Photo by Gary Lanier. Courtesy University of Pittsburgh Press.

My first thought upon encountering Denise Duhamel’s latest poetry collection KA-CHING! was, A poetry book about money? Really? Duhamel has been pushing the proverbial envelope for over a decade in her poetry collections including Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (2001), The Star-Spangled Banner, winner of the Crab Orchard Poetry Prize (1999); Kinky (1997); Girl Soldier (1996); and How the Sky Fell (1996). After collaborating with Maureen Seaton on three volumes of poetry: Little Novels, Oyl, and Exquisite Politics, Duhamel co-edited Saints of Hysteria: A Half Century of Collaborative Verse with Seaton and David Trinidad. She also co-edited the anthology Sweet Jesus: Poems About the Ultimate Icon with the poet Nick Carbó.

Duhamel is widely anthologized and winner of numerous awards, including a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. She has written extensively about sex and gender, fusing pop culture references and current events into her smart, humorous poems. She writes in free verse and in various complex forms making them seem effortless.

Duhamel’s poetry is both relevant and just plain fun to read. Now it seems the Florida International University professor has turned her focus to money, an appropriate topic considering the current downcast economic climate affecting the US. I interviewed the Duhamel about her new collection.

Susie DeFord KA-CHING! begins with several prose poems about your relationship to and history with money. Money seems to be a taboo subject in the arts. How did you come to decide to write about money?

Denise Duhamel The first section of the book “play money” contains ten prose poems I wrote to actually fit on the back of play money bills I found at a thrift store. That’s why they are all the same size. I was not really aware that a lot of the other poems I’d been writing over the past several years had to do with money until I set out to put together this book. Yes, money is quite a taboo subject in the arts, as well as in polite company. I have been interested in breaking taboos in my work—speaking the unspeakable, saying the unsayable—and have written a lot about sex and gender. I guess this was the logical (or illogical) next step. Money was in the zeitgeist with people like Suze Orman and Jim Cramer becoming pop culture figures. I must have picked up on that.

SD It seems that as KA-CHING! progresses, a question of what is valuable, not just monetarily, seems to emerge, especially in the poems about your parents’ escalator accident in a New Jersey Casino. Did writing about money so much inevitably lead to questioning value? Can you speak about this theme?

DD Yes. So much of what is important in life cannot be measured by a dollar amount. It seems so obvious to state that, but sometimes I have to state it to remember that it’s true. I have been thinking lately about quality of life and how many hours of extra work it takes to buy certain things and, though I’m a bit of a workaholic, I am trying to say no to some readings or teaching gigs so I can just stay home and write. Or read. Or be with someone I love.

SD You bounce from prose poems to sestinas to anagram poems to translations, constantly playing with form. Will you speak about your relationship to form and how it operates in your writing process?

DD Last night my friend Richard Ryal called me and said that we should start a new school of poetry called Reform School. It would be for bad girls (like Barbara Hamby) and boys (like David Trinidad) who want to prove they can write in formal verse. I came to fixed form later in my career. I wrote the requisite sonnet in my MFA classes at Sarah Lawrence back in the late 1980’s, but I wasn’t truly interested at the time. Collaborating with Maureen Seaton (who is a sonneteer of the highest order) made form fun and we spurred one another on through pantoums, villanelles, and sestinas. Through those projects, I became more confident to try forms on my own.

SD Do you find it easier to place formal or free form poems in literary magazines?

DD I haven’t found there is much of a difference.

SD In the poem “Lucky Me” you write humorously about your luck (or lack thereof) in writing and publishing fiction and screenplays. This poem should comfort any struggling writer. I’m curious since you’ve had so much success with your poetry if you still write and hope to publish in other genres or if you’ve decided to just stick with poetry? Can you speak about this and any current projects you’re working on?

DD I’ve begun to blog a little bit and have started to incorporate a lot of prose in my poetry, which I suppose is a way to reconcile my urges and forays into fiction.

SD In the brilliant poem, “eBay Sonnets” you imagine auctions of poems and poet’s belongings while also discussing your career. Have you actually bid on any poetry or tried to sell poems on eBay?

DD No, I guess that is all in my imagination. What if I put up a poem on eBay and no one bid even a quarter? It would be too humiliating and I’d have slink off the site in shame.

SD Currently on eBay there’s a signed copy of your book, Kinky, starting bid: $25. Are you getting a piece of that auction?

DD Wow! Are you kidding? I had no idea.

SD In the poem “$900,000″ you receive a bunch of back rent from overpaying rent on your NYC apartment and pay off your student loans. Have you had any other instances of financial luck since KA-CHING came out?

DD Nothing yet, but, as the gurus say, I am open to the universe.

KA-CHING! is now available from the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Denise Duhamel will be reading in NYC December 2009.
12/04/09 at NYU
12/07/09 at Louder Arts
12/08/09 at Bowery Poetry Club