John W. Evans’ self interview for Zugzwang
Q. The title poem of your collection is “Zugwang.” What’s a “zugzwang”?
It’s a chess term, German in origin, that means “compulsion to move.” It refers to a situation in which a player would like to do nothing (pass), since any move will damage his position.
The poem is a pretty straightforward narrative about being young and in love, living in Chicago, and playing a lot of chess.
Q. Are there other love poems in the collection?
Pretty much every poem in the collection can be read as a poem about either love or loss.
Q. Why aren’t more of your poems funny?
Really, I’ve only written two funny poems. The first is in this collection, “Lobster Ravioli in White Truffle Sauce.” It’s basically a transcript of a conversation I had about pleasure with a recovering addict. The other—I try to start all of my readings with it—is “Rock Is Coking.” It’s about watching professional wrestling with Bangladeshi men in the village where I lived.
When I put together this manuscript, I focused on putting together poems that are at heart grounded in the physical Midwest, or have a Midwestern sensibility about them. So, “Rock Is Coking” didn’t make the cut.
Q. What’s a “Midwestern sensibility”?
Writing from a place where you sincerely believe that language makes meaning, meaning is stable and can be shared by many people at the same time, and so writing is an act that brings together people to make sense of the world around us.
I like to think that I’m writing in the tradition of Theodore Roethke, James Wright, Jack Gilbert, Jane Kenyon, B.H. Fairchild, Catherine Bowman…
Q. So, it’s not just layering cheddar cheese and tator-tots on casseroles?
I can’t stand cheddar cheese. Any yellow cheese, in fact, and most of the cheeses I grew up with, as a kid in Kansas.
Q. Doesn’t sound very Midwestern to me.
We moved from Kansas to New York when I was 13.
Q. Where’s the poem about that?
It’s in here, sort of—a poem called “Sexual Illiteracy.” It’s all about longing, misinformation, and being secretive. I led a pretty boring second life as a teenager, but I still felt guilty about it. The poem adapts the ghazal form, with more of a narrative emphasis than in the traditional sense of the form.
Q. Are all of the poems in “Zugzwang” grounded in narrative?
Most of them, I think. “Two Spices” and “It Is The Earth Turning That Lifts Our Shores From The Dark” are not. The latter, I wrote with an ear entirely for the language; the title comes from a Robert Duncan poem. The former is a kind of history-minded take on the cultivation of cardamom and black pepper. Writing that poem, I really got into the various repeating sounds and bits of trivia that I could pack into the poem (e.g., Cleopatra supposedly used cardamom as her everyday perform, especially so when she seduced Marc Antony; Elihu Yale, of Yale University, made his fortune in the pepper trade).
I once took a workshop with Stuart Dybek at the Miami Book Fair, and he said that formal poetry is a fashion of the past; the task of the contemporary poet is to decide what structures will now replace poetic formalism. That’s always stuck with me.
Q. Are your poems autobiographical?
Sort of. I make a lot of stuff up. I like what Campbell McGrath says, about how for a poem to be good, the ego of the poem has to ultimately supersede the ego of the poet.
Q. Any other contemporary poets you want to name-drop?
Denise Duhamel. Jack Gilbert, Thomas Lux, Claudia Rankine, Rodney Jones, Stewart Dybek…
Q. Robert Hass.
Yes, Robert Hass! For me, he’s the gold standard for what a poet can be in the contemporary era: a generous, big-hearted, politically-minded poet-citizen.
In graduate school, at Florida International University, two books really changed how I thought about the potential of the poems I would one day write, B.H. Fairchild’s Art of the Lathe and Robert Hass’s Human Wishes. Both collections are in some ways attentive to form, but they also let form go from time to time, to make big-hearted statements that, if they were reigned in by formal requirements, I don’t think would work as well as contemporary poems.
Q. Which of the poems in “Zugzwang” is your favorite?
The year after I got back from being a Peace Corps volunteer in Bangladesh, I got this job teaching 7th grade in a public school in Chicago. I would fall asleep on the bus coming home each afternoon, and wake up when I smelled the tar and exhaust fumes at this road project about a block from my stop. One day, I woke up and it smelled like Bangladesh, and I thought for that brief nanosecond between sleeping and waking that I was back there, and so I started writing a long poem about this fire at a factory I used to pass on the bus rides to the capital.
