Hypertext Magazine asked Robert Krut, author of Watch Me Trick Ghosts, “You spoke with Hypertext about your last collection—how is this new book different from the last?
By Robert Krut
With each of my books, there have been one or two pieces tucked into the collection that are sort of a key to the next one, whether in terms of form or theme. I don’t think I realized it at the time, but with this one, it was clear that there was going to be a shift in form for a bunch of the poems.
While I hesitate to talk about the “theme(s)” of a collection, I do think the last book felt external and this one feels internal. The last one felt like I was trying my hand at that old “barbaric yawp,” and this one feels more like a whisper. The last one was inspired by cities across the country, and this one is, for the most part, rooted in my little spot here in Los Angeles.
Some of that most likely came from the fact that the vast majority of the book was written during lockdown, and while it is certainly not a book about that, I do think the simple logistics of having a smaller center of experience influenced the writing of the poems.
Early on in the process, since I wasn’t leaving the house much, I leaned heavily on other art forms to spark writing from home. I found other disciplines particularly inspiring. I spent time with the work of visual artists I knew; I also started many mornings with short films that might energize me. And, music provided both a spark and a sustained energy for writing. For my last book, I created a playlist to accompany the collection; this time, I’ve done the same, of some of the songs that pushed me forward and helped me begin to develop the tones I wanted for the collection (the new playlist can be heard here.)
Beyond turning to the arts, I had my neighborhood. In the past, I’ve been invigorated by being in different spots throughout the city, the state, and the country. Now, I was finding inspiration from sights in a radius of a few blocks: a house with no lights on for a year, the same guy walking his dog in the middle of the night every single night, a liquor store closed for weeks that forgot to turn off its open sign, and so forth.
I was worried I wouldn’t find sparks for writing early in the process, and then, one night past midnight, a guy on one of those motorized skateboards came down the street—I heard him coming because he was holding a boombox playing Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “Reasons” (one of my favorites, no less). As the song echoed through the neighborhood, I looked out the window and saw him smoothly curving from one side to the other as he moved past, one arm holding the boombox, and the other waving up and down like he was underwater. At that point, I knew there would be enough to spark writing, even under these different circumstances, in this tiny corner of the world.
Writing from that different vantage point, under very different circumstances, forced change into the process, and I believe, led to a collection which, by nature, stands as an entirely different piece than the last.
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Robert Krut is the author of four books: Watch Me Trick Ghosts (Codhill/SUNY Press, 2021), The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire (Codhill/SUNY Press, 2019), which received the Codhill Poetry Award, This Is the Ocean (Bona Fide Books, 2013), and The Spider Sermons (BlazeVox, 2009). He teaches in the Writing Program and College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and lives in Los Angeles. More information can be found at www.robert-krut.com.
