Episode 29: It’s my party, I’ll do what I want

August 1st, 2019
Hosted by Brian Birnbaum
Guest: Aaron Poochigian
Produced by Katie Rainey
Transcript by Jon Kay

Animal! We're so excited because our old pal, Aaron Poochigian, is our special guest on this 29th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast. We consider Aaron one of our O.A.s - original animals - because he's been a long time supporter of the Animal Riot Mafia. You may remember him from his cameo appearance in Episode 22 at the Paragraph: Writers Workspace, however, we've got him all to ourselves in the episode. Tune in to hear all about Aaron's rich career in the writing world, from his enviable day job with translations to the wild ride that is his latest work Mr. Either/Or: All The Rage, the sequel to his acclaimed Mr. Either/Or.

>> Brian: Welcome to the 29th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast, brought to you by Animal Riot Press, a literary press for books that matter. I'm your host, Brian Birnbaum. We're here today with Aaron Poochigian who earned a PhD in classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in poetry from Columbia University.

His first book of poetry, The Cosmic Purr was published in 2012 with Able Muse Press and a second book, Manhattanite, which won The Able Muse Poetry Prize, came out in 2017. His third book, American Divine, won The Richard Wilbur Award and will come out in 2020. His thriller in verse, Mr Either/Or And That's Mr Either slash Or for the folks who are not visually with us, was released by Atruscan Press in the fall of 2017 and the sequel, Mr Either/Or: All the Rage will come out in 2020. Aaron's work has appeared and is forthcoming in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review and Poetry. The Paris Review. There you Go, that's just That's it. That's it. That's all you need?

>> Aaron: I received that email, what is it Saturday today? It was only about three weeks ago from the Paris Review, and I had just gotten out of an unfortunate relationship and it brightened up my whole day. I think I had forgotten entirely that happened.

>> Brian: I think that we need that kind of karma. You know what I mean? And before we get started. I'm gonna say this episode's brand of fuckary is brought to you by Presecco. We now have two bottles because we had enough an abortive attempt to do our podcast with Aaron, what was it a couple weeks ago or something? And Aaron brought over a bottle of prosecco that we drank. And then we bought another one. And then you brought one today, again. And it's just like the prosecco never ends. You know, it's a bottomless bottomless bottle. So, yeah, let's start off with how we met because that's always, you know, that's always important to remember.

>> Aaron: As I recall, it was my first year at Columbia, and I gave a reading with Katie Rainey.

>> Brian: Who we've referred to as our producers. You don't have to do that, and it's and it's plural, our producers, because I like to act like we actually have some, like a back area with a switchboard here.

>> Aaron: Yeah, And then I ended up giving a reading for the Animal Riot series at Downtown Uptown (DTUT), and you guys were all very generous about accepting students at Columbia while I was in the program.

>> Brian: And there's so many.

>> Aaron: Yeah. I read. And then all my friends would be regularly reading. And so I had reasons to go and I got hooked. Now I come all the time.

>> Brian: Beautiful.

>> Aaron: I'm your biggest fan.

>> Brian: Yeah, and I think it's safe to say that that reading really just catapulted your career into the stratosphere.

>> Aaron: It did. At Columbia. Well, it was fortunate. And then I got to get more readings at Animal Riot subsequently. I think I've read for Animal Riot three or four times. I am one of your regular contributors.

>> Brian: Yeah, it's gotta be. And yeah, fuck it. Let's talk about it now. Because you're reading is something. It's memorable. Let's just say that you're a You're a very expressive reader. You're one of the best readers I've ever.

>> Aaron: Thank you very much.

>> Brian: That's right. You co hosted Animal Riot when Devin was out. Was I there that night? I don't recall. So many years ago.

>> Aaron: I would be happy to co host.

>> Brian: Any time. Yes.

>> Aaron: I was at an event last night in Brooklyn with a graduate of Sarah Lawrence. Where you guys graduated was with Joanna C Valente. She is another a great reader. It was really intense frequently. Yeah, I was just I found it overwhelming. She's mentioned that you knew you both and also knows Devn as well.

>> Brian: Uh huh, yeah, but I just I had to bring that up because you just for those who don't know, Aaron, those of the maybe, you know, I don't know, maybe, half the population of the world that doesn't know you yet. By this point, you really just grabbed the mic and just the mic becomes your lover. The mic stand, and you just you really just I don't know.

