A Conversation with Brendan Constantine
I met Brendan Constantine at an event in Los Angeles back in 2013. He greeted me as if we were long lost friends, and I found myself desperately wishing we were. That’s the dynamic joy of spending time with Brendan’s spirit -- as welcoming a space as that which he leaves for us in his work, places we can sit down next to him and luxuriate in metaphor and recognition. Thankfully, we did become friends, and it’s been a great joy to learn from him, to read each new word of poetry, and to celebrate the variety of good he brings to the world. Here, we talk about pockets, poets to discover, teaching, and more, followed by the gift of four brand new pieces. -- CMG
Hello, Brendan!
I’m currently sitting at a beautiful desk at the Carolyn Moore Writers House in Tigard, Oregon. The folks at Portland Community College have been kind enough to offer me a residency here for a month! So, while I endeavor to answer these questions, I must pause now and then to wonder at the curious number of robins that have gathered outside. Just now (2:30 PST), I can see at least ten in one window, standing apart in a meadow, facing the same direction. Something appears to be ‘up’ in robinland.
1. Please tell me about your biggest kitchen failure.
Well, the one that stands out is from about 1977. I was ten years old, and my dad had just bought a microwave oven. It’s fair to say, back then, safety standards weren’t quite what they are now: this thing kept cooking with the door open! Anyway, my stepbrother and had been left alone in the house (again, it was the 70’s) and we were hungry. So, we took a frozen dinner from the fridge, wrapped it in several layers of foil, as one did with a toaster oven, and likewise set the timer for 45 minutes. In over forty years of attending rock concerts, what my brother and I witnessed stands out as one of the best lightshows I’ve ever experienced. Incidentally, we did try to eat the frozen dinner (a Swanson’s Chicken Pot Pie, I believe) but it resisted us, and we gave up after bending a knife.
2. What is your favorite sort of pocket?
Interior breast pocket of a sport coat. Still feels sneaky.
3. Who are three writers who you wish more people knew about?
The top of my list has to be my girlfriend Julia Ingalls, an artist and essayist here in Los Angeles. She has spent so much of her time promoting other writers – in addition to a good deal of critical writing, she was the curator of the now legendary cross-genre series It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere – that I think her own work hasn’t received any of the attention it deserves. She’s written for Salon, Slate, Guernica, Crime Reads, and the LA Times. Here most recent project is an audio quartet which can be sampled here, starting with part one ‘Blind Spots’: https://soundcloud.com/user-427725026/blind-spots_part-1-julia-ingalls-audio-quartet
Next is LA-based poet Tom Laichas, whose work knocks me out. If it was one wit less, I’d merely be resentful. As it is I can only admire him. Here’s an excerpt of a larger work which appears in the current (and final) issue of Lammergeier: https://www.lammergeier.org/post/excerpts-from-the-star-catalogue-tom-laichas. His newest collection is Three Hundred Streets of Venice California (2023 Futurecycle Press).
The third is Oakland poet Valentina Gnup. I am so excited to be shouting about this poet. I’ve known and admired her for over twenty years, and we are finally getting her first collection! Her book Ruined Music (2024 Grayson Books) was released in March! Here’s a recent piece from Two Hawks Quarterly: https://twohawksquarterly.com/poetry/2022/05/06/the-work-of-flying-by-valentina-gnup/
4. Strangest/favorite place you’ve given a reading?
Where do I start? The pizzeria? The observatory? The bus stations or cemeteries? No, it has to be the time I was asked to read at an apiary-supply shop, outside San Francisco -- ‘Her Majesty’s Secret Beekeeper.’ The event was part of Litquake and local businesses had agreed to host poetry readings for an afternoon in 2012. This particular venue was small, and guests stood or sat on the floor. But I was made very comfortable, even given a big pair of bee wings to wear by emcee Nichelle Davis.
What I didn’t realize, until I was halfway through my first poem, was that there was a live chicken behind me, in a decorative cage. For the next ten minutes, this little guy offered commentary, making clucks and half-caws with incredible sensitivity to the mood of each piece. I would say something about astonishment or loneliness, and as I tried to ‘hold’ the moment, the rooster would utter an inquisitive “Ohhh?”
It is, by far, one of my favorite gigs ever. I even toyed (very briefly) with the idea of getting my own chicken to accompany me at future readings.
5. Do you listen to music when you write? If so, what?
I do! And it’s a pretty eclectic mix. Because I have a tiny brain, it’s hard for me to listen to lyrics while writing, so I favor electronic music, symphonic, or jazz. Perhaps the most evocative for me, or rather, the music which has proven the most conducive, has been the work of Swedish composer and ‘sound artist’ Marcus Fjellström. In 2018 I watched the first season of a series called ‘The Terror’ which was set in the arctic and which featured an incredible soundtrack. On viewing the last episode, I saw a dedication to Fjellström in the credits. Apparently, his score for the series was one of his last efforts before his sudden death in 2017 at the age of 38.
I’ve since found tons of his work online and play mixes of it at my desk. I’ve also acknowledged him in my next book. He helped inspire a lot of those poems!
6. Tell me about teaching. What has teaching taught you about artistry? (Related: Was Letters to Guns a real class exercise?)
I’ve been teaching for over twenty years now, at pretty much all levels. I work with adults, college students, the elderly, people living with brain trauma, and since 2004, I’ve taught Creative Writing at the Windward School, a college-prep in West Los Angeles.
