Each imaginary arrow by Scott Ferry
impspired press, 2023
Cynthia Atkins: Each imaginary arrow is a powerhouse of a book. Congratulations on its publication bringing it into the world. You explore the depths of family, faith, and relationships to the self in a way that is evocative and raw and honest. These poems are the primal screams of life, the vulnerabilities, the fears, and the direct intention to face god and faith in a very commercial world. Your voice is authentic, unquenchable, and hauntingly sincere. This is a beautiful book. Let’s deconstruct and hear about its lineage.
I am always struck by the power and depth of your poems, and how there is a raw sense of honesty and candor, and the reader feels as though we are witnessing interior thoughts and epiphanies. Can you speak to the concepts and themes that were at the core of each imaginary arrow, and how the title relates to these themes?
Scott Ferry: First of all, thank you, Cynthia, for agreeing to interview me! I am really thrilled by your work and have been a fan for years. Plus, I think we speak a similar language.
As for the question, it’s strange that I have not really thought about what holds this book together thematically. I can think it is about a loss and regaining of faith, a connection between us via our common angels and demons, via our shared alienation. This seems like a contradiction, but it is not. Many times, in my darkest times of feeling I do not belong on this planet with all of this horror and ignorance and cruelty, I will read a poem from one of my friends, and it will reel me back in because I realize they are there too. I examine my status as a sentient being, although fragmented, and my link to the imperfect divine. As a father, I am always seeing the world through my children’s eyes, and a fair amount of poems come from the decisions we all make and the lessons we all receive through the daily obstacles and joys. The title has to do with pulling the traumas out of our bodies and realizing they are no longer traumas but stories.
CA: In the poem “there is only me and a demon television,” I was captivated by the way the poem works on positive and negatives, cancelled lines, crossed out, but still visible, and how the poem reads with the subliminal text, there but not. Can you speak to how this poem came to you, and how the form and the content relate?
SF: This one was a late entry into the book and came mostly with my work with the California poet Daniel McGinn (who is really fabulous). We have a poetry collaboration coming out from Meat For Tea Press in early 2024 called Fill Me with Birds. Daniel introduced me to erasure poems and even said we should do half our book in erasure from the poems we had written, which was a really amazing idea had I been good at writing them. Ha! But he writes some great ones, and I began thinking of just writing in a visible voice and an invisible one, which is still actually visible. Or saying a sentence out loud and then whispering the next. I actually think the concept could be expanded, but this is what I came up with. The uncrossed lines are what is apparent about myself, the crossed lines are what I have hidden, or swallowed. Light / shadow. Again, I think the concept has more potential than this, and I may revisit it in future pieces. I think most poetry is a murmured voice under the seen.
CA: In the prologue of the book, you speak to the subjects of god and self and the use of the lowercase and how you delineate the use of these entities. Would you speak to these lines in relation to the paradigm of faith in your life, family and poems and poems?
to my wife and her honey arms as big as god
to the god children believe in / to the hole
to the waving grassesto the person i wish god could love if love were real
SF: I see God as a universal opening in our hearts to the eternal spirit. This ghost we all have hangs out inside this meat costume, and sometimes we can feel whole or at one with all of the lights in all of us. I don’t really see God as a thing to be worshipped as much as being an integral part of us which we can either listen to or not. I am also a huge believer that no one human is more divine than another. Thus, I use lower case to represent both myself and God in my poems. I do believe God and love are real and ignorance and hate are just a turning away from one’s own essence. But we all get stuck in holes, in lightless stretches of road, in battles with ideas inside ourselves which really mean nothing but can suck the life right out of us. The real victory is to come back to love after all of that. Especially love for oneself, which is also God.
CA: What does it mean to you to be both a father and a poet, by way of imparting this passion of writing and making Art in such a commercial world?
SF: Poems come from my kids all the time. All I have to do is listen to them, and they are just miraculous creatures. I realize they come here with their own brilliance, and I just try to allow them to discover it and survive in this broken amusement park. I don’t really care about selling anything. I don’t want money. I want my words to be out there because, honestly, I think they come from a transcendent place. I’m not saying I am enlightened or anything. Not at all. I am saying that I really try to listen to what comes through the static underneath the talktalktalk. These words choose me many times, and I guide them more by instinct than by skill, in my opinion. I write from a deep and quiet place, and that is like a prayer and a glossolalia. Plus, I like to have fun with the story and the song. I think I went a few directions here, and I hope you followed me. I am lucky if I follow myself.
CA: In dealing with people as an RN and as a Vet, how do you feel this background informs your purpose as a poet, thinker, and artist?
