Barbara Decesare: Deadly Poet, Great Laugh

Who me? The Writer Decesare.

Talk about your early years on this planet. You must’ve been a pistol.
Um, maybe. I know I was a problem child, in the way that if I was a kid today I’d be on Ritalin or something. I hated learning things that I couldn’t translate into my real world; like religion or mathematics. I remember making my algebra teacher cry when she taught Pythagorean Theorem in 7th grade. She said A+B+C and it seemed to me that A+B would equal AB. I didn’t mean to make things hard for her; I just couldn’t understand where the hell that C was supposed to come from. I also remember once having a huge fight with my mom where she said over and over that I wasn’t her throw-away child (I was one of six) and I remember thinking very clearly that she was saying this to convince herself of it and not me.

When and why did you first start writing?
Okay, I was one of six kids. When I had problems, they were my problems, you know? I couldn’t exactly talk to my parents, who were always busy with somebody younger and probably crying.

So I started writing, and pretty young. Maybe six or so, since I was reading when I was three or four. My mother is a huge pro-lifer. She was always banging out these angry letters to the editor on her little Olivetti typewriter and I remember as a preschooler how important this seemed. She’d type and type and type, then she’d be on the phone with her friends reading the letters and getting feedback, then it would be published, then she’d get phone calls congratulating her and it seemed so powerful. It was the only way to be heard, I imagined then, to type the words, not to say them.

Why poetry?
My knee-jerk reaction is to say I have ADD and poetry satisfies my communication needs and abilities. But I have a real love of word economy, of the straight shot. Poetry is the language that communicates with me, so I found it easiest to communicate through it.

I’ve been lucky with fiction, too. But with fiction, I feel like I’m writing for an audience. The poetry I write for myself.

Tell me about the name of your book, Jigsaweyesore.
Honestly, it’s a misheard song lyric from an XTC song. It works thematically because the book is sort of a disaster. I’m sure you noticed there aren’t any page numbers. It’s chaotic, and the title represents it.

Ive been reading Jigsaweyesore off and on for three weeks now and loving the fuck out of it. My favorites include, “To Make Us Poets,” “The Last to Know,” “Because Your Stomach Hurts You Think You Love Me (My Contagious Dysfunction).” I am curious about your writing process. How do the poems come to you?
Are you serious? First of all, if I knew it, I would probably jinx it by telling you.

Ok, I’ll tell.

I tend to notice things that other people don’t. Once I was driving by a house with a friend who commented on the gorgeous hydrangea growing in the garden. I didn’t even see the flowers because I was looking at these amazing mushrooms growing the yard. Now it’s not like I’d go home and write about mushrooms necessarily, but I’d remember it and keep it in case something else acted upon it. I suppose I’m just built to detect metaphor in the world and I can hang onto it long enough that when the real inspiration comes, I have the image to plug into the idea.

The specific poems you mention were inspired by:
1. Sylvia Plath;
2. a guy I dated who had been the subject of some vaguely erotic photos; and
3. my real live ex-husband and the guy I dated after him

Jigsaweyesore is about 7 years old. Talk about how you felt when she first dropped and how you feel about her now.
Thank you for asking this.

For a first book, Jigsaweyesore is pretty solid. I was lucky enough to have Joe Natoli for my editor and he pulled pieces I would never have thought to publish. He had far more faith in my work than I did.

I’ve been writing so much since the book came out that I feel a bit disconnected from it. It doesn’t represent me now, as a person, so I don’t read from it often. When I go back and read it I’m usually surprised that there are poems in it that are honestly very good poems.

Is Jigsaweyesore still available for purchase?
Sorry, no. The very last of them sold last month and I decided not to reprint. But I have about 4 copies at my house if you’re into B&E.

When can we expect to see a new book from you?
Real soon! Paper Kite Press has a new manuscript and I’m pretty sure they’re going to produce something in 2007. Right now I’m at work on a CD that will be out by the end of September.

If walked into your apartment right now, what would you want to hide? What would you want me to see?
Right now? I’ve been drinking. You can see anything you want.

I’d really want you to see the two paintings by Tom Holder, collages by my daughter, and the Incredible Hulk paraphernalia and PEZ collection in the bathroom. I don’t own a lot of stuff.

When I saw you at the Bowery Poetry Club last April (or was it May?) you read a poem about your mother. Talk about being a mother and how your mother taught you to be one.
Oh, shit, I was just talking to my girl about this the other day. She’s just turned 16, not much older than I was when she was born. We were talking about how her need to be rebellious has manifested itself into a rebellion against the things my mother espouses.

Are your children writers? Artists?
Yes. Em is an incredible visual artist. Tom, my youngest, likes cartooning. Jack, the middle guy, is a writer. I feel as if I’ve passed on a terrible hereditary disease to him.

Who do you like to read?
Because I’ve bee drinking (the kids are in Maryland with their dad) I will most likely pick up Pablo Neruda’s odes and cry over “Ode to a Plum” – also I’m reading Raymond Carver to bone up for a class I’m teaching this fall at U Penn, and then Tony Hoagland & Kenneth Koch and the humor issue of Poetry just came in the mail…

Name six people you loathe and why with one word.
I can’t stand people who take themselves too seriously and there are more than six, but one is my brother the priest.

Five men you would fuck in a heartbeat.
I can safely say that it would take more than a heartbeat to get me to fuck anyone. For the sake of answering your question, let’s just say you and four of your best friends. Let’s go.

Four thoughts that everyone should consider.
This food didn’t fall out of the sky, so give some kind of thanks to somebody
Do you really need to drive your car today?
Send the fucking thank-you note already!
You can’t claim your cat on your taxes.
There is always something better to do than watch TV.

Three body parts you love.
Clavicle, shoulder, neck.

Two things about Baltimore that few outsiders know.
1. Go to Martick’s before dies; and
2. I have never, ever lived there.

One thing every writer should know.
WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW!!!!
I hate these kids who write poems about the imaginary lives of women on welfare or homeless people. You should stuff your fucking trust funds up your asses, you self-important asshole grad students.

Oh, here’s a poem! I’m writing in my black notebook in the diner and no one in the diner knows how cool I am and everyone in the diner is suffering in their sad little diner lives. Eat me and my tampon, jackass.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 @ 05:59 PM