ANTLER
INTERVIEWED BY PORCUPINE
Porcupine: As we sit here along the
Antler: It's important to me in that it's always flowing. Coming here
regularly is one of the only things that makes it
possible for me to live in
In winter I like being able to cross over to the other side, experience walking
on the ice and lying on the ice... and in summer, with all the birds - I come
because I love birds. I've been writing poems that have to do with the river
ever since I started living here. So it is something that entered my poetry
early on, and became a part of my life. I have snapping turtle experiences, big
snapping turtles. And I saw a snake right down there a couple of days ago. I
don't see snakes as much anymore.
Porcupine: Is there a divide that surfaces in
your poetry between the river, what it represents as a sanctuary for you, and
the rest of
Antler: Yeah - and I like that word sanctuary a lot, it seems like a key
word. When I first moved here, the rest of
Porcupine: Watching the river, seeing that blue heron land, I somehow
feel restored. It's like a refuge here. But I wonder what it says about one's
ability to appreciate the realities of the city. Do you think you could be a
poet in, say, downtown
Antler: Sure. I think you would see the human drama, and the skyscrapers
standing in long streets like endless Jehovahs, as
Ginsberg says... confirming the human tribe and its domain among millions of
people. Both worlds exist. I like the river, but I don't reject the human
tribe. I don't think it's a black and white thing, the natural world being just
this river escape.
All we know for sure is
all places that exist
were once one place.
All we know for certain is
all the beings that exist
or will exist
or have existed
were originally all together
in an infinitesimal dot.
All we can know for sure is
if humans went from dugout canoes
to spaceships to the Moon
in 10,000 years,
in 10,000 years humans can go from
spaceships to the Moon
to Moons made into spaceships
traveling to other galaxies.
- from "Know for Sure"
Porcupine: When you go on your two-month wilderness sabbaticals, what
is it you discover? What do you recover?
Antler: I get in touch with my earlier selves: my grade
school self, my baby self, early and late boyhood, early youth, later
youth, young manhood. All the various chapters become one. Then I can replay
the tapes of my life without any interruption, and review what happened on the
playground in fifth grade that one day. I recall all the teachers I once had,
all the people I knew and loved, and what happened to them. After the tapes are
played out and the memories reviewed, then silence and the sense of going
beyond myself - especially when juxtaposed against huge vistas of old growth
forest without human beings in sight, and the endless Milky Way scintillating
above.
Porcupine: Why come back at all?
Antler: That's what I always ask myself. But in some way, one never
returns. And what one becomes by the end of an extended stay remains there. Later
on, growing older, you return to those places and reconnect with your more
youthful apparition. You pal around with that youthful spirit and it re-enters
you. So you do come back, but something else doesn't. In a way you have
incarnated where you were, and that returns with you and is part of you. I can
say that I am in
Porcupine: So the depth of experience while you were away creates a
reservoir for you to draw on with your poetry.
Antler: Yeah. Because in a way, you're risking your
life - especially going off by yourself. Once you risk your life and
there are bears around, there's a different aspect of commitment toward poetry.
If you must die to do it, you will. And you risk everything: poverty, scorn,
madness, disillusionment, alienation. It's all at risk to ultimately embrace
what the spirit of poetry is.
Porcupine: You're describing the wilderness poet.
Antler: Maybe any poet at any time. But there's something magical about
going off away from people, sensing your self, your
desires and history, seeing yourself as a tiny little speck surrounded by trees
that were around before Christ was sucking his mother's breast.
Porcupine: When you're walking through a forest and gazing up at
treetops, can you simultaneously be noting ideas or lines for poems? Or do you
have to take in your experiences purely, without thought?
Antler: Sometimes I get ideas and write them down in my notebook, or poems
will come to me finalized in a single moment of delight.
Save as feeling if they don't know of me or the stars
what do I not know of
that's looking
through me
at something far grander
than itself...
- from "Save as an Idea"
But often there is no thought. I become an animal spirit
wandering endless forests, gazing out at sublime non-human vistas. Somehow the
wordless realm of no-thought takes over and my identity as a poet is lost, my
memories of myself are lost, everything is lost, and as Emerson says about the
eyeball...
Porcupine: I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all...
Antler: Yeah, I become transparent in that way. Part of it is embracing
myself, and being content with wordlessness.
Porcupine: So if a poet is jotting down lines while in the midst of the
poetic experience, does that take away from the depth of their experience?
Antler: Some might say you're robbing yourself of the cosmic moment by
trying to capture it, and maybe emotion recollected in tranquility, as
Wordsworth said, is a better way to go, and not go out expecting or demanding
anything. But I don't think one way is necessarily right and the other is
wrong. Some people do best in crowded cafes, observing other people with an
endless cup of coffee. And for others that's totally foreign, they have to be
alone with no interruptions.
Porcupine: Where does your dreaming inner voice arise
from - the voice that wonders about frozen bubbles and amoebas swimming on your
eyes. Is it a childlike voice?