>> Aaron: Thank you very much. Well, I'd be happy to read, but I hope to do that sometime during this broadcast. But also you show it has to do, I mean, because we can talk about that. And what is one of the things that interests me most as a poet and that is connecting with an audience, right? And so a lot of contemporary poetry for literary historical reasons is alienating and both on the page And when it's being read out loud, there isn't a lot of consideration given to the needs of the audience.

>> Brian: Why do you think that is?

>> Aaron: Oh, well, partly it is the modernist influence. I respect and everybody loves TS Eliot, of course, but a lot of getting the Wasteland requires a lot of footnotes. And at a first, yeah, imagine encountering that for the first time without the aid of footnotes or someone to tell you what the difficult parts mean. Yeah, and it would have been the reference. It would have been a very excluding presentation. And the same could be true also of the legacy of post modern poets in that they're arcane references and illusions. A coterie of poets, A small group that's going to get it, The elite. And the general audience. Well, fuck them. And so I partly because I emphasized the aural so much. Speaking so much in my poetry. Yeah, I gone 180 degrees the other way, and I want to be right there whispering sweet nothings in the audience's ear. In dull set tones trying to make the audience member come home with me. And yes, and people have responded favorably to that. Thank God. Not going home with me. (laugher) But on the but the audience appreciation, gestures towards the audience.

>> Brian: Yes, yeah, and especially coming from someone who you kind of at the locus of your craft is this translation effort of the classics and that itself can feel kind of excluding in the sense of how many of us are reading Dante today? I mean, in a comparative literature class, sure. But your ability to translate that into modern literature is amazing, and especially with Mr Either/Or. That book was just so much fun to read because it was hilarious. I mean, it's a book in verse, but it's like it's couplets, right?

>> Aaron: Yeah, they're rhyming couplets. And then there are. Then I stretched the rhyme out and then I can condense it. So I wanted a flexible medium for a verse epic. And so it's all iambic pentameter like Shakespeare. But then, when I wanted to be sententious and catchy, then I'll go, yes, mental rhyming couplets. And then when I want to be more like prose, more expository, I'll distance the rhymes. Yeah, and so I needed. I'm proud to say that it's sort of my own invention. This free rhyme is what I call it. Every line rhymes, but there's no particular pattern.

>> Brian: Yeah, that makes me think we just before we got on the air, we were talking about the MFA programs and that kind of exclusivity. I do think that students of MFA programs I really do think that the canon is more important to other people than it really is, you know? And you have you have this awareness that you know so much of our audience. They don't know who the fuck wrote Dante's Inferno.

>> Aaron: Bless their hearts. They have other things going on.

>> Brian: Yeah, bless their hearts. These works aren't important, but it is important to remember that we're writing for our audience and your ability to translate that. I mean, like, have these almost like, you know, like Fitzgerald's idea of holding two contradicting ideas at once. You know, you understand the importance and the beauty of the classics, and yet you're not writing the classics, you know? Which would bore the shit out of everyone.

>> Aaron: And thank you for saying that.

>> Brian: And it's not a failure on the part of the students at MFA programs. I think it's a failure of really just modernizing them. It's funny because I think there's a whole other end of the spectrum where people are writing novels like about their tweets, you know, So I don't know, but not to get too much.

>> Aaron: You're right. There is a premium. You may have noticed this in MFA as well. On a premium on the novel on new on what's next. And you could have whole literary sensations that are built up on something that I regard and I would regard is interesting but faddish, and so I don't want to sound disrespectful, but I just... My instincts are completely the opposite of that. Given the poetry I like in the voice I like, I'm just so freaking rooted in the tradition that I mean.

>> Brian: You can say fucking if you want.

>> Aaron: Fucking.

>> Brian: We got the thing way got the R rating. It's all good. So it was there a transition period for you, Or did you or did you naturally come to this sort of conflation of just joy, like, you know, modern joy. I guess you could call it on the page and and drawing from the classics at once. Or did you have to go through a period where you were kind of writing boring shit? That was, you know, a little bit, A little bit too close to that to those classics.

>> Aaron: Yet you're absolutely right. And so it was an actual conscious decision that freed me up to have fun. Yeah. Yeah. When was that? So what? Yes, thank you. So it would have been Oh my goodness to one year's about 2009. I have been traveling a lot. I was I got a phD in classics. I was a professor. It's kind of joining the military because it's like where your sent early on in your career. And so I had a bunch of temporary positions in places like Utah and rural Virginia. And then I eventually just said, Fuck it. You know, this is my life. I have one life, and then I'm gonna fucking die. I want to do exactly what I want with it. And so what I'm gonna do is move to New York City and I am going to combine, put all the things that I love the most in one book.

