An Interview with Isaac Lunt

On the chapbook Mistakes for Stars

CK: Your first chapbook, self-published and titled “Mistakes for Stars,” is a thorough reflection of impermanence, particularly in scenarios of love or ones that might appear so, exploring too its role in certain physical and material spheres. Was this unifying theme determined at the outset of production, or did it emerge later and elaborate?

IL: A lot of the poetry I used for this chapbook I actually wrote long before I had any idea what a chapbook was, so I would definitely say it was the kind of thing that I discovered while compiling my work and reflecting on it. But that feeling you describe, the feeling that things are passing all the time, that’s something I’ve been aware of in my life and poetry for a couple of years now; so when I went out looking for the poems I wanted to include, as well as when I started writing newer pieces to accompany those older ones, I definitely had it in mind as a sort of “organizing principle.” I think we are all, as poets, aware of something like our thematic “sense,” and in that way we can structure our work around something within us; but I don’t think one really grasps the true themes of their work until they are looking at it all at once and recognizing the similarities and the patterns.

CK: Many of your poems are in form, the collection beginning with a sestina. What drew you to form poetry, and to what degree do you feel it either restrained or pushed your poetry further?

IL: Like a lot of young poets, I was very anti-form until I learned about it properly. My interest in and eventual obsession with form started when I began taking classes with Greg Williamson my junior year. As I’ve learned more about it, I’ve realized that, while it is definitely true that form is in some ways restrictive, it can also be extremely liberating. The sestina is a good example. I’ve written a lot about my ADHD, and before that poem, I had always written about it in free verse. Those poems would be sort of long rants (reflecting the chaotic state of the ADHD mind), and once I wrote them, I wouldn’t know how to edit or format them. They were too freewheeling. But the sestina manages to show the chaos and maintain order simultaneously. I also like to think of words as puzzle pieces, and when there’s a structure it is a lot easier to see them that way, and then focus on playing with them. Last thing on this: I’m a big fan of the use of casual, everyday language. Poetry that is written casually, devoid of “floweriness,” faces pressure, I think, to be compelling in some other way. A poem written in form that is also written in every-day-speak can be impressive that way.

CK: It’s evident that you paid great attention to the flow through the poems’ ordering, so far as to even divide the collection into four parts. What were some of your considerations during this process, and what are the sections specifically meant to indicate?

IL: I will say I tried ordering it about ten different ways. I knew I wanted four sections because of the volume of work, and I know that, personally, four five-or-six-poem sections seems a lot more palatable than twenty-two (or however many it was) poems in a row. I tried to keep things thematically consistent, but spread out. I wanted the collection to reflect change, to not wallow too much in self-centered sadness (which a lot of the poems do), and I wanted to keep the consistent images—stars, eyes, butterflies—away from each other. I wanted the many feelings in the book to balance each other out, sort of swirl around a thematic axis without being too redundant. Ultimately, though, I just started reading them out loud and seeing how they flowed, aurally, and if there was one out of place I would move it. And if something didn’t belong, I cut it out.

CK: I remember you once said, “I just really love words.” Your poems often incorporate sound play within a conversational tone – are there any certain qualities you look for when choosing and then stringing together these words?

IL: I can’t really say there is. A writing professor once told me, after I spent about 15 minutes rambling about something in his office, that the sound and flow of my own voice seems to be really important to the way I work through things. I am a very verbal person, and I will often catch myself playing with a word in my head, turning it over a few times or rearranging its letters or saying it in a few different accents. I also love homonyms, especially in poetry, and I love it when the same word can be used ten different ways. But once its just me and the page it’s a process of flow and then editing, or else working carefully around a formal structure and letting the sounds come from the natural progression of the words.

CK: How did editing the work of your peers as they moved through the chapbook process themselves affect your own product?

IL: Watching my peers work has been very humbling. It is always the most inspiring and frightful thing to see people do things you are incapable of doing, and each of my classmates exhibited that in one way or another. It certainly makes you want to go try new things. But I also think watching others work, you get a sense of who they are and what they’re all about, just from watching them work. And then you can turn that on yourself, try to, in some sense, “watch yourself work,” or try to see your poetry and your process the way your peers do. So it was both amazing to see so many talented voices working together in the same room, and highly helpful for allowing me to find my own.