Antler: I hope it is. It seems one of the difficulties is that a lot of
people have their child wonder-essence lobotomized. They grow up to be
responsible adults but never reconnect with that wonder again. Maybe it's just
openness toward a visionary experience that goes beyond knowing what's true and
not true anymore, and just being in awe of aspects of the natural world that
have never occurred to you before.
Porcupine: What books influenced you as a child?
Antler: The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland,
Peter Pan. Those had a big effect on me. They beckoned a fantasy realm
which was and still is a part of my feelings. Later, Leaves of Grass would be a
major book in my life - there was this vision of love and death and nature that
was truer than what I found in the Old and New Testaments, or other sacred
texts of human-centered spiritual traditions. It seemed Whitman's vision was
more complete, more passionate, more understanding and celebratory of human
reality, the reality of the Eros energy and the human promise. I didn't have
any friends, but you can read Leaves of Grass and Whitman can become your
friend. He actually has lines which suggest it's something that can happen. So
there's a kind of seance effect that takes place, and
then the spirit of Walt Whitman walks by your side, protecting you, and you
have fun taking Leaves of Grass along - that's your pal, you have fun with
Leaves of Grass!
Porcupine: Maybe you're Walt Whitman reincarnated.
Antler: I don't think so - although on some level I may be. I think it's
more complex than that. The spirit and the energy Whitman put forth was
absorbed by thousands of poets and spiritual seekers who then had the awareness
that he embraced inside himself. I don't think any one person can be an
incarnation of Walt Whitman.
Porcupine: How did your friendship with Allen Ginsberg shape your view
of poets and poetry?
Antler: One of the main things he represented for me was complete
courage to trust who I was without fear, and to write poetry with complete
candor and openness. He criticized society's injustice and intolerance, and did
so with compassion, tenderness, hopefulness, and humor. He had something to
replace it, or balance it with. Endless encouragement of younger poets was also
a big part of his mission.
Porcupine: Do you have a sense of yourself maturing as a poet?
Antler: I hope so, and I believe in that. I think there's a poet you can
be in love with, a thought you can move through as your sensitivities change
during metamorphosis from childhood through adolescence, and through the
various stages of adulthood. As one matures, one's work goes to different
levels. Some people think poets are better in their younger phases than in
their older phases - like, say, Whitman, Wordsworth, and Swinburne. I never
felt that way.
Porcupine: Would you still be a poet if, after today, you could write no
more words?
Antler: Yes. The definition of poetry on one level in our society is
that you write things down on paper and get them into print, which proves to
others in your tribe that you are a poet. But that's just step one. Your book
then has to receive positive reviews, then another book must be coming, and you
have to keep cranking out books until you're a corpse. That seems to certify
you as a poet, but endless ages unfold, review what you've done, and make their
own judgements. There are poets today who we think
are the greatest on Earth, but who we might have nothing to do with three
hundred years from now. And in ten thousand years everything is dust. So on a
huge time-frame, all that we do ends up obliterated,
the Earth ends up being swallowed by the sun and the sun cools.
But I find, especially in early adolescence, there is something very poetic
that boys and girls don't even know they have. Some people write poetry when
they are young, but go on to other things and stop writing. And yet, because
they touched base with it once, it's always a part of their story. I don't
think there's anything to be afraid of - the spirit and feeling of it is more
important than its publication.
Before there were books and literary magazines, the spirit of poetry existed,
and the pulse of the connection with the Big Mystery was felt and experienced,
and the tender realization of mortality was present. The fact that Neanderthals
buried their dead with flowers sixty thousand years before Christ is very
affirming and reaffirming of human beauty and soulfulness.
Porcupine: It is there, early in our lives and in the small moments,
that our vision begins.
What must it be like for fish
watching ice form
on the surface of their lake
Or looking up at fish
frozen in ice above them
and feeling the water
Thickening around them
till they too
can't move
But are still alive
looking up seeing
falling snow
Slowly cover the ice
till darkness
engulfs their realm...
- from "Looking Up at the Milky Way Thought"
Antler: It's a beautiful thing when a young person decides to give
their heart to poetry and follow it as a spiritual path - to be infatuated with
it the same way as your first love experience with another person, whether it
works out or not.
Porcupine: ...when one creates a relationship with poetry, and trusts in
where that voice will lead.
Antler: That's beautiful - to trust in it and have faith in it. To
believe in a soul that began before your birth and continues after your death.
And knowing it's just a start.
Doting on Summer Snowflake Shadows
Cut-out
paper snowflakes
taped to windows
in winter
left up
year-round
Cast shadows
of their shapes
on walls
and ceiling
And the shadows
of their shapes
move
as the sun moves
Slowly
as I lounge
on a couch
drinking iced tea
Admiring them
and their shadows
this 100 degree
July afternoon.
Reproduced here with permission from www.porcupineliteraryarts.com.