>> Brian: That's a good way to go about it. I think when people ask on an earlier podcast of recent one, we were talking about the question of why you write? And it's like, That's a great answer. To put every one of your passions into writing.

>> Aaron: This is what Yeah, moves me, uh, the most. And that's how you move you dear audience.

>> Brian: But that's how you move people like, you know, if you're not moved while you're writing, then how can you expect your audience to be moved? You know, so not only your readings, but I mean the writing itself is just so much fun. I think I read Mr Either/Or in like two days or something.

>> Aaron: Yes, it's supposed to be like a thriller.

>> Brian: But I'm you know what I mean to say by that? Is that like, I just enjoyed it that much, You know, it was just so much fun. It was so funny. It was something that if you explain the endeavor, it would sound so pretentious. But like, well, not really, if you give us an ops is because it is about this. This is this dude going and kind of like to the seedy underworld, but at the same time, like, you know, it's like a novel in verse, you know, you think of Ann Carson, Autobiography of Red. I love that book, but it's not quite as fun as yours. I'm gonna say it like it's It's not.

>> Aaron: Thank you. I love Ann Carson's book.

>> Brian: It is. It is an incredible book.

>> Aaron: If it's okay, I'll read a little bit from the sequel to Mr Either/Or: All The Rage just a brief section. Um, And so in the first book, you are 20 something dude and a secret agent and an undergrad at NYU You fall in with Li Ling Levine, who is I'm in charge of Asian the Asian wing at the Met Museum.

>> Brian: I'm flushed with lust already.

>> Aaron: And you have a difficult time getting together. But at the end, kiss and go home at the end of the first episode. But no sex, because that's the worst thing you can have is if you you're male and female lead, if they fuck in the middle of the book...

>> Brian: The tension is gone.

>> Aaron: I know there's no more tension. And so you're so exhausted from your adventure that you fall asleep right before you. Thank God it's a little artificial, and I'm pretty proud of that. But you get together, and then, apparently you have started getting it on because at the beginning of Mr Either/Or: All the Rage, you're living with Li Ling Levine and Chelsea.You dumpy dorm and near N Y U, and you're waking up in the morning and you want to get it on with Li Ling Levine. But she's barfing. She's barfing. Why is she barfing? Oh my God.

>> Brian: Someone slipped her A Mickey? Who knows? We'll find out.

>> Aaron: Ummmm, rotten sushi? Alright. This is just a short section. Chapter 2: Sugar Bear.

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Get a copy of Aaron’s book, Mr. Either/OR, on Amazon here. 

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>> Aaron: And so the rest of the book has to deal with dealing with this pregnancy scare. And eventually Then Li Ling does go and get a pregnancy test and take it stealing hyper rational and scientific about things. And so she, when she talks about it, talks about her pregnancy in a distancing, scientific, alienating way that makes you uncomfortable and so well, I'll read a bit more about this pregnancy theme in chapter 15 called Human Chorionic Gonadotropin.

>> Brian: My God.

>> Aaron: Yes, I know. It's scary to me as well.

>> Brian: Should I pretend that I know what?

>> Aaron: No, It's, um check it out. What? Well, Li Ling will explain what it is.

>> Brian: Yeah, okay. I trust her. Yes, I trust that she will.

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Chapter 15 "Human Chorionic Gonadotropin"

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>> Aaron: Open and gonadotropin. Gonadotropin is one of the very few rhymes for open in the English language. And I'm glad that I found it.

>> Brian: Got an orange here?

>> Aaron: Yes, yes. Orange and door hinge.

>> Brian: There you go. Eminem couldn't come up with that one. I don't think he did.

>> Aaron: So yes. And then in the last installment that I've just started working on now it'll be several years in, and there will be a child in the mix, a baby boy in the mix. You've retired from your spy work, but of course, gets sucked back in last adventure.

>> Brian: Every time you try to get out, they pull you right back in

>> Aaron: And I started working on that, I think. And I think that will be the final episode of Chelsea.

>> Brian: Are you done drafting?

>> Aaron: So the first book contains two episodes on the second book will contain two episodes. I've written Episode three and I started episode four

>> Brian: Got It.

>> Aaron: And so that's interesting that we can talk about that as well. That and so when I sat down to write a novel in verse, I was experimenting and learning how to do it. I plotted it all out. I storyboarded the whole thing like I was a movie producer.

>> Brian: What do you mean, learning how to do it? Because you obviously have had analogs.

