conducted by Steven Cordova

STEVEN CORDOVA: The first poem in A Question of Gravity and Light refers to St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. The last poem ends with the line, "The bay full of boats. They've come all this way." In between, there are crossings from the Old to the New World, settling ins, searches for sexual fulfillment; and many different kinds of distance—the distance between gay and straight, between being content and dissatisfied, the distance between lovers and the distance between generations; between being faithful and left out in the cold, between being safe and being in danger, even the distance between being alive and dead. For all us who struggle to arrange our books of poems along such clear thematic lines, can you tell us a bit about how you put A Question of Gravity and Light together?

BLAS FALCONER: In the summer of 2006, I wrote "Dead Reckoning," a poem about the ferry ride from Vieques to the main island of Puerto Rico. I realized that the metaphor of crossing spoke to all of the conflicts within the book, regardless of subject matter. So the recurring metaphor, not subject, became the organizing principle, and I saw each poem existing somewhere on that continuum between departure and arrival.

I began to see new and more interesting relationships among the poems, and the way that they spoke to one another influenced the book's narrative tremendously, creating momentum, so to speak. For example, placing a poem about the end of a relationship beside a poem that responds to the death of a loved one allowed me to suggest that the latter was the catalyst for some new insight on the former, on love, without saying so explicitly.

Once I had the general framework for the book, I could see what was missing—in terms of tone or narrative—and wrote those poems. Because of the way that the narratives were woven together, as one conflict reached some sort of resolution, so did the others, so it all happened at once. I found that to be very satisfying.

SC: Many of the poems in the volume, your first, are sparse lyrics that give the reader just enough narrative detail to invoke a mood, an idea, enough information to restate your theme of crossing distances. Others are full-fledged narratives. As you work on a second volume, do you see yourself veering more in one of these directions than the other?

BF: I only have about fifteen poems finished, so it's difficult to say what the dominant style will be. These newer poems tend to be longer and use less narrative. They're more meditative, making a number of leaps to juxtapose scenes. I want to take more risks in the second book, so my writing process has had to change considerably. Before, I would work on one poem for a long time until I felt that it was finished, but now, I'm setting the poems down after writing a few drafts—ten or so. I want to resist the initial urge to take out the edge or roughness. I've come back to some poems months later and done some substantial revising; I'm pretty excited about where they're heading.

Unlike the first book, the poems seem more dependent upon each other. Or I should say that the dependence seems more obvious, as I rely less on narrative, so a subject introduced as a digression in one poem gets picked up later on in the book. Right now, a fine web seems to be forming naturally among the poems, so they become one text, but the connection still feels tenuous, so it's a bit frightening. I'm putting a lot of faith in intuition.

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