For this next installment in a series of interviews with contemporary poets, contributing editor Peter Mishler corresponded with Dara Barrois/Dixon. Barrois/Dixon, born in New Orleans, lives in western Massachusetts. Her writing has been supported by the Lannan and Guggenheim Foundations.
Her new book, from Conduit Books. Recent books and chapbooks include and from Scram, from Incessant Pipe, and from Wave Books. * What is the strangest thing you know to be true about the art of poetry? The strangest thing: Poetry’s enduring, mysterious powers, transformative actions, paradoxical heart.
Here is this empty space, on a page, on a wall, on a screen, in a notebook, on a scrap, someone says a poem will go there, by magic, every word, every mark, every winding form of syntax, infinite sonic frequencies, each instance suddenly gathers around itself each and every previous encounter, suddenly everything that is put into the poem carries along with it every significance—good, bad, awful, wrong, right, dull, brazen, calling, answering, loving, hating, avenging, forgiving, seducing, inviting, damning, trusting, praising, saving, salvaging, presenting us with new information about ourselves and one another. Poetry’s intelligence. Intelligence gathering.
Its fearlessness. Its inclination to forgive, to keep secrets, to tell secrets, to make, by means of poetry’s illusions, chances for us to experience eternal connections, confluence, continuity. Because, no one, nothing has yet be.