>> Aaron: Yes, I did in that there are books... Yeah, that there are books that I admire that our verse novels. There's Lord Byron wrote a book, It's Don Juan, but it's pronounced Dong Juin in British English, which is a verse novel, has all kinds of adventures.

>> Brian: That couldn't be more that couldn't be more antiquatedly parochial.

>> Aaron: He calls it an epic, but it's mostly about Byron's voice, and the plot is extraneous. He just brings in the plot to move Don Juin from one place to another so that he can go off on and talk. Now about Russia.

>> Brian: Has Lord Byron written novels?

>> Aaron: He wrote a number of epics, but he's famous on Lee for yes, on Lee for his poetry first. So he wrote Child Harold early on, which is a big sensation, and got him rich and then Don Juin was a huge sensation. But recently there haven't been that many verse novels, and we haven't heard about them. There were in the late eighties Vikram Sayt, the Novelist. His first novel was called The Golden Gate and was a novel entirely in push sonnets in four beat sonnets. And I'm fond of that as well. But I found the form for it too rigid, and I found the novel uneven, and so I wanted my form to be more malleable. Also, because of the nature of the plots I'm dealing with, I'm dealing with, like, dime store novel plots, comic book novel plots.

>> Brian: There's Pulp in there.

>> Aaron: Yeah, that I don't feel I didn't want to sustain a single plot for the for the length of what would normally be an entire novel. And so I decided to have two plots and then in a romantic arc that linked them and so similar there'll be two plots here, and the arc will be the pregnancy through the birth, through the raising of that child. And that'll link episodes three and four.

>> Brian: When you first brought this up. You're a little disingenuous. You said pregnancy scare.

>> Aaron: Yes, it is hair for about half the novel. And then and then the climactic moment it's revealed that Li Ling is pregnant and you the main character, go sort of Cro Magnons in response to finding out that you yes, this is paternal instinct that kicks in. You become murderous to someone who's threatening Li Ling. It's pretty awesome.

>> Brian: It is. Everyone listen to me when I fucking say this. It really is awesome. Was there any decision involved in publishing this next installment with Etruscan or is that still up for grabs?

>> Aaron: It's up in the air. I trusted has expressed interest in it. Yeah, and I'm fairly confident that when I send them the third and fourth episodes don't want to publish it. But if something goes wrong, God forbid, then I would publish it elsewhere. I would probably buy the rights back from Etruscan and publish all four episodes together.

>> Brian: Ooh! Gotta get the suits involved here, God damn it. But you know, that's something that, I mean, I'm sure you know how to navigate because you have so much experience publishing with translations. And I'm sure that I mean, that's how you support yourself, right? That's pretty much where you really earn your bread?

>> Aaron: I've been lucky for the past 15 months and that I've just been able to live off of royalties from translation.

>> Brian: You just pissed everyone off.

>> Aaron: I know. I know. I know. I know. That was a big mistake I made was a big mistake. I made on Twitter when I realized that I just write and don't work. Hey, this guy on here who says that he just writes poetry and people. Yes, I had to explain my situation. And so no, it's not from original poetry, though I wish that I were. The money that I make it comes from.

>> Brian: But a translation is it's important work. This is coming from a place that I have ambivalent feelings because I'm bothered by translations because I so badly want to read the original every time I read one. But at the same time, it means that translations are themselves an art form, and it's not exactly a science, it's not it. Their artistic decisions that you need to make, and you're obviously pretty fucking good at making those decisions.

>> Aaron: Yes, lately, my philosophy in translating ancient Greek classics is to again, with my emphasis on the audience, is to make it accessible as possible. But I'll add some distancing details. Whether it be of form, I'll make it metrical or of diction all used on occasional slightly archaic word. Or even now and again I'll use my syntactic inversion was gonna start with an archaic flavor just for a flavor to remind the reader that this isn't something slanging that was written last week, right? Right. And so you can you have effects in your craft choices that are slightly distancing. I don't use a lot of them.

>> Brian: are right, And that was pretty fun. In order to does you get you get to draw on this well of knowledge because obviously, as the translator, I mean, you know, the etymology so well, you know, and my only other language is sign language. So which isn't written at all. So it's like I have no idea what that's like. I'm green with envy when, when I think about that. But yeah, the one of the reasons I asked about Etruscan is because I also remember that you did a lot of publicity yourself, and this kind of brought draws in your social media prowess that I wanted to talk to you about as well. But yeah, I just wanted to talk to you about with. But what was your experience of publicity? Because we've talked a lot about that on the podcast, and it's a huge deal for us because, you know, our mission statement is publishing books that matter in ways that matter and the ways that matter. In one sense, building community in the second sense putting resource is behind books, not just signing on authors and hoping to win some lottery that catches attention, catches fire somewhere you know, and goes viral. So, yeah, what made you decide to kind of independently push your own book? And did you feel a need yourself? Or was that a premeditated decision? How did you go about it? Or whatever the fuck you want to say, you know?

