SEVEN: PHILIP ST.CLAIR

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SEVEN: PHILIP ST.CLAIR

Posted on May 21, 2010 at 1:07 PM

Philip St. Clair

Kentucky native and?prize-winning poet, Philip St. Clair has a?keen and unique vision of life. His poetry will disarm you, make you reexamine what it is to be human.?From haunting family poems to?his?chapbook, Divided House which is?devoted to?the life and death of Abraham Lincoln, St. Clair's poems are powerful, unsettling, and memorable.

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Joe Napora said this about?St. Clairs's?work:?"Acid Creek depicts language of the blood clot working toward the brain?of children of the working class. This wonderful and frightening exploration of the language of family, its power and pain, is the legacy of Industrialism, where the most vital thing alive is the dead and dying."

Discover seven revealing facts about Philip St. Clair.? He?will take questions for the next two days so take advantage of this opportunity and?make him welcome!!

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SEVEN THINGS YOU PROBABLY DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME

?~Philip St. Clair

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1. I didn't go to my senior prom. I've never been to any of my high school reunions.

2. I joined the Air Force in 1961 and was sent to Florida twice during the Cuban Missile Crisis

3. Favorite female movie star: Giulietta Masina (Nights of Cabiria, La Strada).

4. Favorite "guilty pleasure" movie: Repo Man.

5. The funniest sequence ever filmed is the kitchen scene in Fellini's Amarcord.

6. I reload my own ammunition.

7. I don't own a cell phone.

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Philip St. Clair is the author of four books of poetry: Acid Creek (Bottom Dog, 1997), Little-Dog-Of-Iron (Ahsahta, 1985), At the Tent of Heaven (Ahsahta, 1984), and In the Thirty-Nine Steps (Shelley's, 1980). His two chapbooks are Divided House (Finishing Line Press, 2005) and number 176 in Pudding Press' Greatest Hits series (2003). Among his awards are grants and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Arts Council, and the Bullis Prize from Poetry Northwest. His poems have appeared in many journals and magazines, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Gettysburg Review, Harper's, Ploughshares, Poetry Review (London), and Shenandoah. St. Clair was raised in northeastern Ohio and currently resides with his wife Christina in the Appalachian mountains of Carter County, Kentucky. He is Professor of Humanities at Ashland Community and Technical College in Ashland, Kentucky.

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?????????????????? www.finishinglinepress.com

Features?Acid Creek by Philip St. Clair

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8 Comments

Reply Eddy

9:09 AM on June 17, 2010?

Phil,

Reloading your ammunition sounds like something that would take a lot of patience and care. Do you think about poetry while you reload? Seriously, I know you've written a book-length poem about the Civil War. Is your poetry partly an address to violence, whether military or economic (as in Acid Creek)? I guess I'm assuming it is, but wonder if you'd talk about what you think have been forces behind your work..

Reply Philip St. Clair

10:18 AM on June 17, 2010?

Yes -- reloading takes patience, but basically it's a repetitive process: once the proper amount of powder is determined for the load you want, it's just a question of following a series of rather simple steps -- the most critical one making sure you didn't overload or put two charges of powder in the same case. One has to pay strict attention, and focus on the procedures. I can think about other matters during other less critical parts of the procedure (cleaning, depriming, repriming, resizing, crimping, etc.), but when the gunpowder goes into the case . . . I grew up with firearms, and have been through at least three formal training experiences (one during basic training in the Air Force, another years later at Camp Perry). The issue of violence is an interesting one, and I have to say that I've never thought about it all that much -- that is, I've never said to myself, "Now I want to write a poem that address the spectre of violence in Kentucky," or something like that. I suppose that America is a violent society with its Wipe Out The Indians/CIvil War/Wild West/WW I & II heritage, but it's part of who we are -- and I do not mean to glorify or condone it. The Civil War project was meant to address the darker issues -- Lincoln as less than saintly, the military leaders as often vain and incompetent, the common soldier as often brutish and ignorant, malnourished and underequipped. But I'm certainly not the first to speak about these issues. I've always been aware of American history, and violence has certainly been a part of it. And I don't consider myself a violent person. Another "foce behind my work" is a working-class attitude: my father worked in a steel mill all his life; I spent four years on active duty as an enlisted man; I spent another four years as a custodian (full time) at Kent State University; I've tended bar, worked (briefly) in an asbestos pipe manufacturing plant, and so on.