SF: I give my wife much credit for my perspective. Before I met her, I was operating from a very white cis privileged point of view, growing up in Southern California in a coastal town. She is from Guam and grew up with a family-first and selfless ethic which I have been attempting to learn for close to 20 years. After I became an RN, all of this carried over into empathy for all, even those who are rude and closed off, because there is usually a reason for this. This is a constant struggle, especially with people who are hurtful because they are hurt. Nursing taught me that judgment can’t be part of your practice. I am not a veteran, myself, but I give each veteran the utmost respect for serving their country, even if I don’t believe in the reason the wars were fought. I think as an artist I try to show everything without prejudice and am not afraid to show myself in a shameful light if it is the truth. Everyone has had to suffer; everyone deserves a voice and a bit of understanding. This is truly hilarious that I am writing this because I am the most impatient person on earth. But for the reasons I am here, writing, I can be patient and listen.
CA: I felt a kindred spirit and connection in the poem “listening to coltrane’s love supreme” as he is one of my artistic heroes, and that album is classic and iconic—what is it about his music that you feel connected to as a poet making music in your own right—but no saxophone, just a pen?
SF: Coltrane’s music in certain stretches enters a place of combustion and synergy to a point that it is no longer just music. I think many of us poets try to enter liminal and synesthetic spaces with words, to crush them up, combine them, fissure them into a door or a river of doors. I tried to do that with this poem, to skip and leap in time. I’m sure I got nowhere near my goal, but it certainly was exciting to try. A few of my poet friends are really good at this. I think of Aakriti Kuntal, Lillian Necakov, and Lauren Scharhag. If you don’t know their work, it is worth looking up!
CA: Speaking of music, I am struck by the cadences and symphonic sounds in your lines, which are richly vibrant with sounds and pulse and vibrations, lines like: “make the world fair for one tilted second/ before I try to haggle back my soul,” “the maw of old ouroboros /gnaws and manifests a new limb,” and “give me a skin to dance out of.” How do you craft this music? How does your ear tune itself?
SF: Honestly, half the time I just let the words come out automatically, and many times there is either internal rhyme or alliteration that just happens. Sometimes when I revise, which is usually minimally, I will change a word that clanks or is off tune and use a word which sweeps the whole sound along. It really helps to read the poems aloud to hear where the awkward spots are and then tweak them, streamline them. I usually try to get away with as few words as possible, but sometimes the song is more important, and the string needs to carry out until it stops ringing in the air.
CA: What are your writing practices—do you have a ritual or regimen that you go to?—and while you’re at it, can you give us a visual of your writing space—what does it look like, what’s on your desk?
SF: I usually have triggers for writing, something my son says, like “I dance you,” or a visual, like a frog jumping away from a lawnmower, or a core of a thought, like the idea that fear is mostly taught by body language. If I can’t write the poem right then, I will send myself an email with some key words—“dance,” “frog,” “fear in the body”—so that I can return when it is quiet. I wrote much of my previous book, The Long Blade of Days Ahead, on my phone walking by the Puget Sound during my lunch, short poems which had to be compact and lean. Another project I am looking to publish is a collection of prose poems, and for these I had to sit at my computer either at work or late at night at my house and write. For me it is hard to write with distractions because I almost enter a trance state where I get really vulnerable. I also have to allow enough time to finish the poem properly. If I get interrupted and try to go back, it is like writing a different poem: the clouds and music have changed, there are bees instead of birds, there is lavender in my eyes rather than red. I think this is why I don’t really revise except to rephrase and clarify, because if I try to write part of the poem again, it ends up being a different world, and the poem seems fractured. I strive to have each poem follow an unbroken thread from the ether to the page. For me, I can tell if a poem has been revised to death—it feels like a chain of vignettes without a center. I see much of this being published. I’m not judging, it just isn’t what works for me as a poet.
CA: How does the poet Scott Ferry feed on the world around you—landscape, politics, biography, politics, family, faith—what makes the boat float for you in writing a poem?
SF: I do a lot of synesthetic thinking, making meaning across senses and rooms and distances and time. I like to combine things in a dreamscape. I do much of that in this book, just turn on the faucet and let the subconscious run all over the floor. Sometimes the poem needs a tight shell, sometimes an open sky. The boat floats all over the place all the time. It is a blessing and a curse. People wonder how I write so much, and my answer is usually that I really try to stay open constantly. I don’t stop it with thoughts like “this will be a shitty poem.” I always give the poem a chance and give it a spin and a twist, and it usually surprises me. I mean why not? And I publish about 80% of what I write. I know some people would frown on this, thinking that one should only publish their top 20%. Nah, I think most of them have a place in the narrative and the whole. If you don’t like what I am writing, don’t buy the book. It doesn’t bother me, the idea of “quality.” I think I write well enough, and if a poem really doesn’t work, then I will scrap it and start over.
