Tombstones Interview, October 10, 2009

Don Burness’ newest collection of lyrics is a tribute to those who have passed, and also a tribute to the role of language in celebrating the life before the death, in invoking the spirits in this world and the next to carry forth these individual souls, in fixing a memory that can travel farther than an actual tombstone, and in reflecting the dualism of internal grief and praise. Burness says, “These people come from many lands; they died young and old and all of them enriched me.” The following is an interview conducted by mail (yes, regular post office-type mail) between the author and publisher.

Your new collection consists of eulogies, fitting tributes to each individual—man, woman, dog. How do you see yourself being eulogized? The ending poem? By someone else?

As for being eulogized, I’ve written an elegy for myself! (I have sent it [the closing poem in Tombstones] to my brother asking that it be read at my funeral.) Other poets have done this, poets like Sá de Carnciro, an excellent 20th century Portuguese poet. I’d hope, as well, maybe some of my literary friends might say something. I sure don’t want a banal, sentimental good-bye. I’m just one person who, like so many, lived loving and respecting words and wanting the world to be better than it is.

What is your writing process? You seem to be more often than not an occasional poet: how do you move from the occasion, or subject, to the first line? Is this something you are moved to do immediately, or years later? What’s the difference in composition for each?

A poem calls, words come from some mysterious and holy place. Words, sounds of words. The color of words and images as well just come, but the moment must be right. Some poems end up far different from where I started. If I can’t complete a poem within 40 minutes, I know it’s a failure—flat, lifeless. Sometimes it takes 20 years for a poem to burst out of its shell, but most often there is an intense emotional flowering and— voilà—a poem is born. Let me add the same is true for painting. If I paint without real emotion, the result is awful, dead, uninteresting.

There is an incantatory quality to many of these poems: would you prefer to be known, or heard, as a performer of these poems? Is there something you feel is missed by these going out as texts on the page?

I taught African literature for years, read volumes of poetry, and incantation is an element very common to African poetry. Of course the poetry is recited to a community. I like to think the poems are at least as rich an experience for the “listener” as reading the poem is for the “reader.”

Why dachshunds?

There is a society, all over the world, of dachshund lovers. I’m just one of them who happen to paint dachshunds, draw dachshunds, and write about dachshunds. But I love birds too and think of myself as an itinerant singer of birds as well. Henry James, C.K. Chesterton, Matthew Arnold, Picasso, Andy Warhol, E.B. White all had dachshunds. I’m drunk on the greatness of dachshunds. I love most dogs, but dachshunds stand alone as the essence of what is best about dogs.