>> Aaron: Yes, I knew Etruscan has a publicity department when actually, my friends, which is growing work there but they put out between six and 12 books a year and have limited resources and they're some online forms, I noticed a publicity that they hadn't yet started to use. And so I had put as I mentioned into this book, Mr Either/Or everything that I had loved. And I was at the time living in a house for free in California, in my paychecks were piling up. And so I was like, I'm gonna go all out. I'm an invest all that I have in promoting this book. And I did a fair amount on my own, and I enjoyed. I'm grateful, I should say, for the publicity company I work with JKS in Nashville. It's hard to promote a work of fiction, and it's even harder to promote something that is as weird as a verse novel. A pulp verse novel. Yeah, nobody's ever heard of it, but that's in second person on. And what I went for was not book sales so that those were pretty good. I'm grateful to say, but but I just went for exposure. And so they JKS got me into a Writer's Digest, for example, and a number of travel blogs about traveling to Manhattan. And I was able to talk about the history of places in Manhattan then quote from my verse novel in order to promote it, and so and they got me lots of interviews as well. And so I'm yeah, grateful to them, and I think I will use them again, but also just in terms of now. I was able during that time to build up my social media presence. And yes, we should talk about this. It's interesting to me, that I've come around to be such a social media person. I never imagined myself being this way.

>> Brian: I didn't either.

>> Aaron: The way I justified is this that during the periods, let's say, in ancient Athens, right or even earlier, pre literate periods, right? Um, during the time of Homer, right? You have this poetic tradition, and it's all mnemonic and people memorize it. And in conversation it's clear on the evidence that we have they quoted and quote poetry, and it's a part of their daily life, whether it be proverbs, wisdom or little bits of wit that are passed along. So it's apart of your everyday life and for a number of reasons, we didn't have that for most of... we lost that. I should say, starting the 19th century, but especially in the 20th century. And now we're getting it back and the way that we're getting it back, having poetry be part of it. Yeah, that one's everyday life is through social media, Twitter in particular, but also Facebook. And there's a whole new genre. Then there's genres of poetry that have come into existence only with the rise of social media called micro poetry on. So there's the have a form you have to have some constraint. Constraint of the form for Michael Poetry Award can is the number of characters. Yes. Oh, for Twitter. It's to 80 now, I think for an SMS message on your phone, it's 160 characters, and that's the constraint, and it allows me, then to daily present poetry. Stuff I've already translated stuff I'm working on to an audience and get a reaction, and also I've even started because people respond better online if they can participate in something rather than if you're just saying, I did this. It's also, if you invite them and you're interested in what they have to say. People are more interested in participating. And so I've actually workshopped poems on Twitter.

>> Brian: Yeah, and it wasn't because people don't like when you just force feed. Please buy my shit.

>> Aaron: Yeah, what do you think of it and what can I do to make it better? And I have gotten so many awesome suggestions. Yeah, out of Twitter, it was just for literary Twitter that I did it. Now I do it. I just invite everyone to have away whatever I put up there. Yeah, and there are lots of trolls. That's a really funny, awful things home. There are.

>> Brian: but there's no bad publicity.

>> Aaron: Yes, yes, and there's a lot of constructive criticism. There'll be lots of people, English speakers from all over the world will have problems with rhymes because of pronunciation differences.

>> Brian: Right.

>> Aaron: That's always really funny. And so it's a way for me to have poetry be part of my daily conversation and to try to make it part of daily conversation for other people as well. And so in poetry, we've been happy the past several years, ever since the NEA announced that reading readership, rates of poetry.

>> Brian: And for those of us out there listening that don't know what the NEA is.

>> Aaron: Is. Oh, the National Endowment of the Arts did a survey and discovered that reading rates had risen for the first time ever, and we have been all declines throughout the 20th century. Since they had started taking the in just the last census two years ago among people who are 18 to 35. And they attribute the rise in poetry readership primarily to social media.

>> Brian: Wow, that was the biggest injection of hope I've received today.

