- Noah Eli Gordon ’99, ’04G
Noah Eli Gordon earned a BA in English in 1999 and an MFA in 2004 from UMass Amherst. As an undergraduate he received the Class of 1940 Creative Writing Award; as a grad student he won the Glosband Fellowship. Among his collections of poetry are Novel Pictorial Noise, selected by John Ashbery for the National Poetry Series; A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow, and Figures for a Darkroom Voice, in collaboration with poet Joshua Marie Wilkinson and visual artist Noah Saterstrom. He has also published more than 50 essays and reviews.
Gordon teaches creative writing and literature courses at the University of Colorado at Denver and is establishing Letter Machine Editions, a small press that will publish two collections of poetry a year.
You’ve published six collections of poems in the last few years, three in 2007. How do you manage to be so productive?
I take what I do seriously. I care deeply about it. To be a working, active, productive artist, one has to forgo, and consistently battle against, the myriad distractions that tout themselves as a part of the mind-numbing rubric we call entertainment.
Do you ever want to slow things down?
Poetry does slow things down. It forces one to recognize the world anew, to think, and to rethink. I write, or at least think about writing, every day, so the fact that I’ve published many books already doesn’t mean that these works represent some sort of speedily scrawled texts. If you mean my own level of production, then, well, no. This is what I do. I’ve got three manuscripts already completed, one slated for publication in 2011, and am in the midst of numerous other projects.
You write in a variety of forms but often return to the prose poem.
I like to twist and expand the arc of the sentence. Because it’s with prose that we posit, develop, and interpret our understanding of the world, it is a prime target for poetic investigation. I’m interested in surfaces and surface play but also in attempting to accrue some kind of depth. It’s like watching through a frozen lake as the shadow of a creature underneath darts by.
A couple of chapbooks you have published were the outcome of collaboration with other poets. What was that experience like?
Collaboration turns the romantic notion of the poet in solitary recollection inside out. It’s an anodyne for that solitude. The camaraderie of the process forces everyone involved to jettison solipsistic ownership. I’m always willing to take more risks in a collaborative project; eventually, that willingness is carried over. And sometimes it's just plain fun.
How did the MFA Program help you develop as a writer and reader?
I owe everything to my experience at UMass! As an undergrad, I took several classes that absolutely altered the course of my life. It was here that I first encountered poetry in any substantive way. As a senior, it seemed as though all of my constituent courses of study marvelously converged. It felt like my professors must have been meeting in secret, matching their syllabi. In hindsight, I see that this is simply what happens when one’s surrounded by wonderful professors, as I was in the English department.
In the program I developed friendships and associations that are sure to be lifelong. I was learning as much from my fellow students as from our courses of study. Three of my published books were not only written while in the MFA program, but greatly improved by it, by my professors and peers.
