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madoreable.com / 2009
preface
 
The following interview was conducted between9:11PM and 4:49AM AST on 2/3 October 2009.If there's anything you want, come onback 'cuz it's all still here.Set in Futura.
madoreable.com / 2009
 
P. H. Madore
: I want to know this: are you from New England? Besides the distinct lack of jobs and hard winters, why on earth would you leave the motherland? This is fromsomeone who'll probably never go back unless his dad gives him the house, of course, butall the same, I like the idea of people staying in New England, I like the idea of there beingpeople there, or something.
Heather Christle
: I am from New England. I was born in Huggins Hospital, in Wolfeboro,New Hampshire. For the first five years of my life I lived in Alton, the town next toWolfeboro. Then we moved to Wolfeboro. Then I went to college in Eastern Mass. Then Ilived in New York City. Then I went to grad school in Western Mass. Now I live in Atlanta.It seems that part of being a poet who makes money by teaching means that I will bemoving around a lot for a while, but I also like the idea of people being and staying inNew England. I think New England has superior yard sales. I would like to be old in NewEngland. I have known some very excellent, well-dressed ladies who were old in NewEngland, and would not mind taking after them. The superior yard sales will help.
PHM
: I always forget about New Hampshire. How relevant do you think poetry is tomodern society? There's certainly more of it than ever. The popular thing to do right now iscurate things, to find the best and give it to an audience. I know that I can't even give away
little white poetry journal
, and that's got some of the best poets working today in it. Do youthink the glory days of poetry have already passed (and when) or are they yet to come?Say something crude and amazing about poetry that no one has said before.
HC
: I don't really know what "modern society" means, so it's difficult for me to make anyreal pronouncements about poetry's relevance to it. Must we be relevant? I'd rather be fun.(Of course, I mean "fun" in a kind of broad way.)Really though, yes, of course poetry is relevant. And yes, there is an awful lot of it,and an awful lot of it is appalling. But there are people who are out there performing thesegreat dirty miracles with words. I mean, we live with language and we treat language sopoorly. We hardly ever get intimate and physical with it like we did when we were babieslearning. So I think that poetry makes language available to us again, so we get to fall inlove with it again and to understand how weird it is. Poetry makes you want to fuck your spouse a whole new way."Glory days" are kind of impossible to think about. If they are over then I am stillgoing to be making poems. If they are not over then I am still going to be making poems. Iknow that I feel very excited about the people I know who are writing.Maybe a problem exists with distribution and perception. If people who are likingthe Dirty Projectors turn on the radio and hear Garrison Keillor reading a poem on theWriter's Almanac, nothing happens except a sad confirmation of the perceived dullness of poetry. And if people who dig the Writer's Almanac turn up at a Natalie Lyalin reading,madoreable.com / 2009
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