First Book Poets Talking

The Boxcar Poetry Review Spring 2015 issue features “First Book Poets in Conversation: Marc Di Saverio & Julie Cameron Gray.” It’s an interesting concept, to see each poet discussing their own approaches to writing, then spinning that into a question to ask the other poet, back and forth.

At one point in the conversation, Di Saverio reveals how his manic-depression guides his writing, “You ask me to take you through a poem, start to finish. I find my manic-depression somewhat dictates how a poem will be written. Usually, in manic states, I am overcome with inner wilderness, and I essentially explode onto the page, often a filthy, incoherent mess. I leave this mess alone until I am calm enough to rationally formalize or structuralize my raw manic material.”

And later, Gray offers, “The themes of loneliness and isolation are all self-imposed, all the narrators are in situations of their own creation. It’s such a common moment in everyone’s life, at some point (or repetitively so), being lonely and liking it, reveling in it, keeping others at arm’s length because you just don’t want to deal with them right now; elements of self-sabotage.”

Real the full conversation here.