

Lucinda Clark is the founder of P.R.A. Publishing. She has worked with visual artists and authors on the promotion and marketing of their creative works for the past nineteen years. She wrote her first volume of “View from the Middle of the Road, where the greenest grass grows” in 2004. She has published 8 other titles by other authors since then. She currently resides in Martinez, Georgia with her husband Robert and their two children. She is the publisher of four “View from the Middle of the Road” volumes, and one of the poets included in the second volume.

R. Xavier Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He began working as an assistant editor for P.R.A. Publishing in 2006 and has reviewed close to one hundred queries in that time. Clark works as a volunteer staffer for PRA Publishing’s annual poetry contest, which is in its 10th year and currently writes for the Lakeside Liberator. Xavier serves as the PR officer for the Lakeside Interact Club, and is the founder/president of the Lakeside Billiard’s Club. He enjoys fencing, billiards, watching sports, and producing music. He currently resides in Martinez, Georgia with family.

Daniel Y. Harris, M.Div, is the author of “Unio Mystica” (Cross-Cultural Communications Press, 2009), “Hyperlinks of Anxiety” (Pudding House Press, 2010) and co-author, with Adam Shechter, of “Paul Celan and the Messiah’s Broken Levered Tongue” (Cervena Barva Press, 2010). He is the associate editor of “The Blue Jew Yorker.” He was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize. Among his credits are: “The Pedestal Magazine,” “Exquisite Corpse,” “In Posse Review,” “European Judaism,” “SoMa Literary Review,” “Mad Hatters’ Review,” “Poetry Salzburg Review,” “Wheelhouse Magazine,” “Moria, Ygdrasil,” “Wilderness House Literary Review,” “Poetry Magazine.com,” “Denver Quarterly,” “Convergence,” “Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture” and “The Other Voices International Project.” Among his art exhibitions credits are: The Jewish Community Library of San Francisco, Market Street Gallery, The Euphrat Museum, and The Center for Visual Arts.

Pete Klimek, after receiving the prestigious “Sons Of England” English literary award at school level, knew his creative career course—that of a singer/songwriter—had begun. A quarter of a century later and this path has blossomed into a road. His poetry is a documentation of this journey.

 

 

 

Clifford D. Ponder has had a lifelong fascination with the English language, which has supported his technical writing efforts as an Army Officer and Nuclear Quality Assurance Engineer and his creative writing in retirement. Juggling two careers and active in church, family, and community, he also has written essays and op-ed articles of public interest. In retirement, he has written over 1,000 poems on:  Life in General, National and World Politics, Religion, and Travel. “Time” is one of his favorite subjects, as well as Nature and Wildlife. He likes rhyme, but he also writes in free verse, uses personification, and likes alliteration. Of himself he says, “Life for me is a flowing stream of rhyme and remembrances.”

Tyler:  Welcome, everyone. I’m very excited to talk to all of you since I don’t get to talk to many poets, much less male ones, but my first few questions are for your publisher. Lucinda, what made you decide to publish an anthology of all male poets and how did you decide upon these four poetic gentlemen in particular?

Lucinda:  We receive numerous queries from women poets. However, we became aware of Daniel Harris from a women poet for which we have completed two titles to date, Sheema Kalbasi. Clifford Ponder has entered and won top prizes several years running in our annual poetry contest. Pete Klimek sent us a beautifully photographed manuscript of his work that included many more poems than are in the anthology, and Xavier Clark has worked as my assistant for a number of years and has learned to appreciate the art form.

Tyler:  Tell me about the order of the anthology. Are the poems by different authors intermixed or in a certain order, and how did you make the decision about the organization?

Lucinda:  In selecting the order of how the poems are presented, we decided to give Xavier the place closest to the front of the book because he only had one poem and he is the youngest contributor. The other poets were place based on poem length and complexity. Each section was devised to tell a little something about the thoughts each poet would convey. Daniel Harris deals with love, life, and history. Pete Klimek deals with love, loss, and social issues and Clifford Ponder deals with life, social ills, and pays tribute to the unsung heroines of our present day society. If you look at the background of each poet, you can see that that which impacts his writing has a lot to do with his age, where he lives in the world right now and in some cases his religious affiliation.

