I lose control on the page

November 04, 2014 A: I try to be honest, to write about what needs to be [written about]. Writing is an opportunity not to repress and I try to take advantage of this opportunity. What’s decorative doesn’t interest me, excessive verbiage, cuteness, what’s fashionable. I’m interested in speaking about darkness; I don’t want to fall asleep on my watch. . . It’s imperative.  And even when the poems deal with sweetness, it’s important to understand what sweetness is, its characteristics. The names of partners fall into categories: some are fictive and some are real.

In recent years, Haimovich has shifted back and forth from writing poetry in Hebrew that appeared in a range of Israeli journals, to writing in English which led to appearances at international poetry festivals in Canada and the U.S. 
 
Q: What is the inner, border crossing significance of ‘being a poet’?
 
A.: I’m a poet every place I go. There’s no way to take this baggage away from me. I didn’t choose to be a poet. I’ve been writing since first grade. It’s something I was even embarrassed by. I write in secret. A pen and notebook are like crutches. Over the years, they change and there is an ability to travel farther [with them], towards beauty.
   
The pornographer in me must cease.
If only because I’m an audience of one…
or perhaps but, I simply love to pornograph
the way a cripple loves his crutches
   
Q: Is it important to you that people discuss your poetry here?
 
A:  Of course. You put out a book and think your life will change but it doesn’t. Poetry is meant to be read, but in Israel it isn’t. It’s not spoken about.
 
. . .
 
Q: What price are you willing to pay in the service of your poetry?
 
A: First of all there’s the monetary price I pay to publish my books (a similar fate that awaits nearly every Hebrew poet). Beyond this, I lose control on the page. The losses in my first book were somewhat coded. In the second I wrote that I’m an action hero hanging over the page and sliding. What makes this situation tolerable is the beauty of poetry but sometimes the poems are cruel. In the third book I wrote a lot about love and that helped me, but there’s also something frightening about its power. I’m giving my all here, also in comparison with previous books. The name of the book, My Forces’ Fire, is related to ‘friendly fire’, when troops [mistakenly] shoot at their own soldiers. In this way I leave myself and return to myself, fearless, in order to burn. In my last book  the poems also discuss alienation in the face of a joyful feeling such as love.
 
Q: Which poets do you admire or have influenced you? Do you write out of a particular poetic sensibility? Free verse is dominant in your work and you almost never use  classic, well-known forms.
 
A: I like Toni Morrison’s prose, and in Israel, [poets] Agi Mishol, Tuvia Ruebner and Nurit Zarchi. In contrast with Mishol and Zarchi, who have a language of imagination, I’m very direct. Yitzhak Laor is a poet who moves me at times; he’s generally a great poet in my eyes. This is poetry that is cruel to the writer and struggles against delicacy, which can be very moving. And sometimes barbaric. The lack of form in my poems is part of my striving against the bourgeois conception that a poem is an attempt to give form to that which has none. I prefer to leave poems still bleeding. On the other hand, I do take musicality into account. If I rhyme, that’s to sweeten something, but this is essentially a bleeding trap for the reader. After all, rhymes come from lullabies of mothers saying horrible things about fathers who left for work or are on ships on the high seas.
 
. . .
 
Poetry for me is something you’re given and give to others. I try to make mine as precise and concentrated and finely tuned as possible.