Reply Marie Manilla

12:04 PM on June 17, 2010?

Very interesting discussion, Phil and Eddy. I wondered if any of Whitman's Drum Taps' poems were running through your head as you worked on this collection. Whitman didn't romanticize the Civil War, but he was certainly gaga over his "O Captain, My Captain" Lincoln. How do you think he might respond to your poems?

Also, I know you just got back from a pilgrimage to Scotland. What, if anything, were you looking for? What did you find?

Reply Philip St. Clair

2:46 PM on June 17, 2010?

I'm afraid that Whitman's "Drum Taps" was not in my consciousness when I was working on the Lincoln poems, and "O Captain" is atypical of the standard Whitman poem. I fear that the Good Gray Poet would revile me for my gross impiety at the altar of the Martyr-Liberator-Savior of the Union. He also wouldn't care for my postmodernist impertinence and my distinct absence of camerado-ship. In addition, he might be confused about the shifts in time, since the poem bounces back and forth from the 1860s to 1910. One notable influence was Gore Vidal, whose no-nonsense views are always, I think, refreshing correctives against the status quo. I was particularly inspired at his responses toward the "scholar-squirrels" who attacked him for alleged inaccuracies in his novel about Lincoln. I felt this gave me permission to tweak things a little . . . Christina and I got back early Monday morning from a pilgrimage to the tiny island of Iona, where St. Columba arrived in 563 AD from Ireland, built an abbey, and brought Christianity to the heathen Scots (no mean feat!). But Iona has been a sacred place since the Bronze Age . . . Like many others over the centuries, we went to Iona on pligrimage in a spirit of reverence and openess: we wanted some sort of sacred/transcendent/religious experience, but really didn't have any specific expectations. I did not levitate, nor did I see Jesus, St. Columba, or Walt Whitman -- but at one point, sitting on a wooden seat in the nave of the Abbey, I was suffused with a type of energy that was new to me. I'm sure that in the fullness of time I'll have a better undersanding of what happened, but at this point, my pilgrimage was a success . . .

Reply laura7

6:24 PM on June 17, 2010?

I've admired your poetry for many years. There's a poem in ACID CREEK called "Water" that has always captivated me. I won't copy it all here, but I love the atmospheric quality you establish in the opening line when ". . . the moon begins its angular flight/ Into the dark" and the boy wanting to go faster on "sluggish water." Even the family dog is excited about his own uncharted course.

"Tilted, riding a wooden seat
Over the middle thwart, a small boy
Watches the trees on shore. For him
The illusion of speed

Is incomplete: he turns to his father,
Wanting to go faster."

Would you tell me more about that memory, that boat ride? I'd love to know the genesis of this poem.

Reply Sean

8:22 AM on June 18, 2010?

*like*

Reply Philip St. Clair

8:47 AM on June 18, 2010?

laura7 says...
I've admired your poetry for many years. There's a poem in ACID CREEK called "Water" that has always captivated me. I won't copy it all here, but I love the atmospheric quality you establish in the opening line when ". . . the moon begins its angular flight/ Into the dark" and the boy wanting to go faster on "sluggish water." Even the family dog is excited about his own uncharted course.

"Tilted, riding a wooden seat
Over the middle thwart, a small boy
Watches the trees on shore. For him
The illusion of speed

Is incomplete: he turns to his father,
Wanting to go faster."

Would you tell me more about that memory, that boat ride? I'd love to know the genesis of this poem.

Reply Philip St. Clair

8:57 AM on June 18, 2010?

The idea for "Water" came in 1983 or 1984, while I was at Bowling Green (Ohio), enrolled in a MFA program. At dusk, I was on the banks of the river that runs by BG (I don't remember its name), and saw the scene in the poem -- pretty much as I've set it down, even to the boy, the dog, and the man having some difficulties with his outboard motor. Some family history is appropriate here. My father, who worked in steel mills, had a little outboard motor repair business in the cellar of the house we lived in. Every year during the 1950s the family would drive up to a fishing camp in Canada for a week or two: Dad like to troll for walleyes in a small boat like the one in the poem.