CA: This poem is quite beautiful and really seems to speak to many of the themes in this collection—love, loss, faith, sensuality, family, pain, and love. Can you speak to the way the poem threads these themes of vulnerability of the speaker and how fatherhood and family inform your work?
it’s easy to talk to god
if my child isn’t screaming
but i need to hear himto eat his primal cry for a mother
left in the drivewaya deity who keeps getting
farther awayi also feel the longing
for a lost mother a godever present but ever-
retreating into the gaspingholiness between
sobs
SF: This one has a special place in my heart because it does bring so much of what I write about together. Once we are born, we are always longing for the comfort and reassurance of a mothering God, but the nature of living is that one has to become reliant on oneself to find this internally. But even with a faith of some kind, there is still the feeling of being alone, being abandoned, and weeping into the dark.
CA: Your poems are surreal, empathic, dreamlike, and very enigmatic. A good example is “when the poem isn’t ready to fight.” There’s a mystery and an epiphany that happens in the poems. This is an effect and depends on careful tools and concise language and ideas about social justice, integrity, and faith. Your poems pack a punch with images, torques of thought. What do you consider to be the tools and the craft that define these qualities in your work?
when the poem isn’t ready to fight
i walk into the ring wearing a weaponized nostalgia
like a cloak of bats but my opponent is sleepingthe sea is now a schoolbus and the seats anemone
and eel as we try to kiss(my mother does not remember that i have two
children but she is overjoyed when reminded)my mother is at the bus stop wearing a polaroid hairdo
my mother holds me so i cannot reproducemy breathing machine scares the cat but she still
smothers me as i weave a cloak of bats in my sleepi have a fight tonight my mother is there watching
thinking i am still twelve that i have not lovedanyone but her she wants to know who i am
willing to die for
SF: Like I said I begin with an image or idea which really sparks something, an emotion and a flash. Then I either try to link it synesthetically to a larger context, or I just follow the image very succinctly. I think what I do is try to speak the chaotic truth but with a playfulness and a dark humor. Because, you know, God is laughing her ass off regularly with the absurdity of this place, of the prison we have built here. And I do really try to tell the truth, be emotionally authentic. I think people can tell if the passion in a poem is real or not, or if it is fiction to get a reaction from a reader and get a piece published. I really don’t write to get things published, to follow trends. I write to get this loud-ass voice out of my head. I think the muses have something to say, and so I am a mouthpiece. Sure I take credit for my work, but really it is my subconscious doing it, and the collective unconscious, as Jung would say. My ego and my fleshbag just make it possible for it to be heard. In terms of my craft, I just keep reading contemporary poetry and see what works, get inspired. Like I said before, I write more by instinct than by any method. I would love to get a MFA someday, but I really don’t have the desire or money right now. I think it would be really fun and thrilling to immerse myself in my art. In the meantime, I am just writing and letting it pour out.
CA: What advice would you give a younger writer about po’biz—publishing, books, marketing, etc?
SF: First get a manuscript together, and have people you trust read it and give you input. Send out poems to places that you think have a similar vibe to your work. Read poetry, share poetry, celebrate poetry! Get on social media and develop a presence. Be supportive of others and champion work you believe in. I would not suggest contests for manuscripts as they are very hard to win and they cost money. Research publishers that accept work without contests. Read poetry and submit to presses you feel would embrace you. Above all, keep submitting and keep writing even through rejections. Write what shines your bulb. Have fun with writing. Above everything else, be kind with yourself and others in the writing process.
CA: What is Scott Ferry’s next project? How will you challenge your aesthetic curiosities?
SF: Like I said I have a finished collaboration with Daniel McGinn titled Fill Me with Birds coming out in early 2024 from Meat For Tea Press. I have a book of prose poems titled Sapphires on the Graves which I have submitted to a few publishers. My newest thing, though, is writing one sentence poems which link together into one longer poem with a working title of 500 Hidden Teeth. The idea is that each sentence should work on its own and also fit into the loose narrative. I have had some great feedback on this project, and I am posting it in bits on Facebook and also submitting chunks as “poems.” I am at sentence 162 as we speak and hope to reach 500.
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Scott Ferry helps our veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. His most recent book is a collaboration with the California poet Daniel McGinn called Fill Me With Birds from Meat For Tea Press. His book of prose poems, Sapphires on the Graves, will be published by Glass Lyre Press in early summer 2024.
Cynthia Atkins (she/her) is the author of Psyche’s Weathers, In The Event of Full Disclosure (CW Books), and Still-Life With God (Saint Julian Press 2020), and a collaborative chapbook from Harbor Editions, 2022. She earned her MFA from Columbia University and has earned fellowships and prizes from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Writer’s Voice, and Writers@Work. Atkins lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County, Virginia, with artist Phillip Welch and their family.