Arlene Ang’s poems “Bruise” and “The boy pretending to be dead” appear in the November 2009 issue of The Collagist. She is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent being a collaborative work with Valerie Fox, Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press, 2008). She lives in Spinea, Italy where she serves as staff editor for The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1. More of her work may be viewed at www.leafscape.org.

1. Can you talk about the inspirations for “Bruise” and “The boy pretending to be dead”? What was on your mind while you were writing these poems?

“Bruise” was inspired by reading accounts of domestic violence and the long-term psychological effects it has on a person. “The boy pretending to be dead,” on the other hand, stemmed from my understanding of death as a child—absence vs. presence—and also from the idea that often the recently dead aren’t aware they’re already dead and so continue to go about their usual business wondering why people pretend not to see them. I remember experimenting with this when I was small—hiding from everyone and eavesdropping on conversations just to get a feel for how it’s like to be dead.

2. “Bruise” begins, “And the skin on her face / clones the fist that hit her,” setting up an image of hurt that then moves throughout the poem, changing its location on a woman’s body before “being absorbed / back into her body.” I read this two ways: That the wounds caused by others become permanent in our bodies (if also unseen), and also, perhaps paradoxically, that they can also be borne, absorbed, made to disappear into us until they finally become a “heat” that is “the equivalent of living.” I don’t want to put you in the position of overexplaining your own work, but I’m curious about this particular poem’s worldview, and what it might say about your wider body of work. Assuming I’m even close to accurate in my depiction of the poem, is this view of how hurt effects a person something you see as accurate to this specific character, or that you see as a more universal quality of experience?

You actually explain everything to a tee. This is poem basically is about physical abuse, but towards the end I did begin to wonder if any kind of hurt—caused by other people’s thoughtlessness or by the death of a loved one—affects us in this manner, if the healing process is also a kind of assimilation on a cellular as well as psychological level. While reading up on domestic violence, I was also struck by the tendency of people who were abused in their childhood to become abusive parents or partners themselves.

3. In “The boy pretending to be dead,” the title functions as a sentence in the piece as well, a single line leading to the couplets of the poem itself. Is this a structural decision, caused by an uneven number of lines, or is there some other cause for leading into the poem in this way? I’m thinking of the way titles exist both separate from the work—by intent, certainly, but also on the page or screen due to layout choices, font sizes and types, and so on—and how they are also inseparable, both because their meaning is meant to be considered alongside the poem and because, in cases like this, they are in fact part of the poem as well. How do you approach titles for your poems, and how did you know this was the right way to title this particular poem?

I have a penchant for using the first line of poems as the title, too. There’s something cost-effective about that that appeals to me. It also gives the poem an undercurrent of immediacy. Sometimes I use this as a writing prompt—begin with an intriguing phrase and just try to build from that. Or sometimes the initial title just sounds so lame that I just pull out the first line and use it instead. Using “untitled” horrifies me somehow… it’s the human equivalent of asking people to call you “bozo” in public.

With poem titles, it’s more instinctive than anything. A bit like when you decide what to publish in The Collagist. You may weigh the pros and cons, but in the end, it’s the gut feeling that decides.

4. I’ve read some other poems of yours recently, in the upcoming seventh issue of Caketrain, for instance, and in DIAGRAM’s latest. Looking at that poems beside the two very different poems you have in this issue of The Collagist, I’m struck both by the breadth of your ability and also by the many different forms and shapes your poems take, from the shape of your stanzas to the decision to write in prose paragraphs to your use of the sentence fragment in certain pieces. Can you talk about the thought process that you use to decide on the structures for individual poems? Is it the structure that most often gives rise to the poem, or the subject that demands the structure?

I write most of my first drafts at ITWS—In the Writer’s Studio—an online workshop where you’re challenged to write 30 poems for 30 days. To get through the month, I use writing prompts from some journals, like the theme issues of Six Little Things for prose poems or the word poem assignments in Eclectica. I’ve recently learned to “cheat” by writing poem series—one stanza a day, like the poem you mentioned in Caketrain. I find it easier to write when I already have a clear subject or direction in mind.

Usually it’s the structure that decides how the poem would go. Prose poems, for example, tend to be non-linear with more room to play with language while sonnets are more down-to-earth. But it’s not fixed rule. When a prose poem doesn’t work, I sometimes chop it up into stanzas and see how it goes from there. I also have what I call “Frankenstein poems” that are built from the lines of other failed poems. The trick is to just experiment.

5. You’re an editor at both Press 1 and Pedestal Magazine. How has editing informed your own poetry?

It’s a learning experience. In my head, there’s always this voice that would say, There. That’s something you do, too. Try to avoid that next time. or This is a really intriguing form, maybe you can try that. There’s a load of information in every poem, even if it’s written by someone still trying to imitate Shakespeare.

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

I’m still attempting to write a collaborative novel with Valerie Fox. We’ve been at it—off and on—for three years now and counting. I’ve also been trying to do a series of Petrarchan sonnets based on Chopin’s Preludes Op. 28.

7. What great books have you read recently? Are there any upcoming releases you’re excited about?

Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot immediately comes to mind and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Poetry-wise, there’s James Tate’s Return to the City of White Donkeys and Adrienne Rich’s The Fact of a Doorframe. I’m rather excited about JoAnn Balingit‘s Your Heart and How It Works which just came out this year. She’s one of the poets I discovered while reading for The Pedestal Magazine. For light reading, I’m thrilled to find out that there’s a new Mole book from Sue Townsend, Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years.