Ray Succre

A Roundtable with Myself

When asked by Vanessa if I was interested in a possible interview, I was excited, and pleased to take part. When I learned it was to be a self-interview, I panicked. As a writer, and usually a poet, asking myself questions about the general predicaments of the world and the workings of social life is par for the course, but having to do this with myself as the subject, and with the idea of others reading it as if I or my work were important... that's difficult. To broaden the questions and answers in this interview, I felt it best to provide multiple answers, of varying opinion. For these seven interview questions, each is answered by my childhood self when I was growing up, my current thirty-something self, and my future old man self, far in the future. This should better highlight my otiose nature and the always-changing flavor in my particular sort of amentia. It is hoped it will provide an ample view into both my inanity and utmost vanity, and across a grander span of time.

1. Ray, according to your bio, you write a variety of things, and have a novel forthcoming. Can you tell us a little more about your process when writing poetry and how it might be different when writing a novel?

CHILDHOOD SELF: I only want to write horror novels. Stephen King is the best. I have an idea about a monster that gets you by making you play evil games. I'll be so famous.

THIRTY-SOMETHING SELF: Interesting question, Ray. Poetry is a daily endeavor for me. I've a driven regiment of writing and reading poetry. Novels are more of a timed thing. Once or twice a year, I'll set a month or so aside to try my hand at a novel or stageplay. Writing a novel isn't as instantly gratifying as writing a poem can be. You'll have the rough draft of a poem done in a day, if you want. You'll have the rough draft of a novel in a month or so. Both feel about as gratifying to me, though novels take more research and commitment and have a larger reputation in modern book publishing. It's much more of a patience game, and you have to spend a lot of time on the page, and there are no time-cards, and your boss can be a real prick about it, because the boss is you, and let's face it: You can't be trusted.

OLD MAN SELF: Well, since the stroke, I have trouble focusing, but I think I see what you're asking. How do I write poetry versus how do I write novels, right? With poetry, I write it by hand. With novels, on a screen. If I were smart, I would have written instruction manuals with my youth or something, instead of all that poetry.

2. The two poems that appear in Tom's Voice are centered around your father and his troubles with substances. Would you be willing to explain more?

CHILDHOOD SELF: Pff. My dad's cool. He doesn't have any troubles. Besides, all his friends do the same thing.

THIRTY-SOMETHING SELF: My father, and many of his friends, are/were a part of a certain generation that dug drink and pharmaceuticals. My own father was a musician, and played a lot of gigs in various bars where there was usually an open tab. Combine this with a crowd of people drinking, many of which think you're great and offer you more drinks, and friends that drink and drug it, and you have an enormous pressure to hang out and do the same. This lifestyle was unhealthy for my pop, of course, but when his health started having troubles in his forties, and he began having to take various medications for gout, diabetes, etc... things snowballed. Drinking and hard medications combined will wring out your liver like a dishrag, and it doesn't take long to do it. It's a sad fact that I became a father in the very same month I lost my own, right when I really could have used some fatherly advice. There's no blame in me over any of it, but I miss him badly.

OLD MAN SELF: After he died, all his friends started dying, too. It was morose. It was very strange for me the day I officially outlived my father. I was 48. I may have developed scorching hemhorroids and I smell funny most of the time, and am prone to the occasional stroke, but I certainly didn't do what my father did.

3. Do you use the subject of addiction/substance abuse often?

CHILDHOOD SELF: What? No. Why would I? Drinking is dumb. Drugs are for losers. The cartoons I watch on Saturday mornings tell me all about it. Only my dad can get away with that stuff.

THIRTY-SOMETHING SELF: It's a recurrant theme in my work, but still rare. It dissipates for a year or two before coming back again. I have given it many poems, yes.

OLD MAN SELF: No. Now I write about how much inflation angers me, my agitation over having bad hips, and some obtuse, oddly childlike letters to my grandkids. Well, I do write the occasional quitting-smoking poem.

4. Let's talk about honesty. What do you feel is a tolerable level of exaggeration in poetry?

CHILDHOOD SELF: Huh? No, writing's fun. It's all made up. That's why they call it make-believe. I can write whatever I want.

THIRTY-SOMETHING SELF: That's a tough question, Ray. I think it depends on what's being written. I mean, if you're writing something autobiographical, even changing the weather a bit is exaggeration. So I imagine there's a sort of balance that tilts as you write. I can't predict what too-much-exaggeration would be in a specific poem, but I'll know if it starts to happen.

OLD MAN SELF: Huh? No, writing's fun. It's all made up. That's why they call it make-believe. I can write whatever I want.

5. Your website mentions you've been to jail. Can you tell us about this?

CHILDHOOD SELF: Jail is cool. In the movies, all the cool guys know about jail, or have been there. Rebels kick ass.

THIRTY-SOMETHING SELF: That's nothing serious. A criminal mischief charge from my teenage years that caught up with me in my twenties. Very minor.

OLD MAN SELF: I was arrested once when I was in my twenties, and then again when, in my early fifties, I made the mistake of selling my faulty, used teleporter to a neighbor without providing the mandatory state inspection of the device. She decided to teleport to Miami with it one afternoon shortly thereafter, to visit a grandchild. Only a third of her arrived. I found myself in trouble over that and was arrested. Luckily, I didn't have to do any time in a penitentiary. I just had to give them a lot of money (which was difficult because none of my books ever sold, and Social Security closed for good the day before my official retirement age). I had to clean up the side of the highway for a few weeks, too.

6. What do you see in the future for yourself and your work?

CHILDHOOD SELF: I'm going to be rich and cool. Everyone will read my books. I'll write the best books ever.

THIRTY-SOMETHING SELF: Things seem to be going well right now. Tatterdemalion, a novel I wrote last year, is forthcoming from Cauliay Publishing in early 2008, for which I am thankful and hopeful for. You'll be able to order it most places. I've been writing much poetry lately and trying to keep myself moving, which isn't difficult anymore. There's always a place to write. I have no idea if the future will relinquish anything to me that I don't already have or use, but if it does, I'll certainly give thanks to the proper forces, on a case-by-case basis.

OLD MAN SELF: I don't like the future much. My work will hopefully have an inkling of one. I should have been a plumber. The work they do sticks around for decades.

7. What does it take to succeed as a writer in this day and age?

CHILDHOOD SELF: A dream!

THIRTY-SOMETHING SELF: I'd rather hit myself in the face with a brick than pretend I know the answer to that.

OLD MAN SELF: The ability to convince other people that's what you're doing.