Charles Harper Webb: California Poets Part 1, Five Poems

Charles Harper Webb

August 27th, 2020

California Poets: Part I

Charles Harper Webb

Five Poems

Good with Balloons Those wiener dogs kids love?— my buddy Ted can twist a snarling pack, eager to gut any wacko belting up to bomb a school. Need a teddy bear, spider, giraffe, working mule? Ted’s your man. He can blow swords for an army. Light-sabers, too. Down on your luck? He’ll build, under your overpass, a palace of balloons, and stuff it with air-filled artifacts better than anything from Greece, where balloon-shaping is deader than Hector. Crave your own Pieta? Just say the word. If you’re hungry, Ted can make, out of flavored, cell-sized balloons, a steak dinner with all the fixin’s. Iron-lunged Creator, he would never plop a couple into Eden, then drop-kick them out. He’d never populate the earth with balloon- people, then send a rain of pins. He’s more of a balloon Jesus. Kind, I mean. Except to creeps, crooks, crap-heads. Pilates of the world, open your eyes! Mockers, scourgers, con-men, thugs, duly-elected hagfish and lampreys—for you, Ted’s got a big balloon surprise.

Old Love Letters Become Space Junk Gaze at the sky just right, a pulse of love may strike your heart, and you’ll be kind to everyone you meet that day. Let the same letter pulse two hearts, and they will find each other, no matter what scoffers say, or how far apart they are in place or age. So many letters pine in trunks, boxes, and drawers, hidden there by those who couldn’t bear to let them go. Thrown— as they all are, finally—away, they hover, clear as air over nursing homes and graves, making a high hum only hearts can hear. The ones that pause, like a last glance, above a marriage bed may cause disturbing dreams. But like the ghosts they’re frequently mistaken for, all rise at last to join the orbiting.

When He Grows Up My son is either going to write great symphonies, or headline in Vegas, burping his ABCs. He’ll conjure life by crushing green berries with red ones, then adding Elmer’s glue, chalk- dust, balsamic vinegar, and cornflakes, or he’ll learn to pee calligraphy. He’ll either lift Amazing Kong by the chin for a choke-slam, followed by his “finisher,” the Tombstone Drop, or invent the stink-bug Slurpie. He’ll score a hundred runs in one World Series by running so fast no one can tell his “team” is just one boy, or he’ll out-paint the Lascaux Masters by blowing colored Kool-Aid out his nose. Already his laugh, when he won’t get up for school, makes orchids coalesce from cold October air. Tree-ferns of eye-stabbing green shrug off the clinging dark to please him. Small, feathered dinosaurs begin to sing as, from behind earth’s flowered skirts, the gold balloon that he inflates daily, just by breathing, springs.

Polar Air Invades LA —The Six O’Clock News “Does it come from the North Pole?” my son wants to know. It’s thirty-two days till Christmas: thirty-one till Santa’s ride. If air can’t make the trek, how will a fat man in the sky? Our furnace, rumbling on at midnight, shakes our house like an earthquake eager to shove us out into the dark and chill. When my wife whispers, “I’m cold,” I’m glad to warm her, my stomach stuffed with Thanksgiving while, outside, the atmosphere fights for equilibrium like kids trying to split a chocolate shake: “No! You got more! It isn’t fair!” Clouds hurl orange spears across the sky and fire fusillades of hail into our roof while Polar air pours in like Europeans to America. “Over our dead bodies,” the natives raged. And so it proved.

Blurb How did I exist without these poems, my polioed soul strapped to a crack-axled wheelchair that lacked a ramp to lift it up life’s curb onto the Glad Highway? My highest aim, before these poems, was to upgrade life’s Portacan to a cesspool. My soul floated, formless, in fetid night; these poems proclaimed, “Let there be light.” They beat swords into spatulas; H-bombs into scrambled eggs. They’ve quadrupled the blood supply by squeezing stones. Turnips are next. They stop pain, kill Death, ward off asteroids, flush away unsightly belly fat even as they undo global warming, lift your kids’ grades, snag you a raise, and answer the phone when you’re on the pot. You know that drip that you can’t stop— the way your garden hose buckles in one spot— the driveway crack that could gape into a sink-hole—the cam-shaft ping your dealer calls nothing and won’t fix, lemon-laws be damned—the Ben Franklins you’d shower on the poor, if your trees could only grow ’em? Call these poems!

