PRESSURE PRESS ARCHIVE
Babel Spotlight: Ron Androla
interview by Wred Fright, Jan, Feb 2003
Ron Androla is a small-press poetry legend. Hailing from Erie, Pennsylvania, he’s been writing and publishing for decades and just keeps getting better. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that he breaks sweat working in a factory most days instead of working as a poet/professor like so many other contemporary poets. Then again, maybe it doesn’t. But whatever the case, he’s an American treasure. If you’re one of those people who think poetry is crap, then please read some Androla and have that belief shattered. And if you’re one of those who know poetry, then you probably know Androla’s work. Now meet the man. Babel caught up with Androla for an e-mail chat as January 2003 turned into February 2003.
If you were giving the State of the Union instead of W this week, what would you say to your fellow citizens of the USA?
fellow citizens, fuck war. marijuana is now utterly legal in the united states of amerika, which will boost the economy thru the roof. from this day forward we're cool, we're hip, & we'll allow all translucent, non-academic poets to live here tax-free. amerika will be known as the land of pot & poetry -- if you don't like it, move, the less people, the better. well, the senior citizens will complain, i expect that, but if we add kind-bud coverage to medicare, they'll be fine. so that's about it. fuck war. smoke dope. smile. we must maintain amerika as a land of freedom before it's a country of war.
No doubt, I’d vote for you for prez. Say, how’s the state of the union of American poetics, at least as seen from the currently snowed-in climes of Erie, Pennsylvania? The 1990s seemed like a good time for poetry with PBS specials, poetry slams, lots of poetry zines and e-zines, etc; how’s the first decade of the 21st Century shaping up?
you can be my running-mate then, wred! well, there has been the whole internet poetry revolution, another venue for the poem & the poet, & i like it. i like that it exists. but anyways, i tend to agree with michael basinski's essay in the print THE HOLD (www.the-hold.com) that there are poets today who are just as valid as say kenneth rexroth or w.s. merwin, or whoever. i think the stream, the wave of poets thru the decades, flows pretty consistently as it always has & hopefully always will. amerikan poetry has a solid center. amerikan poetry is individualistic, self-indulgent, iconoclastic: & that's a plus. i don't know if poetry slams & zines & pbs specials has anything to do with it being "a good time" for poetry. look, a poet isn't a pretty celebrity or some loud-mouth ranting fucker -- i mean a poet can by all means BE those things, but basically the poet is a loner, an outcast, an outsider. it’s probably an intrinsic condition to the condition, but amerikan poetics is, as i see it in the first decade of the 21st century, defined by its outlaw qualities -- breaking laws of language. look what john m. bennett does, still, after all these years, growing, modifying the poem. look how todd moore breaks a word in half by line-breakages unlike e.e. but very much like e.e., beyond e.e., the whole slew of language poets. the 90's (& 80's & 70's & etc ... backwards in time to caveman gruntings) is still happening, everything & everyone is still evolving, we're in the process of poet into poem -- hey, to answer yr damn question: it's as it is & has been, & will be. good things happen in babel for instance, or thunder sandwich, or impetus, or the hold, all online. things are fine. amerikan poetics is a rare jewel -- one great thing about amerika is its poetry, not its war-machine or quality of life. i like bill beaver's hyperfiction work, the computerized word, the play with it, & i think more will happen in the next few years with poetry as computer art & interaction. amerika has its poetry going for it, at least. altho 99.99% of amerikans don't realize...
Why don’t more Americans realize it? Are they dumb - the masses are asses? Or are the poets only writing for other poets, say the language poets, and not reaching out to the average citizen? Or some other reason? Or is this no big deal? Or does this help explain why a dimwit is giving the real State of the Union tonight?
