Interview With Joseph Fasano: The New York Novelist On Philosophy, Wellness and Swapping Astrophysics At Harvard For Life With Poetry
Today I’m excited to share a lovely Interview with Joseph Fasano, a poet, novelist and teacher based in New York. I first came across Joseph on Twitter where he posts beautiful poetry, usually every day and mostly drawn from a range of great writers, including some of his own work. His followers comment below with poem suggestions of their own, adding to the mix of ideas and really giving his posts a sense of community among poetry lovers!
But what really intrigued me is that Jospeh also shares these little fill-in-the-blanks poetry prompts, which I thought were just brilliant. With the prompts, he writes the foundation of the poem for you and you come up with a handful of words to fill in the blanks, making the poem your own. It’s genius in the way it encourages and enables so many more people to feel like writing a poem.
I like that you can fill in the blanks slowly, taking time and really thinking about which words to use. But I also love that you can take a spontaneous ‘free association’ approach, where words just come to you off the top of your head without forethought. Intrigued? Joseph has kindly included a poetry prompt from his upcoming new book The Magic Words, for you to try at the end of this interview, so do fill it in and post your poem online for us to enjoy.
Best poetry for reading with children (spoiler alert: look beyond the kids section)
His creative process (does it take 10 years, does he do it on the bus?)
The place of poetry in mental health and wellness
Josephs tips for being calm and well
Write your own poem with Joseph, using his best loved Self Poem prompt
Interview with Joseph Fasano: Poetry, Wellness, Creativity and Philosophy
You studied astrophysics and then philosophy. How did your switch to poetry happen and how do these varied threads colour your poetry life?
I always knew I had words in me that needed to be spoken, needed to find their forms, but although I grew up in a wonderfully supportive home, I was not surrounded by readers or even by people who could provide a script, as it were, for the life of an artist. I have had to write my own story.
I’m proud that I began my academic journey at Harvard in astrophysics and philosophy, which are subjects I will always love, but one of the most formative experiences of my life was finding people at Harvard who noticed and encouraged my writing. Kevin McGrath, the Sanskrit scholar and poet-in-residence of Lowell House, is one person who encouraged me early on, as well as the poet Jorie Graham. I think it’s important for all of us to say the names of teachers who truly helped us along the way.
“Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein
Joseph Fasano: Here is a photo of Goshen, NY, where I was raised and where I have often written (credit Laura Rinaldi)
Can you share a little about your creative process while making poems, what influences you and how you like to work? For example, do you write on the bus? Does your work take time, for example a poem that arrives over 10 years etc.
Writing is an almost obsessive practice for me. I am always, always working. I carry around notebooks in which I am always scribbling—images, phrases, scraps of overheard dialogue—and I try to sit down every day and work the material into some form, or perhaps find the form inherent in the material. A short lyric poem may spill out, fully formed, in a matter of minutes, or it may take decades to find its way. Even the poem that happens quickly is the blossom of roots that have taken years to find their way into the dark.
Mostly I carry poems in me, half-finished things, until one day I find the words that it was looking for. Sometimes it feels as though the poem led my life to where it had to go to find those words.
So much of the poetic vocation is this carrying of scraps of language, this ever-improving ability to listen, to know how different fragments, discovered over many years, were always meant to go together. Unexpected synthesis is the nature of the poetic vocation.
When I am writing novels, I get to sit at my desk each morning and know at least where to begin, where the story has left off. But I rarely lead my process with narrative, which feels to me like pulling an intractable bull by a ring in its nose. Instead, I agree with Heraclitus that character is destiny; I try to get to know my characters so well that when I let them act and speak, a story begins—just as it does in life—to emerge like fate from who they are.
What are some of your favorite poets, poems and philosophers and why?
“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets: A Poem
I’ll start with the philosophers. Wittgenstein changed my life; he helped me think about language in a way I hadn’t before, and he liberated me from a vision of truth that saw language as an instrument to reach an extra-linguistic truth so that I could embrace what I’d always embraced intuitively: the idea that the structures of our language are the structures of our thought, and we cannot get beyond them, and that structure is eternity enough.
For similar reasons, Kant is a favorite philosopher of mine. If I had to round out this list with just three others, I would mention Nietzsche, Hegel, and Camus, whom I consider a first-rate philosopher as well as a writer.
If I had to pick five poets—and one poem by each—I would say these are favorites that I see no end to the possibilities of learning from:
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Carrion Comfort,” for its rhythmic, syntactic, and lexical innovation
Milton’s Sonnet 23, for its astonishing harmony of what I call “horizontal” and “vertical” energy
Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” for its rich metrical ambiguity, its trust in its own imagery, and its prophetic vision
T. S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” for their prosodic variation, vision of history, and ability to restore the broken reader to a faith in wholeness
Anne Carson’s “Autobiography of Red,” for its harmony of lyric intensity and narrative power
(photo credit Laura Rinaldi)
Are you meditative, and if not, which other ways do you like to keep well day to day?