Interview II

March 3rd, 2026

California Poets Interview Series:

Charles Harper Webb, Poet, Editor, Musician, Psychotherapist

interviewed by David Garyan

DG: Five years have passed since you contributed poems to the inaugural series of California Poets. Would you like to share some new pieces here? 

CHW: Thank you. Here are four pieces:

THE POETS STEAL AN AIRPLANE  

to escape from Vietnam. But it’s not really Vietnam. It’s Canada near Kamloops where I used to fish. Thick evergreen forests. Sapphire lakes. And we’re not fighting Viet Cong with AK47s. These are muskrats blasting Airsoft guns.

It’s Bill’s idea to strafe the muskrats. He’s flown nimty-pibbin missions—Army code for “a shit-load”—so he pilots the plane while Ron, Richard, and I grab any poems that happen by. 

“Life’s quartermaster doesn’t issue enough adventures,” Ron shouts above the engine’s roar. Or “doesn’t dish us enough Adventists.”

The muskrats, which could be Adventists, volley plastic pellets that rattle off our plane like blood-red hail. The plane turns out to be inflatable. Its wings slide into a groove, like those frail balsa gliders Kresge’s sold for a dime.

“Hope this thing is safe,” I say.

“Nothing’s safe when you’re the ball turret gunner,” Bill says in his jokingly serious-as-amyotrophic-lateral-sclerosis way.

“Nobody’s washing me out with a hose,” I say, and yell, “Missed me!” to the muskrat Adventists. But they’ve decamped. We’re soaring over a city like the insides of an old radio, all orange-glowing capacitors and tubes.

A pterodactyl sees us and gives chase.

“I don’t want chase,” I bellow. “Take it back.”

Our plane’s wings have shifted, as I feared. The right wing is twice as long as the left.

The more I fret, the faster the pterodactyl flies.

“We’re all ball turret gunners,” Richard cries.

MORE THAN THE USUAL BEFUDDLEMENT AT SCHOOL

Why, when everyone else got one

fetal pig per four students to dissect,

did I get an allosaurus to myself?  

Does my teacher, Ms Pogroshevski,

love or hate me? Is this her way

to make me fail, or earn an ultra-A? 

Will the class move to the auditorium

so I can dissect with the other kids? 

My allosaurus is smaller than a T-Rex,

but still requires room, and months of work. 

Am I expected to wrap up by 3:00 today? 

Can I stay late? Would it be cheating

if I asked beautiful, brainy Mandy

Masterson to help? Why doesn’t anyone

say, “Dude, that’s a big pig”?

NEW CAR 

First I must survive the haggle, the sales-

          woman circling me in the showroom—

                  “I’ll pay this.” “I’ll take that.” —

until, after long labor, my signature

          gives birth to a baby that arrives

                  full-grown, but only five miles old. 

“Wish I could turn back my body’s odometer,”

          I tell the finance man. “Mmm-

                  hmmm,” he says—too busy

prying extra funds from my account

          to register the poignancy. 

                  Tango Red Pearl, my new car’s color,

sounds sexy and rich. I could’ve

          picked Nighthawk Black Pearl

                  or Green Tea Metallic, but not

Cadaver Greenish-Gray at any price.

          My key is like 164 bridles fused

                  into one. My saleswoman’s name,

Alma, means soul in Spanish. 

          She opens my car’s door, but I must

                  carry myself over the threshold. 

WHY THE INTERNET WILL REMEMBER ME

            —after a photograph by Karen Schneider

Not for the asparagus of wisdom

          that sprang up in my life’s garden. 

Not for the eggplant of enthusiasm—

          thick-skinned, purple balloon—

or my tomatoes of insight, or my curative

          carrots: shy eye-doctors with heads

stuck in the sand. Not for my carbon-

          fixing avocados, spackling the ozone hole

as pretty as you please. Not even

          for the cannabis of peace, designed

to give armies the munchies instead of

          the kill-them-before-they-kill-mes.

If I’m remembered, it will be

          for my cucumbers soaked in brine: 

five perfect pickles I photographed

          in a white dish, added a Photoshopped

comet’s tail, then Facebooked

          the result as “Pickle Dish in Space.” 