Q. “The Five-Dollar Shirt.”
Yes. That poem feels like a big accomplishment in this collection. I think it has a definite political sensibility, in the best sense of the word.
Q. Your author’s bio says you’re the executive director of the Katie Memorial Foundation.
Yes! We’re a nonprofit organization. Basically, we give out a series of annual scholarships to graduate students pursuing innovative solutions to public health problems in the developing world. Check out our website: http://www.katiememorialfoundation.org
Q. Does it feel good to know that each year the Cubs don’t win the World Series is another year that “Poem Written Outside Wrigley Field” remains relevant to Cubs fans?
They say that old Cubs fans never die. But we also don’t fade away. We sort of just hover there, full of unrealistic expectations.
Q. The title poem of your collection is “Zugwang.” What’s a “zugzwang”?
It’s a chess term, German in origin, that means “compulsion to move.” It refers to a situation in which a player would like to do nothing (pass), since any move will damage his position.
The poem is a pretty straightforward narrative about being young and in love, living in Chicago, and playing a lot of chess.
Q. Are there other love poems in the collection?
Pretty much every poem in the collection can be read as a poem about either love or loss.
Q. Why aren’t more of your poems funny?
Really, I’ve only written two funny poems. The first is in this collection, “Lobster Ravioli in White Truffle Sauce.” It’s basically a transcript of a conversation I had about pleasure with a recovering addict. The other—I try to start all of my readings with it—is “Rock Is Coking.” It’s about watching professional wrestling with Bangladeshi men in the village where I lived.
When I put together this manuscript, I focused on putting together poems that are at heart grounded in the physical Midwest, or have a Midwestern sensibility about them. So, “Rock Is Coking” didn’t make the cut.
Q. What’s a “Midwestern sensibility”?
Writing from a place where you sincerely believe that language makes meaning, meaning is stable and can be shared by many people at the same time, and so writing is an act that brings together people to make sense of the world around us.
I like to think that I’m writing in the tradition of Theodore Roethke, James Wright, Jack Gilbert, Jane Kenyon, B.H. Fairchild, Catherine Bowman…
Q. So, it’s not just layering cheddar cheese and tator-
Q. Doesn’t sound very Midwestern to me.
We moved from Kansas to New York when I was 13.
Q. Where’s the poem about that?
It’s in here, sort of—a poem called “Sexual Illiteracy.” It’s all about longing, misinformation, and being secretive. I led a pretty boring second life as a teenager, but I still felt guilty about it. The poem adapts the ghazal form, with more of a narrative emphasis than in the traditional sense of the form.
Q. Are all of the poems in “Zugzwang” grounded in narrative?
Most of them, I think. “Two Spices” and “It Is The Earth Turning That Lifts Our Shores From The Dark” are not. The latter, I wrote with an ear entirely for the language; the title comes from a Robert Duncan poem. The former is a kind of history-
Q. Are your poems autobiographical?
Sort of. I make a lot of stuff up. I like what Campbell McGrath says, about how for a poem to be good, the ego of the poem has to ultimately supersede the ego of the poet.
Q. Any other contemporary poets you want to name-
Q. Robert Hass.
Yes, Robert Hass! For me, he’s the gold standard for what a poet can be in the contemporary era: a generous, big-
Q. Which of the poems in “Zugzwang” is your favorite?
The year after I got back from being a Peace Corps volunteer in Bangladesh, I got this job teaching 7th grade in a public school in Chicago. I would fall asleep on the bus coming home each afternoon, and wake up when I smelled the tar and exhaust fumes at this road project about a block from my stop. One day, I woke up and it smelled like Bangladesh, and I thought for that brief nanosecond between sleeping and waking that I was back there, and so I started writing a long poem about this fire at a factory I used to pass on the bus rides to the capital.
Q. “The Five-
Q. Your author’s bio says you’re the executive director of the Katie Memorial Foundation.
Yes! We’re a nonprofit organization. Basically, we give out a series of annual scholarships to graduate students pursuing innovative solutions to public health problems in the developing world. Check out our website: http://www.katiememorialfoundation.org
Q. Does it feel good to know that each year the Cubs don’t win the World Series is another year that “Poem Written Outside Wrigley Field” remains relevant to Cubs fans?
They say that old Cubs fans never die. But we also don’t fade away. We sort of just hover there, full of unrealistic expectations.