Dennis Ward Stiles

On drinking Manhattans, enjoying reading more than writing

Dennis Ward Stiles is a poet with humor and passion. While he's not a Charleston native (he grew up on a farm in Illinois), he does say that he and his wife "like it here even more than we liked living in Paris, and that's saying a lot."

Stiles' newest full-length collection can be purchased at www.mainstreetrag.com, and his older work can be purchased at www.puddinghouse.com.

To see him in person, mark down his reading with the Poetry Society April 9.

Q: Tell me about your latest collection, "The Fire in Which We Burn," which was published in February.

A: The title comes from a Delmore Schwartz line, "Time is the fire in which we burn." There are farm poems, travel poems, landscape poems, dream poems. But the integrating theme is death. I've always been fascinated by the brevity of life and the totality of death, how every individual creature from cockroach to homecoming queen has just a blink of light between two great masses of oblivion. A lot of my work is bleak. The joy -- I hope it shines through -- comes from creating wickedly honest images.

Q: How does your poetry-writing process work?

A: I write sporadically, with little in the way of routine or process. I like to have a couple drinks (Manhattans, usually), then let the imagination churn out some odd lines or short poetic bursts. I work these over later, in the light of day, developing stanzas and eventual whole poems. I revise a lot. Much of my published work has grown from 30 or more false starts. The truth is, I don't much like to write. I'd rather read. That's a problem.

Q: What are you currently working on?

A: Right now, I'm pulling together a book-length collection of word-play poems. Teaching languages has made me sensitive to the multiple meanings that cling to a single word, and to the absurdity of certain phrases when one takes them literally. Think of "flush," for example, or "puttin' on the dog." It's great fun to toy with language tongue-in-cheek and come up with witty little concoctions.

Q: Who are your three favorite poets, and why?

A: My favorite poet is Richard Shelton. He's from the Southwest, not too well-known here. I would describe him as a desert surrealist. Wonderful, clear lines, like the air in that part of the country.

His poem, "History," brings me a special surge of pleasure every time I read it. Just a whisker behind I'd name Anne Sexton. I find her entire body of work fascinating. She wrote from the crumbling edge of sanity, and could stick her tongue out at God and death both.

Another whisker back: David Wagoner. He's a brilliant craftsman who has been writing prolifically for over 50 years without a break in stride or a lapse in imagination.

Q: What advice would you offer amateur writers?

A: My advice to wannabes is simple: read a lot, join a writers' group, subscribe to Poets & Writers, and try Maker's Mark if you don't like Wild Turkey in your Manhattans.