Fine Flu Journal Fine Flu Journal- june 2014 | Page 21

the Holocaust poet Paul Celan, whose book sat on my desk for a year as
I responded to poem after poem. I am now slowly reading Audre
Lorde’s book, The Black Unicorn.
6) What is your basic theory about life? Or about the world we
live in.
I don’t know that I have a theory about life or the world we live in, but
my sense of both is darkened by my family history. Much of that family
was annihilated by the Nazis, including three of my grandparents, and
my parents and their siblings were exiled from their homelands. Long
after that terrible period in history, people continue to suffer genocide
and displacement, inequality, poverty and lack of freedom. At the same
time , I have been incredibly lucky. I have been happily married to the
same woman for nearly forty-four years, have two intelligent, capable,
athletic and gentle sons, both of whom are happily married as well and
have sweet, healthy children. In our world, joy braids around suffering,
and I try to embrace moments of health, beauty and pleasure, while
never losing sight of the world’s continual sorrow.
7) Does poetry help you to defeat or soothe your fears?
I wish it could, but I’m afraid that fear lives outside of poetry and
gnaws at me whenever I think about what awaits my sons and
grandchildren as we race toward further environmental degradation
and the increasing effects of climate change and inequality. Poetry does
help me to be mindful of my inner life, my subjective responses, as I
struggle to make meaning and, through language, attempt to create
beauty from experience.
8) How does time influence you?
My poems often deal with time and its strange, subjective movements,
especially as the past impinges on the present.
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To paraphrase