Tyler:  Lucinda, why did you decide specifically to give this volume of “View from the Middle of the Road” the title of “Pathway to Dreams”?

Lucinda: We have made it a practice to use the title of the cover art as the subtitle for the edition. The photographer did not have a title for the image we selected so we thought about what this edition means to us. We decided to summarize our publishing journey to date with pathway to dreams.

Tyler:  Lucinda, this collection is relatively small, only sixty-five pages. Why did you choose to limit it so much, and what criteria did you use to decide both on length and what to include and what to leave out?

Lucinda:  The anthology is not meant to be a full review of works by the contributors. The goal is to showcase the poets as evenly as possible. I think the talent of each poet can be appreciated in what is represented. Each poet will now be exposed to an audience that may not have ever known the poet before now. These gentlemen will touch lives because they shared their words in a place that can only increase the diversity of their audience. Imagine that a poet living in South Africa will be introduced to poetry lovers in the United States and vice versa for the U.S. based poets because he is showcased in this volume. We believe that is where the true value of what we have produced lies. That has been the premise of all volumes of the “View from the Middle of the Road” series to date.

Tyler:  Okay, men, it’s your turn. Obviously, as poets, you come from a variety of backgrounds, including South Africa and the U.S. What similarities as poets and as men do you all feel that you share?

Pete:  Just as the landscape between the title of this anthology and the cover photograph differ, so each poet here and his view is unique. Yet, we form a part of this book, just as (on a smaller scale, of course) all nationalities, religions, cultures, and beliefs are joined together and belong to one solitary planet.

Xavier:  As men, both young and older, we all share a basic sense of searching because we are all trying to find answers and solace on this winding road we call life, and it reflects in our poems.

Daniel:  For fear of being perceived as coy, or accused of dangling my response behind a thin veil of subterfuge, the poets in “View from the Middle of the Road, Volume IV,” share the unique distinction of what may be called a gnostic collision—we were linguistically assembled and anthologized by virtue of Lucinda Clark’s engaged desire to expand the berth of literary possibility. This is what we share.

Clifford:  As men, we are typical problem-solvers, very direct and specific in what we have to say about issues that are important to us. As poets, we share feelings about a wide range of private and public issues, and we find a way (through poetry) to express them.

Tyler:  The poems share your thoughts on such themes as life, love, loss, religion, and changes in society? Why are these themes important to each of you and do you all feel your poetry complements your co-authors’ works?

Xavier:  Well, what is there besides life and love? They are honestly the only things worth talking about.

Pete:  I believe that life is love and this “theme” is also the purpose of us being alive. Religion is a necessary vehicle (or crutch) society creates and shapes to get through this journey. The poets included in “View From The Middle Of The Road, Volume IV” are documenting a part of their journey in this collection. The times we’ve found ourselves lost, the heights we’ve climbed, the magic, the beauty, the melancholy, the romance, the vulnerability of being a passenger, the power of being in the driver’s seat. They are all here—the silent questions of what makes and keeps us each happy, the dream of holding beauty, the quest for creating perfection, the goal of altering life’s road and the view and making it better. All the poets in this book have something to say, and we’ve been given the opportunity to say it together.

Clifford:  I say that a large body of my work expresses the “tenor of the times.”
Therefore, it is my commentary on life, in general. At my point in life, based on my experience and perspective of things, I see dramatic differences in our world—socially, politically and morally—from the 1950s until now, the twenty-first century. To me, it is a sobering realization!

I see similar feelings, sometimes wistful, among the other writers, which often are best expressed in poetry.

