More Than a Poem Could Describe: Nick Ferraro on Writing and Living
Abraxas: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your writing background?
Ferraro: My artistic pursuits include music and writing and I studied both in college. I was always interested in fiction and I was always a big admirer of the short story and how much could be accomplished through that form. Before I started to write poetry, I had finished a few of my own short stories but I had never felt confident about the results. At one point I got a subscription to The American Poetry Review because I wanted to start reading more contemporary poets. The first poem that I read in APR was by Albert Goldbarth, and I think I had that experience that Emily Dickinson allegedly had when she describes the top of her head being taken off. It was just so amazing to engage with a piece of writing that could be so aesthetically great but also extremely significant in the essence of its idea, even without the aesthetics of its presentation being considered. I think that this is still what moves me in poetry and writing more generally. This experience led me to check out the work of so many other great poets and I began to examine the craft of their writing. In doing so I just couldn’t help myself from trying to write some of my own poems.
Abraxas: What inspires you to write?
Ferraro: I feel inspiration to write in a few different situations. One important inspiration I have is the feeling that I haven’t been diligent and that I need to write more frequently. I end up spending time writing to make that feeling go away. Another much more pleasant inspiration that causes me to write is just the act of living. I think I have spent a lot of time wishing that I had something to write about and hoping that one day I would be a really creative person like those who I admire. I am slowly learning that maybe real creativity doesn’t come from living a life that is so interesting that inspiration will come and that interesting creative ideas will be given to me. Probably creativity comes from simply being observant in all the situations that happen in life and holding different ideas, impressions, objects, people, and experiences against one another and then simply recording that experiment as a new observation. Then, if I have been writing enough and practicing the craft, hopefully I will be ready to make some new piece of writing that connects with someone else in the world.
“I am slowly learning that maybe real creativity doesn’t come from living a life that is so interesting that inspiration will come and that interesting creative ideas will be given to me.” - Nick Ferraro
Abraxas: Can you give us a brief insight into your writing philosophy? How do you do you define your style?
Ferraro: I am not sure I could define my style of writing. I think that my current aesthetic and formal goals in poetry include having a clear, maybe sometimes conversational voice, having a hierarchy of metaphors, and trying to convey them with symbolism that isn’t too cryptic. I don’t often work with meter in a traditional, formal sense, but I always think about it when I am writing. I think that paying attention to the syllables and the metrical feet really help to generate a more presentable form in a poem, even if the goal isn’t to create a regular pattern in the sounds.
Matthew Arnold wrote some pretty interesting work on the theory of writing and I have drawn from some of what he had to say about the importance of the idea of a poem over its presentation. Thinking along these lines has helped me to better address my own writing. However, I also like when writing is really compelling even while violating that ideal. Sometimes an image or impression is all that is needed.
Abraxas: Do you have any specific writing rituals or habits that help you write or edit?
Ferraro: I heard or read somewhere that we become a better writer for every 100 words that we write. This is just an arbitrary number but the idea becomes true because I choose to believe it. I like to aim for writing in 100 word sections. This is about the only ritual that I have other than keeping a careful record of the books that I have read and any new words that I have learned from them. I don’t know if it is often that any of these new vocabulary terms shows up in a poem that I write, but it’s still pretty fun to do.
Abraxas: Are there recurring themes or motifs in your writing? What draws you to these themes?
Ferraro: I find myself writing a lot about personal experiences that happen to me, and then I try to invert them or re-characterize them so that they are more general or so that the roles are reversed so that I can try to learn more about what it feels like to be someone else. I think that this gives some of my writing a kind of generality where there aren’t a lot of specific people or places.
Abraxas: What are your long-term goals as a writer, and where do you see your writing heading?
Ferraro: I would still really like to finish a short story that I feel confident about. If I could submit that short story to some publications for review, that would feel great. I would also like to attend and participate in more live poetry readings than I currently do. I think in the long-term I simply want to stay productive and to continue to have something to offer that I suspect will connect with someone else in the world.
Abraxas: Is there a specific message or impact you hope to achieve through your writing?
Ferraro: I don’t think so. What I hope for is that others will find something familiar as well as something new in what I have written and that maybe they will have something like what I feel when I read a really good poem. Poetry is such a great way to connect with ourselves, life, and other people, and I think that it helps us to see our own situations in a beautiful way, even if they are bad situations. This gives us such a great sensation of feeling that the time spent reading and writing poetry was really worth more than a poem could describe.
