Jason Bredle’s poem “The Proselytizer” appears in the September 2009 issue of The Collagist. is the author of two books and three chapbooks of poetry: A Twelve Step Guide (New Michigan Press, 2004); Standing in Line for the Beast (New Issues, 2007); Pain Fantasy (Red Morning Press, 2007); American Sex Machine (Scantily Clad Press, 2009); and Class Project (Publishing Genius, 2009).

Here, he speaks to The Collagist about the inspiration for his poem, as well as his upcoming Publishing Genius chapbook Class Project, absurdity in poetry, and his recent work with prose poems.

1. Can you talk about the inspiration for “The Proselytizer”? What was on your mind while you were writing this poem?

Science and religion and how we use those entities to try to find meaning in life, as well as their relationship with each other. Einstein, for instance, was always trying to prove what he called the cosmological constant – something he tried to work into his theorems that would justify his own religious beliefs, more or less something that proved there was a divine order to the universe. He was never able to prove it. Darwin was similarly conflicted, which is one of the reasons he waited so long to publish his theories. I’d also just watched The Book of Mormon Movie. It’s a pretty bad movie – there are Mormon-produced films I like more – but there’s a scene where Nephi doesn’t know what to do so he goes off on his own to pray, and God – represented by a male voice – tells him exactly what he should do. If only it could be that easy. I thought it would be neat to call something “The Proselytizer” and make it attempt to convert an imaginary audience to science. I should also mention that the line about circumcision is based on a Jim Gaffigan joke about Moses.

2. Seeing that your chapbook Class Project was coming out from Publishing Genius, I wrote Adam Robinson and got him to give me a sneak peak of the book. I loved the poems I read, but was also struck by the differences between those poems and “The Proselytizer.” The obvious difference is that your Collagist contribution is a prose poem and those are in lines, but I was also struck by the difference in the way humor was employed. In the Class Project poems, the humor seemed to be used to comment on the absurdity of life, while “The Proselytizer” seems to be building a more metaphysical statement out of that absurdity. Does that seem like an accurate depiction of this piece? If so, is it a thematic direction you see your work moving in as a whole?

I’d say that’s fairly accurate, though my ideas of absurdity have evolved over the years to the point where I don’t really know what, if anything, is actually absurd. Everything is just there and it’s up to the observer to decide if a particular thing is absurd or not. Like, I don’t think I have the authority to judge anything as absurd – it just exists. In Hopscotch, Julio Cortázar says something like, it’s not the things themselves that are absurd, it’s that the things are there and we think they’re absurd. It may even be the epigraph to the chapbook – I can’t remember. I think “The Proselytizer” is different from the poems in Class Project. For now this type of poem is the direction I’ve taken.

3. Was Class Project conceived of as a project, or was it built from individual poems that seemed to go together only after they were written separately? Is “The Proselytizer” part of a larger group of work yet?

It was built from individual poems that seemed to go together later. Those poems are part of a larger manuscript I’ve been trying to publish called Smiles of the Unstoppable – poems I’d written from 2005 to 2008 that were born out of what was going on in my life at the time. It’s basically my favorite poems from that larger manuscript. I like the various ways you can interpret the title – it could just be a project for school, it could be a project on social class, or it could be a project on style or lack of style.

4. I haven’t seen your earlier books, but so far “The Proselytizer” is the only prose poem of yours I’ve found. Is this a one-time thing, or something you’ve been exploring on a wider scale? Considering some of the similarities I see between your work and James Tate, I’d be interested if you were making a move toward the prose poem, if only because I feel like his own work has become more and more prose-like, especially in the last two books. What’s the advantage of prose poetry for a writer like yourself? What does it let you do that lineated poetry doesn’t?

I’ve found that in order to keep myself interested and excited, I have to try different things. Towards the end of writing the poems in Smiles of the Unstoppable, I found myself getting pretty tired of writing long sentences, so I started writing shorter sentences that attempted to strip away any sense of irony that may be present in my earlier work. I’ve always wanted to write prose poems (and in fact tried a few years ago but later scrapped those), so I decided to try prose poems with shorter sentences this time. I’ve written about 30 at this point and I’m pleased with the results. Weirdly, I think they’re less narrative than the poems I’d been writing, though I’m trying to employ narrative elements across poems so that there’s a little bit of a confusing adventure happening throughout most of the poems.

4. You’ve put out two books and three chapbooks of poetry in the last five years. That’s a pretty incredible pace of publication, and suggests that you keep a pretty rigorous schedule. Is there anything in particular about your schedule or routine that you think has enabled you to keep up this level of production?

It suggests a high level of production, but I finished Standing in Line for the Beast in 2000 and Pain Fantasy in 2004 – it just took a long time to get those published. Basically what keeps me going is just my love of writing. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I don’t keep any type of routine other than writing whenever I can, though.

5. What other writing projects are you currently working on?

My chapbook of prose poems, The Book of Evil, is coming out from Dream Horse Press in 2010.

6. What great books have you read recently? Also, are there any upcoming releases you’re excited about?

I just read The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux, which is great. I read J.M .Coatzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians about a year ago and it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, as is Disgrace. I’m not really on the cutting edge of literature in terms of knowing what’s coming out or reading things right when they’re released. Of the poetry books I’ve read over the past year, I loved James Shea’s Star in the Eye, Raymond McDaniel’s Saltwater Empire, and Mark Halliday’s Keep This Forever. I’m most excited for my friends’ books to be released in the next couple of years – Jason Koo’s Man on Extremely Small Island on C&R Press and Marc McKee’s Fuse on Black Lawrence.