Pickles: deli-beloved, blunt,

          finless fish-in-a-barrel, easy to catch

because too slow to swim away. 

DG: Having worked on fiction for the past several years, you’re scheduled to release a couple new poetry collections this year. One book, The Elephant of Surprise (Moon Tide Press), will be prose poems and the other, Old Gnu (Longleaf Press), is going to be verse. To what extent was the writing process of the former influenced by the novel and short stories you’d written and how much of a challenge was it transitioning back to lines, breaks, and stanzas?  

CHW: Writing and re-working the prose poems was a little easier after working in longer-form narrative prose. Many of my prose poems could easily be called flash fiction. They’re short short stories, although they emphasize poetic qualities such as metaphor, imagery, imagination, and “music.” Since I’ve written verse poetry for so long, it wasn’t hard to transition back to lines, breaks, and stanzas. My prose poems are rhythmic enough to break easily into lines.

DG: How similar or different are the collections from a thematic standpoint?

CHW: I never write poems, verse or prose, with a theme in mind. I relish discovery in my writing, and try to let theme grow organically through the process of writing. If I can create a pleasurable and interesting reading experience, I’m confident that theme will take care of itself. My prose poems, even more than my verse poems, lean heavily into the absurd, but if there’s a thematic difference between the collections, someone else will have to tell me.

DG: Were you working on both manuscripts simultaneously or did you write one and then transition to the other?

CHW: I find it hard to generate new poems while I’m working on new prose, or vice versa. But I worked on both of these collections simultaneously, and had no trouble doing so, since both collections are poetry.

By the way, I never sit down and think, “Now I’m going to write a prose poem.” I discover, in the process of writing and rewriting, that the best way to present a given poem is in prose. Sometimes I switch the same poem back and forth between prose and verse to see which best serves the work. 

DG: You’re now professor emeritus at CSULB. Congratulations on a successful and productive career. Are you using the additional free time to write or will the hobbies you had little chance of pursuing take a bit more center stage?

CHW: I have more time to write now that I’m not teaching. I hope to do more fishing, and to grow better tomatoes this spring. I’m open to new hobbies, but don’t know, at the moment, what they’d be. Maybe I’ll start playing guitar again, or take my photographer-wife’s suggestion to get into photography. She and I are planning trips to Alaska and the Galapagos Islands, which would be good place to take some pics.

DG: What’s one thing you miss about teaching?

CHW: What I miss most is my engagement with students. My students kept me on my game artistically and theoretically. It was also a great pleasure to watch students (for instance, you) thrive, and carve out a significant place in the poetry community. I enjoy, not passing the torch, but helping to light someone else’s torch while I keep running with mine.

DG: Humor has always been at the forefront of your work, yet there’s no all-encompassing definition of what that really constitutes, given that different kinds and styles exist. How would you describe the tone of the two upcoming collections in relation to what you’ve previously done? Something darker, satirical, absurd, observational, political, or an equal combination of them all?

CHW: Again, someone will have to tell me if there are major changes in the tone, humorous or otherwise, of the new books. Like many writers, I try not to analyze my own work. I wrote these newer poems as an older man, so I assume the poems, and any humor they contain, will naturally reflect that fact.

I’m aware that my sense of humor has a satirical bent and a penchant for the absurd, but I like anything that makes me laugh. Humor is one of the saving graces of being human, and an essential part of my voice in person and on the page. Humor helps people cope  with life’s cruelties and vicissitudes, not the least of which is our own mortality. Even fart jokes help. Just ask Chaucer. Humor lifts our spirit as it brings us the bad news.

DG: To what extent was the editing process different (in terms of time or amount) between the prose poems and the verse that you wrote? In other words, did you tend to trust the first impulse more for the former as opposed to the latter, or did the unexpected tend to happen?

CHW: To my knowledge, there was no difference in time or amount of editing. I trust my first impulse in everything I write, but understand that many changes will likely happen between that first impulse and the finished poem. I know, too, that many first impulses will never be more than that: seeds which, for whatever reason, won’t become viable plants. I subscribe to the Sperm Principle of Creativity: send out a horde of tiny wrigglers, and see if any grow up and maybe even win a prize. 

DG: How happy are you with the covers for both collections and how much input did you have in both cases?