well, yes, the masses are asses, & yes the poets are only writing for other poets & not reaching "the average citizen". most people don't want the truths, or visions, poetry reveals. i don't blame them (it's the christ in me). poetry as literature is presented in our schools as this dense maze, or this interchangeable formula -- christ (not meant to be me), much of what is written from our college mfa's is so fucking algebraic & elitist & dry -- & that's where the "average citizen" wants to see its poetry, from the colleges, & when they do, what the fuck do they care about poetry & poets then. i've sd it for a long time, but there is a huge untapped audience out there -- but poetry is so non-commercial (or shld be), & amerikans are money-headed monkeys & equate dollars with worth, we're lucky to be talking about it like this at all. when i say the masses are asses it's philosophical perspective, there's a dumbness dinging cash-register bells, that's what they want to hear & do. again, poetry isn't in the money-game (or shldn't be), & why wld the average joe want the tensions & angst of one of my poems for instance? if novels were free i wonder how long it'd be before their "worth" lessened in this hollow-headed culture of ours. amerikans wanta pay money for things they deem deserving according to the quality. oh sure, they look for deals, but ... more poetry IS probably reaching the masses these days than ever before in history. i don't know if poetry ought to be manufactured for the masses -- no, fuck it, fuck them. it is a big deal. look how poets are treated in other countries like holland, or europe in general, even russia, & china, etc ... then look how the poet is treated in amerika. discarded. berated. harrassed. or mostly, mostly ignored. i take that as a good thing & allows more freedom to create outside the opinions of the ignorant.
Yes, I remember studying Russian poetry and in the 1960s, during the "thaw" when they were trying to reform communism and allow for more freedom before they clamped down again, Yevtushenko and the other Russian poets used to fill stadiums. Or Bukowski being treated like a rock star in Europe. It’s hard to imagine that here. A few poets can fill a hall, someone like Maya Angelou, and I saw a few hundred turn out for Allen Ginsberg a few years back, but mostly it’s like Cat’s Books in Kent, a handful of people hearing some incredible poetry, and the rest of the world doesn’t have a clue. Ah, well, the work speaks for itself, so what literary work are you currently working on?
i'm currently working on this interview, silly. otherwise, i do what i always do & have always done -- fuck if i know. i just write when i can, & these days that's mostly on the pressure press messageboard, or the other boards i check like jellygun press. it's how i write, online, immediate. the pressure press board archives go back to march 2001, but originally began via my stint with webtv & insidetheweb (now defunct & lost) back in 1999 i think. when someone asks for "unpublished" material i'll do something NOT posted on the board. the url, by the way, is http://enhancedphotos.com/cgibin/board/view.cgi. it's an open, public forum & there is much of my work there if one clicks around the various sections -- even photographs, artwork, etc... -- check it out!
Anything for print publication? Will we ever see the Greatest Hits of Androla? There’s a volume this country could use in every library. Laura Bush might dig it even, but don’t count on being invited to the White House. If they cancelled the poetry symposium there about Whitman, Dickinson, and Hughes because they were worried about the academic poets protesting Iraq and Bush, they’re unlikely to let the Beast Generation in the door.
the only things i can think of in the way of print is THE HOLD, & an anthology of poets in erie that a professor at the penn state branch here is collecting for … to be published next year. sean thomas dougherty, maybe you've heard of him. i've never met him, but have e-mailed a few times. i've been saying for years there ought to be a "great lakes poetry" book, you know, duluth, detroit, chicago, toledo, cleveland, erie, buffalo, niagara falls... -- but this anthology is just erie. local poets who know me suggested my name to this professor -- the publisher is ye olde erie bookstore, tho i think it's based in boston, the lady who does it is from erie. but no, i don't think anything else is planned for print, but what do i know? i did a google search of my name & found me included in the anthology BETWEEN THE CRACKS, a gay poetry anthology. now i'm not homophoic, nor homosexual, but when the editor asked for material i didn't even know it WAS gay-oriented, nor are the two poems of mine included there even remotely related to homosexuality, still, ya never know! i found a site in italy published two of my poems in 2002, altho online, but i never submitted there. i'd love to work seriously with a publisher for a print edition of 3 decades of work, but fuck me, that'll never happen. laura bush is hot. she takes xanax by the handfuls. i'd love to read her a few poems someday -- i can picture her smiling, clapping...