>> Aaron: I know, I know, I know. And so we're just so used to... Poets we're so used to fighting a losing battle, fighting the good fight against a culture that didn't appreciate us any longer. And now we don't have that pose any longer. There are people who are interested, and so we have because there is an audience we know out there we should be doubly pushed to engage with that audience, to whisper sweet nothings in that audience's ear and give it what it wants because we know that it's actually there now.

>> Brian: Yeah. So was there a transition period for you? Was there a resistance? Was there a point of self confrontation? Like I fucking hate self promotion or something like that? I need to I need to get over this obstacle. Was it an impasse at any point? Or did it organically kind of swell and overflow it some point?

>> Aaron: I am an introvert, but I could be good on stage for, you know, short periods of time. But then I'm gonna have to go home and sit in the dark and read.

>> Brian: And you're the complete opposite of me. I'm an extrovert. And then as soon as I get on the stage, I'm like a Oh, it was terrible. I hate it.

>> Aaron: You're fine on stage, but I denied... actually I call him the promotional side of me. I call him my Armenian Rug merchant. I'm half Armenian. Yes, it's And he reminds me of people that I knew growing up, who just wanted to make the deal. And so I denied him. And I tried as a poet, as an end as an intellectual to be above business and self promotion. My interest is in beauty and art.

>> Brian: That's what we all want. It really is.

>> Aaron: When I sat down and embraced and actually yeah, and look at the business side of poetry and sort of embraced it and decide to work with it then he came out the side of my personality, the Armenian rug merchant who just wants to sell you a book. He doesn't even care if he sells it to you at a slight loss. He just wants to get as many, as much product out into the world as they possibly can.

>> Brian: And then that goes back to you were talking about. You weren't looking for sales. You were looking for exposure. You just want people to read your shit.

>> Aaron: Yes.

>> Brian: Yeah, I understand that.

>> Aaron: Yes. Poetry's infamously hard to sell, right, And you can't give the shit away. Even the most famous poets: Robert Frost, Robert Frost er alive today, like Billy Collins. They don't make their living off of poetry trails off a book sales. They make their living off of lectures when teaching workshops in prizes. And so it's just poetry sells terribly, though, there have been some promising signs in that area as well. How whether or not you like her work. There's Ruby Carr, for example, who was a social media sensation, and her poetry sells very well. So she's been an exception. But on the whole poetry, not sells, horribly. And so, yes, you have other objectives in terms of promoting a book of poetry book than book sales. Because inevitably, if you go for that, you're going to be very disappointed. Yeah, it's hard to say.

>> Brian: Yes. Uh, let's talk a little bit about the M F A program. You went to Columbia. We went to Sarah Lawrence. We were close. We became friends through the reading series. But you know, there was a There was an element of proximity that brought us together. What are your thoughts? I mean, because that's another area I'm very ambivalent in, You know, on previous episodes, I think I've expressed myself enough, so I'll just kind of handed over to you and then we you know, we'll hear what you have to say. And then, well, you could be my sounding board or the converse.

>> Aaron: I have come to terms with my two years at Columbia when I was there, and this has nothing to do with the program. I was not a particularly happy person.

>> Brian: Circumstance.

>> Aaron: Yeah, and so I was. I was just really depressed. I got a good book out of that time. Well talk about in a second, but I what? I was really depressed and so apart from the others. I don't I don't blame the program at all for that. And as I look back on that time, I'm grateful for it, for a number of reasons that a poet like myself, who is so involved in past poetry, right? As much as I pushed myself to use living language, I had for years artificial archaisms that pop up in my addiction and in writing style and in my thoughts. And so I credit the two years at Columbia for finally purging those from my style.

>> Brian: That's when you conflated the two?

>> Aaron: Yes. And that's what they purify me. I had to everyday, to present poetry. Yeah, everyday. I mean every week I represent poetry, both professors and my fellow students who had no patience, who didn't have the same interests that I did and had no patience for any of those archaisms. And so I purged my own, through that process, the awareness and the sort of worry about it, I purged my style.

>> Brian: That's interesting because you know, they were flaws. That's at some point. I do feel like the MFA program holds on to that the canon and sort of those antiquated classics and stuff like that. But it sounds like it did the opposite.