CHW: I love the covers of both books. Their excellence is due entirely to the publishers and their choice of cover artists. My own talents are not, to put it mildly, in the visual arts.

In the case of The Elephant of Surprise, I did suggest that an elephant might be involved. I had the right of refusal on both covers, but I loved both of them at first sight. When my wife, who is a visual artist, loved them too, I had no doubt.

DG: Let’s talk more generally about poetry and writing. What’s the last book you read that really captured your attention?

CHW: I’m constantly browsing through fiction and poetry, always glad to find something that I like. A novel called Hollywoodski by Lou Mathews captured my attention this year, as did Percival Everett’s James, which in addition to its own considerable merits, returned me to one of my favorite books of all time, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

I’d rather not list poets whose work captured—or held onto—my attention. I’d be sure to leave out someone important. Anyway, some of those poets already know who they are.

DG: It would be right to assume that you’ll do a fair amount of reading to promote the new collections. What are some of your favorite venues in LA and will you perhaps also travel in addition?

CHW: Places I hope to read this year include Beyond Baroque, Vroman’s Book Store, Chevalier’s Book Store, and Skylight Book Store. I also hope to read a lot on Zoom.

DG: Apart from promoting the new collections, what are you planning to work on or read this year?

CHW: I’m in the process of revising stories for a collection, and also writing new stories. Ditto for poetry. I’m putting together a new collection, and writing new poems. In addition, I hope to get my latest novel into print.

As for reading, I’ll continue to browse eclectically, looking for whatever rings my chimes.

Interview

May 15th, 2022

California Poets Interview Series:

Charles Harper Webb, Poet, Editor, Musician, Psychotherapist

interviewed by David Garyan

DG: Your upcoming novel is scheduled to be released in May 2022. Without divulging too much, can you give readers a glimpse into the project and possibly also discuss the inspiration behind the work?

CHW: The easiest way to answer your first question is to quote the so-called tag-line for the book: “In the fast-paced, sexy, and very scary literary thriller Ursula Lake, a husband and wife trying to save their marriage and a rock musician trying to get his career back on track find big trouble, natural and possibly supernatural, in British Columbia’s spellbinding wilds.”

The book was inspired by several fishing trips I took into northern British Columbia back when I lived in Seattle. It’s gorgeous country, haunting and wild in every sense of the word—the perfect setting for the novel I wanted to write. The plot grew out of the characters, of course, but the setting, too.

DG: Many writers have said that the difference between poetry and fiction is that the former is crafted with precision instruments while the latter requires hammers and wrenches. Why are such distinctions ultimately unhelpful and how did your work as a poet ultimately influence the direction of your prose?

CHW: Writing a good novel requires precision instruments as well as wrenches and sledgehammers. I prefer a running metaphor: sprint versus marathon. Poetry-writing skills can benefit prose, just as prose-writing skills can benefit poetry. I’ve tried to bring both skills to bear on Ursula Lake. I hope that my prose embodies poetic virtues such as rhythm, conciseness, strong imagery, and potent metaphor, just as I hope my poetry makes good use of the devices of narrative, not the least of which is entertainment value.

DG: One of your crowning achievements was collecting and editing work for Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology. Readers will find no shortage of candid, powerful, and brave poems in these pages. Indeed, the anthology feels and reads like a response to much of the tepid “academic” verse written today. Was this your original intention, and, if so, what would you say is wrong with much of the work written today?

CHW: The Stand Up anthology, which has gone through three different editions, began as an attempt to collect poems which I felt sure that my undergraduate students at CSULB would enjoy. “The cardinal sin of art,” I tell my students, “is to bore.” Too many times, beginning readers of poetry find themselves befuddled and stupefied by the poems they come across, even in prestigious books and magazines. Veteran readers, including me, may also feel that way. This, needless to say, isn’t good for readers or writers of poetry. The three Stand Up anthologies were among my many attempts to return poetry to being a pleasure, not a chore. To make it, dare I say, fun.

Too much of the poetry being written today fails, it seems to me, to take into account the reader ‘s pleasure or lack thereof. Except in writing workshops and submissions to one’s mom, no writer is owed the reader’s attention. Attention must be earned. Too many poets seem to forget this.