Ha! Well if I ever win the lottery, I’ll publish the Androla best of. Not only is it great art, but I think it’d sell! I swear the underground has so much good stuff, half the time I think all it needs is a chunk of money and a half-decent marketing campaign (the other half of the time I’m misanthropic and despair about the lack of cool folks on Planet Earth who would appreciate it). Moving on, I’ve always wanted to ask where you developed your individualistic punctuation/spelling style (e.g., "sd," "wd," capitalization, etc . . .). Is there an ideology behind it, or is it just instinct, that’s the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it?
i don't know exactly when it was i began using my "individualistic punctuation/spelling style,” but i think it developed first at franconia college in the middle 70's when i was carrying on a correspondence with the poet larry eigner. eigner had severe cerebral palsy, yet still punched out pages & pages of letters on his typewriter, a true feat of endurance. there wasn't any blank space on the page, he typed all over the paper. when i typed letters back to him i'd inevitably do the same thing since i was in the process of copying his writing process poetry-wise, you know, apprentice & master kind of thing. i learned to type fast without the interruptions of punctuation & caps & things, & just let my fingers fly as fast as i cld -- remember, these were TYPEWRITER days! it simply made it quicker to type sd rather than said, or cld instead of could. my mind was a race-horse back then, & i had to use whatever i cld to keep up typing it down. also, i admit, i cldn't rectify to myself the whole push for "correct english" via english composition class & shit like that. rules, laws, dangling participles, fuck 'em all, that's what i figured. i wanted it all free-form. language of the air. language of reality. many of the poets i was reading were using strictly lower case, i.e., williams, e.e., etc... & i left the capitalization key alone. it's just stuck with me over the decades, altho yes i have of course used various devices correctly & made things look like a real poem or whatever -- I mean I can certainly overcome habit by using a finger and slowing what would be quicker by just doing what I do. but why? it was a question i asked & answered a long time ago. this is simply how i now type, for better or for worse. it turns a lot of readers off, i realize, especially cold readers. oh well. the poem comes before the reader. actually i guess it's poet, poem, reader. a triangular, dreamy creation ... & yes, uh huh uh huh, i like it...uh huh uh huh.
per form of a poem, mechanics & devices, i recognize the throw-away quality of a little wordy poem uncapped & missing commas with strange line-breakages, but that's ok, it's a throw-away society we live within, it's mostly a square box of wood or metal or mineral, or circular, more & more circular i suspect if inspected by our cultural anthropologists out there; da monolith of being. as a poet it's my duty to mirror my world, to language it as i live it. i think my roots poke into the ground of the black mountain poets, but i've been other places underground too. i love it i was born in 1954 -- deep in the belly of beat & kerouac's voice -- in amerika the last half of the 20th century. i have a secret to tell you, wreddy, but it really does seem as if i live my life by decades ending in 4, 1954, born, & the ensuing importance of the 4, especially writing-wise. '74, '84, '94, were all energetic years of periods of writing for me, & i look forward to see what 2004 might be. maybe i'll be crucified on live tv.
That could be a reality tv show ("reality tv" being of course an oxymoron), Who Wants To Crucify A Poet Survivor Millionaire? Well it’s time to wrap up the interview, tho it’s been a blast. What last thought, best thought--my apologies to the classic Beat aesthetic credo -- would you like to leave the Babel Interview readers with?
yes, this had been a blast & i want to thank you & victor thorn for allowing my little spoutings in babel. live the poem, that's what i want to say to the readers (who are probably mostly writers or poets or artists) of babel. live the poem. i'm drinking a whiskey & water & ice after working all night running savage #1 press. get a job. do whatever the fuck you wanta do, say whatever the fuck you wanta say, write whatever the fuck you wanta write. i'll be here. there isn't anywhere else to go. earth spins. everything changes eonically. the past does not exist except as "dream,” viewing a view with half an eye, if that. the future isn't real yet either. there is this moment & fuck you. one moment will be yr last moment. sunrise maybe you drift like a gin drunk, a massive gin drunk with a few sedatives added, uh oh, what are you doing now? pass out, try to read poems in a dream. in yr final perpetual dream. even try to say this communication between us now is reality. it is not.