What have I learned? Good Lord, there just isn’t enough time or space to answer. But let me see if I can offer some highlights! Teaching has kept me teach-able. It’s one of the scariest things I know how to do; I’m just as terrified as I was the first day, but my students, especially my kids at the high school, are constantly making poetry new for me, they let me ‘see’ it in a thousand unexpected ways. They remind me that while the first poems may have appeared over 6,000 years ago, this art form is still quite young, and will stay perpetually adolescent so long as speech itself continues to evolve.
When it comes to workshops (as opposed to teaching the mechanics of poetry) my latest kick is to create classes where the participants acknowledge and accept that I expect them to lead their own classes. My motto is “If you can take two workshops, you can give back one.”
As to the latter part of your question, I think you’re asking if ‘The Opposites Game’ came from a real exercise. And yes, it did. The scenes described in that poem actually happened. There are a few embellishments, a few extra colors, but I really did have a class (more than one, actually) where a debate over the antonym for 'gun' raged for days and divided students.
Wanna try it? Take a poem by someone else and rewrite it, saying the exact opposite of everything it describes or asserts. If the first poem starts, “Once upon a time...” then you might begin with “Twice under never...” It shouldn’t take long before you encounter terms without an obvious antonym. Go with your instincts, go with what feels emotionally true. Where possible, structure your poem identically, line-breaks and all.
TIP – Your first draft may look like a train wreck. Expect to do a second or third. Your poem is in there, just a little buried.
Brendan Constantine, photo by Taylor Mali.
Brendan Constantine just completed his fifth collection of poems, “The Opposites Game.” He teaches at the Windward School in Los Angeles.
Study of Three Paintings Eaten by Dogs
1
A woman in a straw hat, ribbon
trailing, eyes lost in shadow.
She waves from a beach to where
a whole sky should be, but isn’t.
There is half a cloud.
There is one wing.
2
A man with white hair, a blue
suit and necktie. He looks at us,
ready to answer any question
not found in the books behind him.
Don’t be alarmed by his missing
chest, his pulverized desk; these
are his credentials.
3
A mountain pass, late winter,
pine trees loaded with snow, gone
pink at evening, they lean away
from an awesome hole in everything.
It’s so big you can see the skeleton
of the world; wet, wooden, thrown
together in a rush.
We might have known.
~
Juice Box
I saw a cartoon where a wolf got sent
to the electric chair. He had stalked a trio
of pigs before killing two of them.
The judge and jury were cats and crows.
The wolf’s lawyer was a worm with big
glasses. He didn’t seem prepared.
Justice was swift, the wolf howled as he died,
long and loud, and the sound hung on the air
in letters made of lightning.
I remember, vividly, asking my mother
about it, trying to lead her to a hopeful
answer,
“There’s not really a ‘lectric chair, right?”
She was wearing her black cardigan
with the purple blouse and smoking so,
when she exhaled on “Yes,” I could
see the shape of the word,
could see myself breathe it in.
“There are lots of those chairs,” she said,
“we’ve had them for a while now.” Of course,
she told me not to worry, that I was good
and always would be,
but I had more questions. For instance,
what other electric furniture was there?
Couches? Beds? My God, bunkbeds?
And what crimes were thus punished?
I didn’t ask any of this. If that seems odd,
perhaps you’ve forgotten the essence
of childhood, which is shock. To be new
is to be dumb to the world’s mad example,
to see words sizzle as we grope for them.
It’s many years since they led the wolf away
and I peer into my electric window,
for any surviving footage. I find it.
The archives are pretty good for this
sort of thing. The whole cartoon
can be seen anytime. I watch it over
and over for the one image I somehow
missed as a child: the wolf redeemed
with wings and his own cloud in Heaven.
He plays a small harp there, the music
falling to earth in jagged notes of silver.
~
Tinnitus
According to Christian tradition, the Virgin Mary was impregnated
through her ear. In most depictions, the Spirit is delivered by some
robed figure – an angel or the unborn Christ himself – who blows
a golden trumpet, bright tracers of sound entering not her body
but her halo, Conceptio per aurem. She hardly seems to notice
looking instead at whomever is talking to her. It’s always someone,
always male, Joseph or another saint. Likewise, her palm is always
raised, as if to tell them, No, please finish, I can wait.
~
Civil Twilight
Just after sundown, when most accidents happen,
when small things lose their shadows and curtains soak
with television, when the cricket gets lonely enough
to sing for its killer, that’s the true witching hour; not
the middle of the night — there isn’t one — not the dark
of the dark but the darkening. It’s before and not during,
it’s What are you trying to say and I already told you.
This is when purple was invented and both the apology
and the suicide note, when the dead make their best
predictions. And this is when we, you and I, tend to enter
our own poems, walk around in them, make a point
of breathing. No matter the season, I listen for birds,
smell for sweet alyssum. I don’t know what you confirm,
but I bet it’s always the same thing first, like touching
a key in your pocket. We both wonder if we’ll finally confess
our part in the great crime or find a way to describe hesitation,
rain sounds, the breath of animals, without comparing them
to anything. Which means this is when we fail, as music fails
and everyone’s picture. Even this hour falls short of an hour.
It’s the time it takes to lose sight of a balloon, one we let go
on purpose, because it’s dying to get away.