CK: What are your focuses when reading a poem aloud and, to follow that, which from this chapbook might be your favorite to read aloud and why?

IL: I’m a performer, I always love to be on stage. I also took a class with David Yezzi on performing poetry, so I have some experience reading aloud is I guess what I’m saying. Rhythm is, I think, very important in reading poetry, finding the right places to pause, to slow, to speed up. You have to have a poem that can capture the audience’s energy, so a good, energetic poem is always a strong choice. But any poem can be read aloud well, so long as it is prepared adequately. I am especially fond of performing, from this chapbook, the opening sestina, as well as “Reflections on Being a Poet and a Lair,” which has a nice tumbling quality to it that I think makes it more fun to read aloud.

CK: What chapbooks specifically or poets in general do you think influenced your collection the most?

IL: In an immediate, mentorship sense, Greg Williamson was a major influence. But so far as just poets I admire: I hate to say it, but at the time I was writing a lot of these poems I was also definitely reading a bunch of Bukowski. He’s not a very good poet, but I admired his boldness and freedom with language. Walcott is a wonderful poet who I love to read. Louise Glück’s chapbook October gave me some good ideas about the power of minimalism. And Billy Collins is a big influence on my “casual” tone.

CK: The voices throughout your chapbook often alternate between confident cleverness and uncertainty. I felt that both voices were brought out through the various plays on “This page is intentionally left blank,” written on the pages sans poems with the last insert rephrased as a question. Was there any other reasoning behind your repeated inclusion of this sentence?

IL: In all honesty, that was an idea I had when I was formatting the book on InDesign. I wanted the Roman Numerals dividing the sections to always be on the right-hand page, and I also wanted the longer poems to (as much as possible) to be on facing pages, so that you wouldn’t have to turn the page in the middle of the poems. This meant there were a few spots where there were blank pages, and I got the idea to do the “this page is intentionally left blank” thing, like there used to be in test booklets in high school. I always thought it was an interesting thing to put in a test. The iteration of the phrasing, I think, adds to the sense of chaos, even within order, that I was talking about earlier with the form question. There is a semblance of structure, but there is disorder and imagination within. This, I hope, is reflective of the poetry, and adds to the overall “sense” of the book.

CK: I found some similarity between “ADHD, Writing Drunk, Considering Love” and “Insomnia, Memory, Poetry.” The initial connection was made due to the parallel titles and use of form (the former a sestina, the latter a paradelle), however this connection seemed to go deeper. In “Insomnia...” you write:

“I keep a pen and paper by the bed.”

I keep a pen and paper by the bed. Before ’was,’ I had it–something –and

paper-you, by a bed, said “Keep the pen.”

“ADHD...” also discusses the relationship between writing and a lover – am I overreaching with this association, or do you feel as though describing love in words has the power to affect both partners in a relationship?

IL: I think you really hit the nail on the head. I’ve always been confused by the simultaneous power and impotence of words to describe our truest feelings. I am an incredibly loquacious person, always trying to vocalize and work stuff out verbally; and because I’m constantly writing, I’m always thinking about how best to describe my internal and external worlds. I love words. But I think they are greatly lacking in their ability to express feeling. There are some things that can only be felt, some things that are robbed of their preciousness when they are described. I feel that way about poetry, generally, and I would say that those two poems specifically are as much about the writing process as they are love or anything else. I do see the creation of poetry as a sort of dream-state, where words are other-ly and sacred, but also lumpy and inefficient. I feel the constant need to put my thoughts to paper and am constantly disappointed by the result. Which, I think, is a good thing.

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Isaac Lunt is a graduating senior studying Writing Seminars and Theatre at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the recently self-published Mistakes for Stars in which he explores (in the words of Caroline King) “love, un-love, and impermanence.” After graduation, he will be studying acting at the National Theater Institute’s “Theater makers” program.

Caroline King is a soon-to-be graduate of Johns Hopkins University majoring in Writing Seminars, Psychology, and Spanish. Her first chapbook, handmade and titled Gifts for a Strange Lion, focuses on intimacy, how it can both fulfill and fail, as well as its relation to femininity. She will be beginning a master’s program in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge this fall.