Interview with Ray DiZazzo
By Alexis August
Editor’s Note: This interview were conducted by editor Alexis August at 2Leaf Press, a Black and Brown female-led press dedicated to highlighting sociopolitical issues with interesting and compelling literature.
Alexis August:
When did you begin writing poetry?
Ray DiZazzo:
I began writing poetry and stories as a young boy. At the same time, I had a kind of inadvertent mentor on communication skills. He was an older kid from next door. I noticed that he had a way of getting just about anything he wanted because he was a smooth talker. I tried to emulate him and, though I was just a kid, began to realize the amazing power of communication. That combined with my creative learning, got me started.
I didn’t take writing poetry seriously until I was in my late teens. The first poem I had published was in the Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, when I was overseas in Korea. I think I was twenty-one at the time. If not for a good friend, I would never have known it had gotten published because I left the country before it made it into print. The friend, who was still in Korea, came across it in Stars and Stripes, cut it out and sent me a copy. Quite a surprise and a hell of a motivator for a young guy like me. That was about the time I started to develop a real passion for the power of the written word.
AA: What overlaps do you find in your studies of media and personal communications and poetry?
RD: I believe they’re closely related. During the time I’d gotten serious about writing poetry, I was also writing other things. One book project was a self-help book titled The Clarity Factor: The Four Secrets of Being Clearly Understood. It was published in 2000. The essence of the book was to focus clearly on what you were saying and making sure you got through to the person you were speaking to. This involved clearly focused thinking and precise, often visual word choices.
Photo courtesy of 2Leaf Press
At the same time, I began to write and produce training films and commercials for large businesses. Again, it was all about focus, clarity and, in the case of media, highlighting the clarity of the words (spoken by a narrator), with the use of images.
I believe good poetry is built on these same basics – focus, clarity and imagery. The combination of communications studies, media production, and the influence of two poets – Robert Peters and James Dickey – led me down a path of what I consider my personal style of poetry, which is not particularly confessional or introspective. It’s more “what you see is what you get”.
I also feel that good poetry is closely related to good art. Powerful images on a canvas are a lot like powerful images drawn from a page. Different mediums, of course, but similar results – surprising visions.
AA: As a director and producer, what differences do you find between storytelling with a camera and storytelling in poetry?
RD: When you’re telling a story with a camera, your primary medium is physical images. You shoot them, edit them into a story structure, and use actors and dialogue to help convey the story. When you’re telling a story with poetry, you’re working with words alone (although I love the idea of combining poetry and images). When words are your medium, you look for ways to create imagery without the physical pictures. The words must do the job. So, they have to reflect those same basics – clarity, focus, imagery. And I my mind, to be impactful, they have to be different – surprising.
AA: You are quoted saying, “if prose were marijuana, poetry would be LSD.” What did you mean by that?
RD: I smoked a bit of weed back in the day and the highs were great. I took LSD once and I found that the hallucinogenic qualities were very similar, but the LSD trip was much more expansive and vivid.
I believe it’s the same with prose and poetry. Reading well-written prose is a wonderful experience, in a sense like smoking pot. It creates emotional reactions and images in the reader’s mind. But reading poetry – what I consider the best poetry, that is – creates more expansive forms of those images and emotions. And, if, as I say, it’s well-written, it takes a reader on a much more intense and surprising visual journey.
AA: You say your goal is to achieve powerful imagery in your poetry, how do you believe you achieve this goal? What images from your poems do you find the most powerful?
RD: I try to create powerful imagery by first using unusual, often detailed, subjects and perspectives, and by carefully choosing the right words and word combinations that most people wouldn’t be ready for. As an example, one of the poems from my last 2Leaf Press book, The Revlon Slough, was titled “My Son in a Canoe on the Colorado River”:
Moving out
from overhang and shadow
suddenly
you spark
human kindling burning
on the surface of a liquid sun.
Gliding on a mirrored glaze
of open water
you dip the oar pull the river’s skin until
it tears
shatters
into
water flies and diamonds
splashing
on a rippled wide reflected bend
of Arizona sky.
I could get into a lengthy discussion about this poem, but in the interest of time and brevity, I’ll simply say word choices and combinations like “human kindling burning on the surface of a liquid sun”, and “you dip the oar/pull the river’s skin/until lit tears” and “shatters into water flies and diamonds” create a fresh, unusual sense of visual imagery that will surprise the reader. And I feel it’s those surprise perspectives that result in the wonderful “ah-ha” moments that make poetry such an amazing reading experience.
(Check out this video about The Revlon Slough, published by 2Leaf Press)
AA: How has the past year and the pandemic affected your writing?
RD: The pandemic hasn’t affected my life nearly as much as it has for most people. I’m semi-retired and I write a lot. In other words, I spend a great deal of time in front of a word processor. And, frankly, I’m not much of a socializer or a partier. It’s the people who fit those descriptions and, of course, people who lost their livings, that have had the most trouble. And for them I feel heartbroken.
AA: Are you working on any new projects that you are excited about?
RD: In addition to poetry, I’ve been writing short stories and essays. A bit of a change up from my usual routine. I have four book manuscripts in the works, and a few making the rounds of publishers. And I do send work out to magazines. One of the poems from my new book with 2Leaf Press, “Space,” will be appearing in the Spring issue of The Coachella Review. Another, “River,” was recently published in The Peauxdunque Review. I try to keep busy.
AA: Since it is National Poetry Month, what would you tell the reader who finds poetry too intimidating or difficult to read? What advice would you give them on how to approach poetry?
RD: Of all the questions, this is the hardest one to answer. To the readers I would say find a quiet place, give yourself plenty of time to read quietly, think about the words on the page and try to visualize what the poet is telling you. Also, be patient.
But the truth is, I would also give advice to the poets. And to them I would say, if you find yourself writing for other poets, academics or critics, there’s a good chance you’re losing many intelligent readers who just don’t want to deal with having to navigate their way through uncomfortable, complicated word-mazes, when what they really want is a clear, sensory, visual experience that makes them sit up in their chairs and say, “Wow! I never thought about it that way!”
Ray DiZazzo, an author of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and criticism, received an associate in arts de-gree in business management from Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California. His work has ap-peared in numerous publications, notably, Westways, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Beyond Baroque, East Riv-er Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Invisible City, California Quarterly and others. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of the Percival Roberts Book Award, and as a recipient of the Rhysling Award, his work was anthologized in their annual publication, The Alchemy of Stars: Burning with a Vision and Contemporary Literary Criticism. DiZazzo has written twelve books, including The Clarity Factor (Source-books, 2009) and three poetry collections. His recent collection is The Water Bulls (Granite-Collen, 2009). www.raydizazzo.com.
Alexis August is an editor with 2Leaf Press currently editing an upcoming series Trailblazers: Black Women Who Helped Make America Great American Firsts/American Icons. She is a recent graduate from the University of Southern California where she earned her bachelor’s in creative writing and master’s in literary editing and publishing. Her work has been featured in Talking Lit, Chatter, Scribe, and Talking Out Loud.
