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JH: I'm pretty confident, yes. Theory does not hinder me, whether it's my own theory or another's. My own theory of writing poetry is whatever has worked for me recently. A theory for every poem, ideally (theoretically?), but theory does tend overall to open and close in sets of poems. There may be a few poems that stray from the fold, even coming to instigate theories, but usually one mind-set has a healthy run for a while. Concerning other author's literary theories, I suspect I've internalized a lot. I do learn more from poems than commentaries, though. You mention other methods. You write excellent list poems. Could you comment on why you like list poems? Also, I like how you bring historical names into your poems. Sometimes they reoccur, such as Maria Shriver and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Could you speak of this too?


AHB: I think theory hindered me some, took me a while to get past the injunctions, however useful they were. I used to gather poetry books to read, flicked thru them but ended up writing, not exactly imitating but hauling on the received energy. But anyway. I know I do list poems, or poems in which I repeat phrases, obviously for the rhythm and drive. I hadn't considered list poems as a genre. I like driving in run-on sentences, I mean see how far I can push them, and list poems can pound, mesmerize or whatever, I guess you could apply the term technique to such usage. The people that enter my work tend to be floating in my head, from reading or tv or whatever. The Maria Shriver poems that you refer to (The Maria) began as a single poem that I posted to Wryting-L. Someone on the list at the time replied to it as Maria herself, which pushed me to write more. Invisible collaboration, for I didn't use Morning Glory's words at all, but certainly was steered and pushed. Maria Shriver the person is a weird concept, plus there's the weird concept of her husband, and so forth. My usage of real people (and characters, like Tarzan and Fu Manchu) is decidedly wry. These beads of formalized, fossilized cultural importance, or some such. I think one of the 1st poems of yours that caught my attention presented Mr Kite, right? For whom the benefit, etc. This would be the appropriate time to ask you to speak on your Virginia, which/who appears in many of your poems. Also, you have characters, if that's the accurate word, whose names seem somehow arcane. Greek and Latin, with an import residing beneath the surface, or so I infer. What's up with that?