“Get Your Ass in the Chair”: An Interview with Gaylord Brewer

“Listen to the poem. If it wants to go off-road, let it. The subconscious makes all kinds of leaps and connections. Let it do its work.”

Gaylord Brewer has published 1100+ poems and proses pieces in journals and anthologies such as The Southern Review, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, and Best American Poetry. The most recent of his 17 books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and cookery is a collection of brief nonfiction, Before the Storm Takes It Away (Red Hen, 2024). He was awarded a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship in 2009 and has been a professor at Middle Tennessee State University for more than three decades.

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I’ve seen that you mainly write poetry, but you also write some prose. So, I was wondering if you preferred to write in one genre over another.

Poetry is the heavy end of it. However, as I’ve gotten older, I notice that — without being too methodical — I’ve been alternating genres. I wrote a short novel, supposedly a comic novel, and then I wrote another book of poems. Then I wrote a cookbook, another book of poems, and released a collection of short nonfiction just a couple months ago. Presumably, my next release will be another book of poems because it’s already finished and won a little prize. After that, who knows?

Wow! That’s awesome! My next question is, how do you know which genre to use to tell a story?

My poems generally have a narrative thrust to them. There are also lyrics, of course, but there’s typically some storytelling going on. Meanwhile, these new nonfiction prose pieces are all over the board in terms of tone, content, approach. They’re short. The book contains 120 essays and are narrative driven, although again not all. Some are more meditative. Two of the essays in the new book were originally verse — stories about my father that I thought were engaging. As poems they never quite worked, so I retooled them as, I believe, more successful short essays. All of which by way of saying I’m dodging your question. The choice of genre is intuitive. I wouldn’t advise anyone to get too hung up on it. Some fluidity is useful and can surprise and invigorate.

I know that you mainly write poetry, but I’ll be honest. I haven’t dabbled much with it. Obviously, I’ve read poetry and taken literature classes where I’ve had to analyze it, but I find poetry to be scary because it seems like so much goes on within just a few words. My question is, how do you get better at writing poetry?

When I teach the multi-genre workshop … I don’t want to over-generalize, but it does seem that students bring more apprehension and stark terror to the table when we do the poetry unit. I don’t know why. Maybe some mistaken preconceptions. Perhaps that analysis you’re doing in other classes is causing a problem. Young writers seem to have less anxiety regarding the short story and the play, so perhaps that genre fluidity I mentioned a moment ago can also help. The economy of language in poems may cause some stress. There’s not anywhere to hide, and if in addition one brings in a notion of the necessity of some sort of elevated wisdom or similar nonsnese, then, yeah, that could tighten anybody up.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds writing poetry unnerving. Okay, now once you have an idea in your mind that you’re set to write about, how do you begin translating the story from your mind to paper?

It’s a process. Set up a schedule. Get your ass in the chair. Write the words down. No one except you has to see them then or ever. Listen. Pay attention. Let the piece leap and surprise you. Take your time. Lower your standards for the day if it helps. Do anything that helps. If it doesn’t help, dump it. Be bold. Don’t fret over meaning. Fret over music. You should always, always strive for your poems to be smarter than you are. The other way around, you’re setting up many unnecessary obstacles for yourself.

You make it sound much easier than the writing process is! I have much less writing experience than you do, but I hope to have an easier time writing. In the meantime, I want to focus more on a story and how it comes to you. How does the story arrive in your mind and when can you start translating it into words?

I’ve been writing poems for a long time. I don’t want to get too preemptive, but I think when I sit down I have a reasonably good sense early on whether the conceit has a chance of successful fruition. When I was younger, I’d write a poem about anything. If I saw an empty beer bottle rolling down the street, I’d rush home and write a poem about it. Everything’s fair game, but I’m a little more selective now about what constitutes material worth my time, and that’s regardless of the tone being dead serious or more whimsical. As I said: Listen to the poem. If it wants to go off-road, let it. The subconscious makes all kinds of leaps and connections. Let it do its work. Allow me to stress again, because it’s important: Don’t worry about meaning. Meaning tends to take care of itself. Strive to write freshly and energetically. Regarding storytelling, keep things lean and propulsive and the language charged. Don’t explain, and always go in fear of “deep thoughts.” As to that rolling beer bottle — it’s all yours. My gift to you. Knock yourself out.

Yes, you want to keep readers engaged, and you don’t want them to be disconnected from the story.

A smart reader will tend to be way ahead of you, too, so don’t overwrite.

That’s a good thing to consider, too. In my playwriting class, I learned that I don’t need as much as I think I do when I’m writing. I’m excited to write in different genres and learn the artistry of creating stories not just through plays but also in short fiction.