‘I really love activities that keep me radically present in the now.’
My mind is often racing (sometimes disastrously, since I suffer from bipolar disorder, among other mental illnesses), so I really love activities that keep me radically present in the now. Chess is one of these passions of mine, as well as riding motorcycles, playing music, and just being present with my son Leonardo, who is the greatest joy of my life.
On the topic of wellness, what do you think it is about poems that makes them so good for a person’s wellbeing?
Even when poems express the most brutal, unredeemed, or even horrifying truths, they have put those truths into form, if they are successful poems, and that experience of finding form for (or in) an experience makes the reader feel understood, held, and even at peace in the inevitability and rightness of that experience.
You share poetry prompts for children. Which books or poets would you recommend for parents out there wanting to read a little poetry with kids?
There are a lot of poets who write “for kids,” but I think children are actually quite able to fathom much deeper things, and a parent could read Shakespeare as a bed-time story (carefully selected passages!) for the child’s mind to soak up sentences, words, and ideas on a half-conscious level.
‘Teach children that they can let poetry work on them on the level of sound, because sound is also sense.. Teach them, while you can, to savor the way, the now, the mystery.’
Joseph Fasano
Another great writer to read aloud to children is Dylan Thomas (for the pure sound of it, which children love without having to understand). There are countless others. Teach children that they can let poetry work on them on the level of sound, because sound is also sense; they will have enough trouble in life being told that every piece of language is just meant to be an instrument to get to some other place, some conclusion, some marketable truth. Teach them, while you can, to savor the way, the now, the mystery.
Here on the left is a photo of my family’s getaway in Sullivan County, New York, where I wrote some of the poems in the book. And on the right is a photo of the guest suite at Lowell House at Harvard University, where I often return to give readings and write, I graduated from Harvard in 2005. My son Leonardo is in this picture. (Both photos by Laura Rinaldi.)
You are a professional poet, you studied at Harvard, and you teach and have many books published, but what would you recommend to beginners or people who feel they might like to explore writing a poem or two?
Truthfully I’d recommend my poetry prompts, which are designed for exactly that audience. There will be an announcement soon about the upcoming publication of a book of fifty of my poetry prompts, and I hope it helps people find their voices. Until then, some of my prompts are available on my social media accounts, particularly my Twitter feed: @Joseph_Fasano_.
I’d also say this to anyone beginning the journey of poetry: find as much poetry as possible and read, enjoy, find the things that move you. Let the love of form and structure and words and sentences deepen, find roots, take hold.
Can you share a poetry prompt with us? Perhaps Emma Mills London readers will complete it for themselves and post it online.
I’d love to! Here’s one from my upcoming book of prompts The Magic Words:
SELF POEM (Title) My name is (name). Today I feel like a/an (adjective) (noun) (verb)ing in the (noun). Sometimes I am a/an (noun). Sometimes I am a/an (noun). But always I am (adjective). I ask the world, “(question)?” And the answer is a/an (repeat your words from line 2).
Joseph Fasano
Can you recommend readers one or two of your books to begin with, poetry wise, alongside perhaps another couple of poetry books that you are a big fan of.
I’m particularly proud of my newest book of poems, The Last Song of the World, which is forthcoming from BOA Editions in the autumn of 2024. Until that is released, people can find my most recent poems in TheCrossing (2018) and on my social media accounts. And if you’re feeling adventurous (this one is not at all for children), you can check out my book Vincent (2015).
Other contemporary or recent books of poetry I admire include Ilya Kaminsky’s Dancing in Odessa, Joe Bolton’s The Last Nostalgia, Jack Gilbert’s CollectedPoems, Louise Glück’s TheWildIris, Yusef Komunyakaa’s Talking Dirty to the Gods, and Czesław Miłosz‘s Second Space (translated by Miłosz and Robert Hass)—if I had to pick only half a dozen.
But every poem I read makes me feel that either everything or nothing has been said, or perhaps both, and the great poem awaits in someone to begin. It really doesn’t matter who writes it.
I wrote my new book of poems, The Last Song of the World, in many places, including Spain, Scotland, Manhattan, and the Hudson Valley of New York. Here is a photo of me in Scotland, where I wrote some of the poems in the book (photo credit Patrick Errington)
Joseph Fasano is an American poet, novelist, and songwriter. You can find his prompts, poems, and Daily Poetry Thread on Twitter at @Joseph_Fasano_
His novels include The Swallows of Lunetto (Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020). His books of poetry include The Last Song of the World (forthcoming, BOA Editions, 2024), The Crossing (2018), Vincent (2015), Inheritance (2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013).
His honors include the Cider Press Review Book Award, the Rattle Poetry Prize, and the Wordview Prize from the Poetry Archive. A book of his poetry prompts called The Magic Words is out March 28th in the UK with Penguin Random House.
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