>> Aaron: Yes, because I was coming in from the other direction where I was even more traditional than the traditional system in Columbia is a pretty radical in terms of its poetics. It's a pretty radical program. Forward looking. Yeah, and I'll tell you, we had the leader of the poetry program for years. There was a poet named Lucy Brock-Broido. Oh, whose work I admire a great deal. I find it very inspired whenever I get writer's block. I'll read her work so rich that it gets my juices flowing. But she and I didn't get along. We met each other and it was like it was an instant dislike. And she doesn't like that I was a formalist. She didn't like that I was a formalist, and at one point she even asked me not to write that way any longer. And I, you know, being a bad asks, you know, keep on just doing even more writing formal poems. And so I ended up doing workshops every semester with another poet from Richard Howard while I was there, whom I adore, Door and Lucy. Uh, sad to say. She passed away just six months after I left the program, and I've come to terms with that and come to terms with her work. And then I read her work now daily, and I wish that I had gotten to know her better. We hadn't had that misunderstanding.

>> Brian: Yeah, so you can see it is an interesting phenomenon to have to admire what someone's work so much that you didn't but and yet you didn't seem to get along.

>> Aaron: We didn't get along.

>> Brian: And I want to say it that my ambivalence about it The MFA program really comes more from an abstract understanding of Well, no, it's not. It's not really abstract. It's not personal because my experience at Sarah Lawrence was absolutely wonderful. I learned so much. I became so much of a better writer. But I can't help but think of MFA programs as somewhat of a Ponzi scheme, you know, because just as you said, we don't make money off our book sales. We we learnt we become these figures who have published books that people know about, and then we teach. And then that's how we make our money and blah blah, blah, blah, blah, you know? But yet it sounds like your experience was because when I came when I came in the MFA program, I was one of the few people who was really attuned to modern fiction, you know? I was all about contemporary fiction. I was like, I don't think it's ever been better. I think we are really... This just keeps progressing, you know, in all, and so many of my favorite books are modern works, you know? And so I came in and, like everyone's talking about, you know, everything like you 3:19... But David Foster Wallace, David Mitchell, Rachel Kushner. Relatively modern writers, you know, but yeah, I mean, again, the faculty was so incredible. It was such an incredible experience. But at the same time, yeah, there's a... We just added a speculative fiction element to the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence. And, you know, some people might scoff at that like, Oh, now it's going into genre or something like that. But just on an earlier podcast with Moses Utomi, I was talking about how much I admired that, because I do think that we need to adapt and it needs, You know, the way that the way that and and that's why I admire your work so much is because you are so rooted in the classics and yet you are translating that entirely to the contemporaneous, you know? So I think we agree that we both enjoyed our experiences there.

>> Aaron: Yes, financially, it was a hit and I think the rest of our lives But way had yeah, more time that passes, the more grateful I am for my time at Columbia. Yes, but I confess that I did get the MFA. I mean, I already published First Poetry book when Mr Either/Or was almost entirely done. I went there that I did do it. I went there. I mean, what would my reasons? I'll just be completely honest. I went there in order to get the credential so that I could teach creative writing and I'll be teaching creative writing at SUNY Purchase in the fall so that that turned out, I went there in order to network and make connections. And it's up in the air as to how much that's gonna benefit me or not, benefit me. And those are the two major reasons. But I was and I was arrogant and thinking that I had already developed my voice as a poet and I didn't need any more of that. And so I got even more than I bargained for in that my voice was purged of all these residual archaisms.

>> Brian: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, I want to turn to the more personal because you, you know, glancingly mentioned going through some shit while you're at Columbia. I'm just curious as to how you juggle this sort of introversion you feel or this or these. These are these stretches of dysphoria or what have you, you know, and how it factors into your writing and your life. Everything, like, how does this how does this influence your writing? How does the writing influence your how you're feeling in the world? So I guess, like to start like, let's talk about that when you started writing and like who you are and like how and how it's affected your trajectory, you know?

>> Aaron: Yes, when I was a freshman in college, I was reading I didn't I was actually went to college for guitar performance. Classical guitar performance and rock guitar performance.

>> Brian: I love it. All I did in college was smoke weed and play guitar.

>> Aaron: Yes, it was under grad school was so much fun. And then I was reading a humanities textbook and there were the opening lines of UNEP IQ poem in Latin called Virgil's and needed. I didn't know Latin, but I could just see on the page I could just see them on the page are more, um, (chants in Latin) I had a religious experience and I swear to God, I was sitting in one of the ivy covered English building I was reading this and the sky became brighter and oh, it became I'm supposed to be a poet like my life and I'm supposed to learn anything we could let it was just very clear. And then And so ever since then, I've just done that when they have been good times. And there have been bad times on and I have struggled with Yes, with depression, my fair amount, and I worry. I mean, I worry about this time I'm so caught up in my person, my mental health, not just because I want to be happy, right? That's a new thing. that I've started being happy lately. But I worry my mental health from my writing like, What's the optimal mindset for me to be writing m best.