When I was a kid, I wrote in all kinds of genres, all badly. I gave up and committed to poetry. Now I’m trying different things again, but I used to have the damnedest time in my short stories. Have you written stories?

No, not any quality ones. I plan on writing some soon, though!

Here’s what happened to me. I’m not kidding. I couldn’t get my characters out of bed, showered, dressed, in and out of rooms, et cetera. It would go something like this: “Joe reached for the door. He lowered his arthritic hand toward the knob. He turned the knob counterclockwise, opened the door partly, then fully, then stepped through and walked slowly down the hallway.” I had paragraphs of that kind of shit. I thought I was being detailed and patient. Three pages to get the guy into his frigging car, another five to finally get him to the party. Dreadful. It took me far too long to understand that you didn’t need any of it. “‘You son of a bitch,’ his ex said, tossing her third Manhattan in his face.” The story has begun! Yay! What a revelation. See, Nick, I just spared you twenty years of bad writing.

Yeah, Dr. Barnett was always harping on her students not to overwrite and not include unnecessary stage directions, and I think that parallels a lot with the other genres. With writing in general, what would you say is the most challenging part?

The most challenging part does not involve writing. It’s becoming selfish enough to steal time from other commitments. Just sitting down and making time to write. Folks will endlessly try to use your time for you, and you must tell them “no.” Actually, don’t tell them anything. Just don’t answer the phone. Delete their tedious emails. Distractions are easy and multifarious. Your life is your own to waste as you so choose. To sit quietly and patiently with yourself and your ghosts.

Once you sit down, how do you really get in the zone to write well?

Well, you need to be attentive to the physical and mental parameters of taking care of yourself, understanding practical things your body and mind need to have the best chance to produce the best work. You can’t be too hungover. Comparisons to the athlete are a stretch but not without merit. It’s also useful to have something to start with, which is one reason I like to write long poem series. I call them “serial poems” to make them sound more dangerous. For example, one summer I wrote a bunch of poems about exhausted metaphors, the goal being to take the clichéd tropes of the metaphor and reanimate them. “Okay, I need a cliché this morning to work with.” I’m not just droning on about my exquisite pain or what a horse’s ass I was the previous night or any of that tedious stuff that you usually just need to work through anyway to get going.

Absolutely. I didn’t even really think about how difficult it is just to sit down and write. It sounds so easy, but it’s not. Honestly, I struggled with that in my playwriting class, too. I was excited to write, but I had a difficult time finding something inspiring to write about. Maybe it could be because I’m an inexperienced writer and still learning to see characters and plant them in my head. Oddly enough, I found that I was writing my best work super late into the night — midnight or 1:00. I could have felt I was writing my best at that time, perhaps because of the prompt. I loved the prompt, and I felt inspired to write about it. The first two prompts were less specific, so they intimidated me more.

I like a good prompt, and I’m a big fan of arbitrary rules and their distraction. I won’t confess some of the silly contortions I sometimes impose on myself when writing. You’d think I was nutty.

Depending on your writing project, I’m sure you conduct research to some extent. Do you find research to be an important factor in writing your pieces?

It depends, and let’s not be coy about this: If you need to know something these days, you just google the damn thing. Even so, there’s some serendipity involved. You might not know what you need to know. One thing leads to another, and that other thing might lead somewhere unexpected.

Honestly, that’s my experience with Google, which is why I love it so much! My final question is, how has teaching impacted your writing or your understanding of writing?

The old chestnut. I don’t believe teaching has profoundly impacted my writing. Except, of course — and this is not to be underestimated — that the job is very congenial in giving one a lot of free time, which is essential. It also doesn’t knock you out physically so you can’t think. And contrary to common opinion, I haven’t found the academic environment damaging. It’s never significantly defined me. I’m probably deluding myself so that I can continue this cushy life without self-hindrance.

I don’t have any other questions planned, but I would love it if you could share any final comments.

Okay. Something inspiring rather than cynical? Just remember that publishing can be fun, but it’s essentially a hobby, akin to, say, stamp collecting. The buzz and the bolt and the power and the glory, meanwhile, are all in the writing, that impulse to create something dynamic and dramatic that arose from your first breath, to begin again and fail again, the audacity of claiming and announcing those words that are distinctly and uniquely yours. You want to sound your “barbaric yawp” over the rooftops? Do it, and do it now! Cornball? Sure. But the time does not return. And what better use of one’s short and precious and irreplaceable life? Good luck to you and thank you for your thoughtful questions.

Nicholas Perrone is a junior at MTSU pursuing degrees in Political Science and Economics with a minor in Writing. He is also the intern for the Fall 2024 In-Process Series.