ISSUE 19: Spring 2025

THE HEARTWOOD INTERVIEWS: FEATURED WRITER SERIES

AN INTERVIEW WITH Gaylord Brewer

CONDUCTED BY LARRY THACKER, INTERVIEWS EDITOR

LT: If you woke up and weren’t allowed to write for the rest of your life – by some life or death forced measure – what would you fill that life work with? How would you immediately cope? 

GB: At this point in my life I think I’d be alright with it. I’m approaching the end of my teaching career—another year, maybe—and I’m looking forward to returning to sketching and painting, sculpting more of the small and grotesque clay heads I began in Spain in 2009, maybe even playing with some cartoons. (Am I at least allowed to write the captions? And to type up a recipe now and then, please?)

What’s a collection or theme of poetry (or another genre), the completion of which has so far eluded you? What do you believe is happening with that? 

I’ve done a lot of extended series of poems—sometimes arranged around a character or unifying conceit, sometimes by restrictions of form—and let’s just say that some were more successful than others and leave it at that. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Or, maybe, between the thought and the deed falls the…well, you know… falls the banality! And maybe notes for a novel of two I’m terrified to ever start—good news for the reader, as she will never be subjected to them.

If we, as poets, tend to write the same poems over and over. What would be your top five reoccurring leitmotifs? Can you give a little background for each?

Please don’t be shy asking the tough and complicated questions. Let’s see. Jim Harrison listed his obsessions as: the road; hunting, fishing, and dogs; private religion; nature; alcohol; stripping; France. I don’t hunt, so condense that to exclusively dogs. “Nature” would contain a good amount of bird geeking. “Private religion” is ambiguous enough to be malleable. “Stripping,” I’m unclear about, although I do like my privacy. Otherwise, a hard list to improve upon, although why Mr. Harrison omitted “food,” gourmand that he was, I don’t know. Maybe it was generally and broadly subsumed under “alcohol”? As to background, vide the various books. I’ve been jabbering on for decades about my handful of preoccupations.

We writers write to sometimes figure ourselves out, to pinpoint our place in the world. In our regular self-questioning and possible catharsis, can you tell us whether you regularly end up with more questions than answers, or are finding more and more healing as the writing progresses? Do you write to figure out more about yourself or the world?  

I believe I’m aware of all the usual theories and propositions—gradually “writing” oneself into one’s own spiritual/psychic completion, et cetera—and some are more appealing than others. “Healing” I’m wary of, as it always suggests writing diminished to some sort of self therapy. I don’t think about it much. By design I don’t think about it, if you know what I mean. I’m old enough that I have little interest in my own exquisite emotions, any extended inquisition of the “self,” and so on. I’m more focused on surprising and entertaining myself, and, with luck, the errant reader.

If the influential DNA of other writers can be teased out from your work, who would we find in there? 

Ha. Good try, but I’m famously uncommunicative and happily paranoid on this topic. I recall an early, generous book review where the reviewer noted that he couldn’t tell who my influences were. I took that a great compliment.

How important does the concept of human insignificance, or smallness within the world, play in your poetry? For example, I’m specifically recalling ideas from two poems: “Field Guide for the Disconsolate” and “Merely, In an Unforeseen Moment”. 

I don’t recall the specifics of those two poems off-hand, but, yes, your question anticipates a ready answer. A world in which we as a species held less sense of self-importance and more responsibility for incredibly destructive behavior is a pleasant world of which to daydream.

Especially with your 2020 collection WORSHIP THE PIG, you move from poem to poem with an eased use of couplets, tercets, quatrains, the mixed long and short line, and step indents. Some poets enjoy the wide craft variance, others not so much. Thoughts? 

I wouldn’t categorize myself someone who necessarily enjoys “a wide craft variance,” mostly due to my own limitations, but it’s nice to think that a few tools have accumulated in the box. Thank you for probably giving me more credit than I deserve.

You relinquish our control over the world, yet occasionally go “down the rabbit hole” (juego de palabras!), such as with the poem “Blessed Is the Lover of Animals,” when, after finding the bloody remains of a baby rabbit on the porch and feeling guilty and responsible at the deepest levels, the speaker questions their “[enticing] the monsters,” and buying the “damn house in the first place” or indulging “in bourgeois/notions, a softness that gets others killed”. What will get you as a writer to venture down such a beautifully complicated and layered path?  

I recall that morning. Gruesome business, and I was part of it. You walk across the lawn, you’re responsible for a thousand deaths. The only ways out of culpability are denial or ignorance, and, of course, neither is actually a way out.

What’s one thing about yourself that gets in the way of your writing? Oppositely, what one or two things about yourself that make you the ideal streamlined animal for the shamanic taskings of poetry?

I write in fits and starts and don’t worry about long periods of silence. Weeks, months, even the occasional year. However, when I choose to be I’m disciplined and feel no compunction being selfish with my time and attention. Stretches of poor writing are more troublesome, but that comes with the process. Muscle on through and keep going.

Now for the question established writers can sometimes dread, but I consider an essential question, so let’s ask it a little differently. How might the advice you offer a beginning writer and a seasoned writer differ? 

That is a different way of asking. I suspect a trap! First off, I’m not one to go around giving advice. “If you ain’t got in you, you can’t blow it out.” Right? Louis Armstrong. Theoretically, the whole “writer’s craft” conceit just doesn’t appeal. How many writers that you admire—or worse, friends you’re deeply fond of—have you seen contribute ponderous “craft” essays to the writer magazines. It’s painful to witness. But to answer your question: Surely no experienced writer wants my imput. To the beginner, just the basics: Be greedy with your time and privacy. Avoid writing groups. Avoid any perception of trends. Take the work seriously, yourself not so much. Write from the heart. Thrive on rejection. Lastly, try your best not to take any shit off anybody. Actually, toss in a good dog and some quality food and drink and travel, and that list serves double duty as my “life advice.”