Daniel:  Quintessential, yet over-determined themes such as “life, love, loss, religion, and changes in society,” bear the platitude’s burden if left to normative expression and routine phraseology. With that said, the platitude’s burden may be sedated and then masterfully augmented by the brute genius of great and startling poetry. The challenges facing the poet lie in expanding the depth between tropes and phrases. This expansion, highwide and receding up, is determined by the language employed to construct the poem. The “idea” as modus operandi remains, in most cases, the subject of historiography and thus canonic. There are no new ideas. There are only new poetic constructs to make fresh millennia of entropic styles. In sum, it is not so much what is written about tropes such as “life, love, loss, religion, and changes in society,” but how the tropes are written, that separates the poetry that perishes from the poetry that endures. If I share this “praxis” with my co-authors, then I am honored.

Tyler:  Would you be willing to share what are your different philosophies regarding what poetry is and what it should accomplish?

Pete:  Between the sensitive, sensual sentiment, there is a space where the drummer ceases to drum, the guitarist forgets to strum. This is the moment when the whole picture drifts into focus—this is the time applause would seem like an intrusion. This is poetry in rhythm with the heart and setting the words of life and love free from the stage to the page. If the reader “listens,” he or she will hear and be carried along with the flow of gentle awakening of the senses. My hope is that this is what poetry should accomplish.

Xavier:  Poetry is simply what is on the mind of a poet. Some poems reflect emotions, questions, or desires but ultimately, it is the voice of what you can never hear: someone else’s thoughts. For me as long as it is sincere, poetry’s only goal should be to add a little more perspective and insight to the world.

Clifford:  To me, poetry should be an insightful, fresh way of looking at a particular subject/issue. If the poem captures the attention of the reader—through language, and form—and conveys the burning message, then it is successful. The job of the poet is to select the most interesting/personal subject or issue, and using the most appropriate form, present it so the reader says, “Yes!”

Daniel:  In my opinion, great poetry is the vehicle by which the imagination is able to reach the periphery of human expression, and in so doing, point to a spatial/temporal place without boundaries. Great poetry is what the American Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, referred to as the “transparent eyeball”—a trope whose polysemantic nature is immanence. Poetry’s potential and its accomplishments were established by Shakespeare, who remains its canonic standard. With that said, poetry’s demands are perhaps the most rigorous demands that have ever been bestowed upon an art form. Every strong poem must be simultaneously original and a canonic beacon signaling to the past. Poetry’s language must stretch the limits of tropes. In some cases, this stretch is an acrobatic contortion severing linguistic muscles in order to make them stronger. To achieve this nearly impossible ethos, the poet must will his imagination to become a walking lexicon, assembling and dissembling his language like a “golemic” or invented second self.

Tyler:  What do you each feel is distinctive about your individual style that sets it apart from your co-authors?

Xavier:  The number of poems I put in an anthology.

Pete:  The intention of my writing is for it to be set to music. Most of these works I have already recorded as songs. It’s this creative rhythm that sets my work apart.

Clifford:  My style is more traditional, since I rely heavily on rhyme and meter. Also, I tend to reflect on life/society in what I call a “distance-but-presence” sense. I do not often use the first person. I often will express concern more as a commentary, although I may empathize strongly with the person/situation.

Daniel:  I am less interested in what separates my poetic style, or better, my poesis, from the other authors in this anthology, than what is unique and/or distinctive to me and my poesis as such. I feel that my contribution to poetry lies somewhere between a reverence for the complexity of the human psyche and the vast complexity that is the English language. I am often awed by innovations occurring in computer technology, medicine, biology, comparative literature, literary criticism, and astrophysics, to name a few. My awe extends to the idiosyncratic and inventive lexicons that accompany these disciplines. I, then, often pause and ask myself why poetry must pale in comparison? My answer is that it mustn’t pale. Poetry must burrow through the lexicon, employing all utensils. I say, perhaps a bit aware of acting as my own caricature, that my poetic distinction lies in linguistic and stanzaic ingenuity. A reader, I feel, must pause encountering my work, saying that something different is happening here. This is where the encounter begins.

Tyler:  In the anthology’s introduction, Lucinda remarks that she wanted a male-dominated anthology to show the sensitive side of men and that they can be poets. What response do most of you receive when you tell people you are poets? Do you think poetry is more commonly viewed as a feminine form of expression and how is poetry that is written by males different?