>> Brian: A lot of writers are scared that if they're happy, they won't write well.

>> Aaron: When I'm depressed, I can't write. Yeah, like how I still push myself to write. But it's like the analogy used. It's like it's like I'm scraping the bottom of some metal container looking for something and there's nothing there. But I just keep doing it obsessively. It's not. It's not healthy. It's self indulgent. What I write itself is depressing.

>> Brian: It's more solipsistic. Yeah, I know what you mean when you and also just on a purely practical, In a purely practical sense, just having the energy to write is so much harder to muster when I'm depressed. I do think there is this fallacy out there floating, and I think it's dying though, this idea of the suffering starving artist or what have you. It's not to say that I don't think you can glean from that suffering. I think we all know that drama is based on conflict, right? But at the same time, I know from my own experience, when I'm feeling good, I can write better. That's it. It's a simple Is that simple? It's really I wish I could say something more eloquent, but there really isn't anything more eloquent to say, you know?

>> Aaron: Yes, the romantic that I call that the romantic view of the artist. The somewhat alienated Yeah, Melancholy. Yeah, the romantic person out of the artist needs to go. Uh, it's had its time.

>> Brian: Yes. Oh, I'm glad to hear you're doing better, though That's that's good. Do you think it has anything to do with, like, recent success, or do you think you've made personal strides in a you know, spiritual sense removed from the pages.

>> Aaron: I realized what I need in order to be happy. I need to be in New York, and I need to have an active social life. When I'm miserable, I isolate myself and just try to write all the time and read all the time.

>> Brian: Yeah. Oh, and I'm right suffer from that.

>> Aaron: Yeah, but what makes me happy when I think Look back on my life those times when I've been happy have been those times when I've had friends and a social network and went out in the evening. And now I balance it and I try to write all day and then as soon as six hits human tonight back a bottle of prosecco party and that.

>> Brian: Shit we waited till seven.

>> Aaron: I know, I know. I think I'll be okay. And that that's worked pretty well for me so far. Yeah, I mean, lately. So I'll try to keep that up the balance of riding because I what? Otherwise I would try to write all the time, and I would just became less and less efficient.

>> Brian: And there's nothing to write about at that point. I mean, we're creatures of observation, and we need we need the data or else we can't. There's nothing to express, right?

>> Aaron: A living language. Yeah, years idioms.

>> Brian: And, uh, we're pretty close. I'm thinking we can close off with another reading. Does that sound good to you?

>> Aaron: Yes, I will find it. I'll end with this so fast. Devastating losses poem American Oh, Cyrus is my new It's my new favorite poem to recite their I mean, I'm I love all. I wouldn't try to publish a poem if I didn't love it.

>> Brian: That's a good tenet.

>> Aaron: There are some poems for which there is something for which you are grateful where you just feel like you were given it. Oh, I was given this by saying Thank you and I get and I get to sign my name to it.

>> Brian: I totally know what you're talking about. When you're in that zone, it's like it doesn't feel like I'm the one doing it right. It feels like it's coming from some super mundane force.

>> Aaron: I wish it was like that all the time. No, but usually it's a lot of work. (laughter) This poem's called American Osiris, and it's in a book my book American Divine, which is an attempt to bring old style religious feelings polytheistic religious ideas to contemporary America. It's called American Osiris, I should explain the opening comes from a child. A children's game I saw my niece is playing was a zombie game like tag. They say Dead Man, Dead Man come alive on the count of number 512345 And then whoever's it is this I'll be in gets up.

>> Brian: I'm terrified. We just We just watched a ah documentary on these two girls who stabbed their friend over Slenderman and creepypasta. I don't want to talk about it.

>> Aaron: American Osiris

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Check out Aaron’s writing here. 

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>> Brian: Beautiful.

>> Aaron: Thank you.

>> Brian: Beautiful. My God, I think I need you to read my audiobook.

>> Aaron: Well, are you looking for someone to read your audiobook?

>> Brian: Now I am.

>> Aaron: I'd be happy to do it.

>> Brian: Okay, That's it for today's episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and review on whichever platform you're listening. You can get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram at @AnimalRiotPress or through our website animalriotpress.com. This has been the 29th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast with me, your host, Brian Birnbaum, and featuring Aaron Poochigian and we're produced by Katie Rainey, without whom we would merely be two of Shakespeare's 1000 monkeys banging on a typewriter.