Poetry Consultations with Isaac Pickell

A poem is built from remembering but is less static than memory, designed to keep feeling for itself long after the poet has stopped tinkering with it. I am drawn to poetry both for what it says, and for what it does and keeps doing, in and out of our hands. For me, poetry is not a way to comment on things we already know, but a way to feel things out, a kind of sensory organ like whiskers or fingertips in the dark. And while a poem is never finished, a good poem, the kind that sticks with you, keeps asking or wondering for days or months after you’ve written it.

When I work with other poets, I try to seek out those whiskers, the smallest details that somehow contend with the whole scope of the world. I often find these moments in the poet’s weirdest little obsessions: the veneer of a childhood table, the family dynamics of orcas, the bite of a nasturtium flower; all those things we can’t put down. My aim as an editor is to invest in those moments and pick at them, magnify them, or ask them to take up more space on the page. I’m also a bit of a grammarian, so despite my love of spatial experiments, I’m still concerned with remembering that even poets are in the business of writing sentences; I love employing syntax with intention.

But really, I do all of this because I love editing poetry. I love editing poetry because I love writing poetry and editing poetry is the next best thing, uncovering where a poem might go next, right alongside the poet. Thank you for sharing your work.