ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Interview with Hal Sirowitz
by Liz Webster



Hal Sirowitz’ third collection of poetry, Before, During, and After, is a kind of poetic experiment in the vicarious experience of female sexuality.  Told in the assumed voices of his real-life ex-girlfriends, the collection marks the third in a trilogy written in the voices of women. From Mother Said (Crown Press, 1996), to My Therapist Said (Crown Press,1998) and finally Before, During, & After (Soft Skull Press, November, 2003) Sirowitz’ terse, humorous monologues have won him a faithful readership from New York to Norway.

Hal Sirowitz is the poet laureate of Queens, the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a 2003 New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the 2003 New York City All-Borough Slam. He has recently retired from his job as a special education teacher at PS 224 and has embarked on a coast-to-coast tour promoting Before, During, and After. His fourth collection, Father Said, also from Soft Skull
Press, will follow in June.


Q: How would you compare Before During & After to the relationship poems in Mother Said?

Hal: Well I think it might be more human. I’m trying to say people have problems with sex, and I’m trying to make sex humorous and show that sex is like acrobatics without getting the training. So it’s more about afterwards. I joke with people and say that the “before and after” are the longest parts and the “during” is the shortest part. I’ve been writing very obsessively about sex because I think that’s important. There isn’t very much stuff about it that’s funny. I like the rabbit stuff that Updike wrote. He covers sex very well. But it’s more from the man’s point of view, more from a macho view, a
conservative view. And I try to give more voice to the woman. The poems are mostly
in the woman’s voice. I’m not sure I can write as a woman, but I still start with that purpose. It’s still from “the other,” and then it gets back to me. Even though I don’t make an appearance, you still know a lot about me through the voice.

Q: You’ve said that Martin Buber’s "I and Thou" has influenced your writing about relationships.

Hal: Well he’s humanistic and he’s saying that God is abstract and you don’t know God and so the only way you know God is through personal relationships. You get close to another human being. That’s almost like sacredness. For him, that’s a god experience.
Humans are physical, and so you can know them somewhat, but an attempt to know
them deeply is a spiritual act. Death is something that we haven’t experienced. God is protection and you can’t ever really know protection. And the closest you can know it is by putting your life second to another person’s. I think that’s what I and Thou is about. Judaism is a social religion. You don’t pray alone you pray with other people. Even if God is silent, he doesn’t talk to us, but if you get close to another person, it’s almost like the closest you can get to God.

Q: So, you agree with this?

Hal: Yes and no. He was a great philosopher, but I kind of feel that he’s stuck in abstractions. Like what does he mean by “eternity”? He’s using these general words but he needs images. I see what he’s trying to say, I just feel like his abstractions are like weights on his feet. It’s almost like a horoscope. It’s very broad, it’s very general, and so everyone can relate to it, but everyone relates to it differently. That’s how he writes. I write more of these individual moments. He’s on the side of the universal. He needs to give me some more examples. He needs to tell me about his wife, his friends. He
needs to tell me about his relationships so I can follow it. He’s a brilliant
man, I like him, but I think he’s stuck with philosophy. He’s stuck with a
distant view, an abstract view.

Q: So, in a sense, you combine that with good poetry and then maybe you have the
ideal sacred text?

Hal: That’s what poets assume. Poetry is almost like philosophy in a way. It’s a
personal philosophy. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, I thought they were better. Philosophy is almost like autobiography. Buber, although I like him, I never felt he was as autobiographical as them. Kierkegaard, he gets off the subject. His own philosophy was based on his not getting married and about what it felt like. He got engaged and then broke off the engagement and thought about it for the rest of his life. Buber is not quite as personal. I think he’s slightly abstract. But I like him.

Q: In Mother Said and even in My Therapist Said, there’s a power dynamic built into the structure of the relationship, and so the silence of your character isn’t quite as obvious. And sometimes the character seems like he’s being acted upon. But in this new book, it’s more like the character is actively ruining things. He’s kind of a jerk, self-serving and not responsive. Would you think of that as a true reflection of you?

Hal: I use humor and so a lot of times I’m self-denigrating. And I do that in the Mother Said poems where my parents put me down and I still do that in the relationship poems. I do make fun of myself and blame the relationship on me. I may come off as a jerk, but the aim is true. I’m stuck in situations where the relationship is just not working. I don’t know how to get out, and I don’t want to hurt the person. And so I talk about the alienation of sex and about how sex takes over. A French woman, Catherine Texier, wrote a memoir of her break up with her husband. She said while they were breaking up it was the best sex they ever had because they were so angry with each other. So it’s about that. And about being afraid of silence, being afraid of loneliness, losing someone, you’re lonely again. You’re back where you started. It’s like wanting
this progression and not quite getting it.

Q: Would you agree that the character in this book is perhaps less likeable than the ones in the other books?

Hal: It’s me, so I can’t say that. I actually think I may have grown because in Mother Said I was trying constantly to get sympathy. Poor, poor me. Like that Warren Zevon song, “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.” So now I’m kind of saying, no more poor, poor pitiful me—but messing up me. I’m trying to put in more power, make more choices, be more assertive, and it’s not poor, poor me anymore. In Mother Said I was causing a lot of these lectures. You can tell by her personality that I’m actively doing it.

Q: This is the third book now that you’ve written in women’s voices. You’re representing a group of people whose experience you don’t share. Is there the fear of getting it wrong or offending people?

Hal: Men think they don’t know women. The woman is a mystery. And yet there’s
something in there they think they understand because women are similar to men.
They’re not just alien creatures. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus but they both live on the same planet. They both live on Mars.

Q: I’m thinking about what Amy Sohn [author of *Run Catch Kiss*] wrote about your book, “*Before, During, & After* is sad, hilarious, and so true it makes me ashamed to be a broad.” And I don’t imagine that shaming women was your intention.

Hal: No, I think she was trying to have fun at my expense. Which is good. I think she’s just saying that in some of the poems the women are giving the men a tough time. Sex is like a piano. Sometimes I play it too loud. Sometimes I play it without any hands. I think the book is important because there aren’t that many books where sex is humorous. Most books are trying to be erotic. There are all these self-help books of rules that don’t do any good because rules don’t work. When you meet someone you’re all alone. It’s existential. You’re stuck in your instincts and nothing works. These poems are about that, about convincing myself that I’m in love with someone and getting ahead of myself. Relationships are like my God, like my "I and Thou." It’s
something we all have to do, and it’s the most difficult thing we have to do in
life. I think, Tom Deller [author of The Seduction Artist] said that I was relentless. I have these themes and I go on and on about them and I just don’t stop. Which I think is true.

Q: What’s it like for you then, to be writing something that’s relentless?

Hal: Kierkegaard said that you live life backwards. You go forwards and live life backwards. You only understand things after they’re over. You don’t understand them in the moment. In the moment, you’re too busy just trying to make sense of it. Like when you break up, that’s when you understand the other person. But you can’t do anything. You can’t say, let’s go out, after you break up, and let me explain you to yourself. It just doesn’t work. You’re alone with all your observations, the sense of understanding these relationships for the first time, understanding the woman’s view. These monologues are kind of hard to write. Writing is a great experience. I get into this role and I just go with it. I don’t know where I’m going with it. I get up early in the
morning and I just start writing, and I have no idea of whether it’s good enough. I just go forward.