DG: Very relevant to this discussion is your collection of essays about the state and craft of poetry, published in 2016, under the title A Million MFAs Are Not Enough. On one hand, the title seems to say it all—greater instruction of creative writing won’t revitalize the essence of poetry; on the other hand, you’ve successfully taught craft and aesthetics to students who are now publishing their work in some of the best literary magazines, meaning there are benefits and advantages to this approach. In your view, what are the pros and cons of a degree practically non-existent in mainland Europe—the MFA?

CHW: The title of my book means to imply that a readership of poetry specialists, even a fairly large one, should not be the ultimate goal of poets and poetry. I have wanted, from my beginnings as a poet, to entice the “general reader” back to poetry.

Poets have to learn their craft, and a good MFA program can help serious students move forward, and save them years of trying to re-invent the wheel. Students should realize, though, that having an MFA doesn’t guarantee a good teaching job, or any job at all. Nor can it turn every student, however diligent and well-meaning, into a Shakespeare, a Keats, or even a Colley Cibber. The MFA is simply one possible step on the road to possibly writing good poems.

DG: Before embarking on a teaching career, you were a professional rock musician for over ten years. We’ve already discussed the similarities between poetry and prose, but music, despite being a different genre, seems to be even closer to poetry, mainly due to the former’s melodic characteristics, which the latter has much in common with. It would be interesting to hear more about the nature of your musical career—how did the years of being on stage ultimately make you a better poet?

CHW: I think that music and poetry come from similar places in my psyche. My musical ability translates into what poets call “a good ear.” That means I’m sensitive to what sounds good, whether music or poetry. Many of my poems have a propulsive rhythm that feels very rock-and-roll to me. I try to bring the same high energy to my poems that I brought to music.

As a professional musician, I learned the importance of exciting the audience, and giving them a good time. If a band fails to do that, they either don’t work, or don’t work for long. Poetry is a different story. Poetry which pleases almost no one can flourish in academia if a few influential academics champion it. Since there is a very limited market for poetry, there is no real trial-by-marketplace. A receptive audience has no chance to overrule the arbiters of taste, as can still happen with music and novel. (These arbiters of taste, by the way, often have very peculiar, or at least atypical tastes. I could write a whole essay about the reasons why.) My goal has always been to write poems of high literary value that simultaneously enlighten and entertain.

DG: It’s sensible to assume that music still dictates, to a large extent, the writing of your poetry. Is the same true for fiction, or do you gravitate towards something else?

CHW: I try to bring the same musical qualities to my prose as to my poetry. I want my fiction to possess high energy, and utilize language that can roar, whisper, and sing as it tells stories that give the reader excitement, emotional involvement, insight, and pleasure. In both poetry and fiction, I try to write books that I would like to read.

DG: Will you continue focusing on fiction after the publication of your novel or will you return to poetry, and which one, for you, is more enjoyable to write, and which is more enjoyable to teach?

CHW: I plan to continue to write both poetry and fiction. Because I wrote only poems for so long, I have a buildup of fiction-energy that I’m currently using to fuel short stories and two new novels, as well as a collection of prose poems.

Poetry is more fun for me to write than fiction, because poems come out in an exciting rush and generally take less time to complete. The sprint versus the marathon. Also, if a poem fizzles, it doesn’t cost me a year or more of my writing life. I find great satisfaction, though, in creating a whole world, as one can do in a novel and on a smaller scale, in a short story. I’m fascinated by the human psyche, and enjoy delving deeply into characters, watching a compelling story grow out of their interactions with each other and the world.

Author Bio:

Charles Harper Webb has published twelve books of poetry, including Reading the Water, Liver, Tulip Farms & Leper Colonies, Hot Popsicles, Amplified Dog, Shadow Ball: New and Selected Poems, and Brain Camp. His latest collection, Sidebend World, was published in 2018 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. A Millions MFAs Are Not Enough, a collection of Webb’s essays on the craft of poetry, was published in 2016 by Red Hen Press. Webb’s awards in poetry include the Morse Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Felix Pollock Prize, and the Benjamin Saltman Prize. His poems have appeared in many distinguished journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Tin House, Poets of the New Century, Best American Poetry, and The Pushcart Prize. A former professional rock musician and psychotherapist, he is the editor of Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology, and recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, a fellowship from the Guggenheim foundation, the CSULB Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award, and the CSULB Distinguished Faculty Scholarly and Creative Achievement Award.