WORD People

WORD Places

WORD Things

Free WORD

WORD Anti-Socials and
Anti-Salons

ICBWB

Backtalk WORD

WORD on Frank Montesonti, Poet

It is another Sunday in San Diego and Frank Montesonti stands on a pier at Pacific Beach. Seagulls circle overhead, but he doesn't notice, because he is rearranging words in his head.

You see, Frank is a poet. A real live poet who can actually say it is what he does for a living! At 29, Frank Montesonti is the lead Faculty for National University's MFA Creative Writing Program. Not only that, he has his first chapbook A Civic Pageant set to be released this fall from Black Lawrence Press. Montesonti received his MFA from University of Arizona. WORDsd had a few questions for him about writing, the San Diego writing scene and his new publication.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
Back when I was a teenager, all I wanted to do was own a boat and sail around the world.  I don’t think anyone ever explained to me that wasn’t a career.

What do you want to be now?
The author of at least one significant book of poetry.

How did you become interested in poetry?
I first came to poetry as a troubled adolescent.  Like many, when I put my emotions down on paper they somehow became easier to manage.

What is your earliest memory?
I have a notoriously poor recollection of my distant past.  I recall my mother coming home with my baby sister, which would be around when I was four.  I’m sure there are memories before that time, but I have no recollection of how old I was.

Has the SD writing community or life in Paradise, in general, been more conducive to you as a writer & how?
Landscape has always been a part of my work.  I write a lot about the bleak, sterile, strange suburban landscape of the Midwest where I grew up.  When I first moved out to San Diego, I became very nostalgic about the weather, especially snow.  Now I find the beach in many of my poems.

How do you think San Diego can increase its awareness of the value of poetry to the arts community as a whole?
Actually, I think we do a pretty good job.  I do think each university that has a writing program should talk to the others a little more, let them know of events.

What are your favorite San Diego writers’ hang-outs? Favorite on-line writing sites?
My friend, the poet James Meetze, has started a nice reading series at the Agitprop Gallery in North Park.  Readings are usually on Saturday nights.  Other than that, sometimes you’ll find me at the Nite Owl Cocktail lounge.

What sets apart National University's MFA program from others?
The program is completely online, which is the main thing that separates the program from others.  But the thing I like the most is the incredible diversity of our student body.  In one of our workshops we might have a helicopter pilot in Iraq, a retired scientist, a schoolteacher in Guam and a state assembly person from Arkansas.  The diversity of life experience makes for really interesting writing.

Do you think there are advantages to an online writing workshop as opposed to one that is in the classroom?
I like that in an online writing workshop the writer is guaranteed feedback from every student in the class.  Nobody sits silently in the back of the class.  I also like how much thought and consideration the students put into their written assignments.

What advice would you give aspiring writers?
Read, read, read.  Listen to everyone’s voice.  Be careful about adopting reactionary stances before you have examined them.  Play “the believing game,” and never question your artistic impulses because you feel they may not be “publishable.”

What inspired the title "A Civic Pageant" for this collection?
My girlfriend was sitting on my couch reading Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (one of my favorite books) and came across the phrase.  She remarked that it would make a good title for a poem.  I wrote it down and started thinking about how it opened up themes in the book.  The book is not only about the thin pageantry of constructing a life, but also about the varied civilities we use to keep ourselves sane.

When I read the poem "Redundancy of Light," I noticed you manage to recreate for the reader the heaviness one feels when they are truly alone and feel like their voice is not heard. What image created the beginning of this poem?
I was in a motel in nowhere southern Indiana around dusk and it was winter and raining.  I was looking at how the raindrops on the window cast shadows in the light, and I couldn’t think of an elegant way to render the image in words.  This started me thinking on the poverty of language.  I think it was that initial sense of distance that set the tone for the poem.

The poems in the chapbook are strung together with imagery like baroque pearls, each shaped slightly different. How do you manage to cohere these images to create such unified poems?
FM – I do like to write in self-contained fragments, “pearls,” as you call them.  To connect them, I have to put a lot of trust in the reader’s associative sense and my own.  I hope they make sense, but I’m not sure if they always “cohere.”  That’s an interesting word.  It imagines we have some consensus about what a poem can/should do.  I like to walk the edge of that imagined consensus between the reader and the writer.  At times, I try to move to a somewhat unfamiliar place where the reader is left searching for ways to create sense.  Finding new ways of moving through a poem is a productive space of discovery.

How do you approach revision in your poetry?
I’m a banker.  I store interesting gems.  In revision, I go into the vault and hold the gems up to the subject, tone or form of the poem and see if it speaks to that poem.  If it does, I add it to the poem and see what the poem becomes.  This is a process of composition and revision.  It’s quite time consuming.

Do you collect anything?
No, in fact, I’m against collecting anything.  I see it as the worst kind of capitalist fetishism – defining ourselves by the things we acquire.  When I see news stories of some guy in Pawtucket who collected fifty thousand ash trays, I get so bored I could scream.

Science is a recurring theme in your poetry. What is it about science that draws you to write about it?
I like reading about science.  I don’t do it for poetry, but a poem often results.  I think reading science helps me move back from my subject matter to see things conceptually.

If you could be an animal what would you be & why?
A puma or a hawk – or maybe some sort of chimera of the two.

Who are some poets who have influenced you. In what way have they affected the way you write poetry?
Whew… That’s too hard to answer.  I’ll just say that every poet I read shows me a new way of opening up the possibilities of language.

>>Back to top<<