Xavier:  Poetry is definitely a unisex form of expression. Everyone has opinions and emotions; therefore, everyone deserves to be able to convey how they feel or what they are thinking through poetry. Some people may see poetry as feminine in the same way they may see cooking as being feminine, but in reality it is a human form of expression.

Clifford:  In the course of a conversation, when I tell people I am a writer/poet, some give a quizzical, inquiring look. Others give an interesting smile or nod which leads to more discussion. Several have encouraged me to continue writing. One previous U.S. Poet Laureate commended me for writing, indicating it is much better than just drifting through life and leaving no trace.

Contemporary poetry may represent more feminine writers than men, but if you examine past, traditional anthologies—and larger, contemporary anthologies—I believe they are reasonably well-balanced between male and female writers. Poetry written by males may be less intense and personal than by females, but it is difficult to generalize.

Daniel:  I deeply admire Lucinda Clark and her “geist” to create a male-dominated anthology. She has gathered together an eclectic array of styles in this anthology, unafraid of diametric disparity and complexity. Sensitivity and literary acumen have no gender. There is no such thing, in my opinion, as either a feminine or a masculine form of expression in poetry. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are equally strong, equally equipped to encompass the multi-tiered regions of poetic expression. What does exist in poetry is talent and ingenuity, often in “agonic” relationship with a poet’s multiple selves and the history of canonic poetry.

Pete:  After Oscar Wilde, I wonder whether there are any thought-provoking women chefs left…

Tyler:  Would each of you tell me what one of your favorite poems is by one of your co-writers and why you think it’s a meaningful or enjoyable poem?

Xavier:  I really enjoyed Pete’s “Society’s Revolutionaries.” It just breaks down all of the pomp and pretentiousness that is so common in our society today in a very direct way. It’ll really make you think (but then again the whole book will make you do that).

Pete:  To date, my copy of the book is stuck at the South African customs offices, but I have seen and read Xavier’s “Follow.” This work allows the reader space and room to drift into the canvas of endless questions and confusion—it is like a recital from a private memoir. The words are delivered in a rebellious, protesting, individual manner which I find inspiring enough to make me want to grab a pen and paper and write my own answers to leading and following… but Xavier already says it all.

Clifford:  I like Daniel’s poem “Baseball.” He demonstrates to me what I term the “distance-but-presence” of the poet. He begins as a spectator, but later he says, “we step up to the plate.” The reader successfully gets the feeling of a devoted spectator/fan, but also that of the batter. I like writing about The Masters golf tournament, and I think it is fun to first pretend you are a fan, then a golfer. His poem does a great job demonstrating this dichotomy, and it shows how poetry is an excellent avenue for this type of expression.

Daniel:  Again, for fear of being perceived as coy, or accused of dangling my response behind a thin vale of subterfuge, I recommend that the reader read all the work in this anthology and see what resonates. First readings of poems are often last readings of poems. In reading this diverse array of work, readers may want to ask themselves which poems do they remember, and what language contained therein returns unannounced in a random moment of reflection.

Tyler:  Thank you all, again, for sharing your views of poetry and how you perform your craft. Lucinda, will there be another “View From The Middle of The Road” volume, and if so, what are your plans for it?

Lucinda:  We are looking to do at least one more volume in the series. The number of queries from abroad has increased. We may showcase more poets from outside the U.S. next time.

Tyler: Lucinda, before we go, will you tell us where online readers can go to find more information about “View From The Middle of The Road, Volume 4: Pathway to Dreams?”

Lucinda:  More information about Volume 4 and all the “View from the Middle of the Road” series is available at www.prapublishing.com with a link to order it. It is also available to order through your local bookstore. Thank you, Tyler, for interviewing us.

Tyler:  Thank you all for the fine interview today and your various perspectives on poetry. I wish you much happiness in continuing to be fulfilled by your art.

Listen to interview on Inside Scoop Live
Read Review of View From The Middle of The Road
Make Comments on weblog