Our Time Together

 Meet the Poet: Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski                                   

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Hi, Thad! Congratulations on your new collection of short stories Safe Colors! I was drawn to the stories whose titles are related to animals, like ‘Bird-Watching’ and ‘Cat’s Teeth’. I have read those as well as the title story ‘Safe Colors’. Except for ‘Cat’s Teeth’, I feel that the stories are autobiographical. Am I right? Are most of the stories in this book based on true life events? Can you tell us a bit of the background of the creation process?

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Hi, Florence, Thanks for the congrats. All of the stories in the book are autobiographical in that they are based on my experience. But they are called 'fiction' because I select, distill and rearrange events to make dramatic stories. These stories have characters; dialogue; and beginnings, middles, and ends. Some of those elements are missing in real life, so this book isn’t a memoir. I rely on my memory for material, then I write and rewrite until I have something more than a diary.

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In fact, 'Cat’s Teeth' in my book Safe Colors is autobiographical—I had a pet cat who once went wild when he saw the neighbor’s German shepherd. The cat felt threatened by the dog, who was straining at its leash, but I was standing between them, and the cat bit my leg instead of attacking the dog.

 

'No Littering', the story that appears just before 'Cat’s Teeth', is also about my cat—I kept forgetting to change his litter.

 

Animals come in and out of other stories in the book. Because I live in a city, these are ordinary animals: dogs, birds, maybe some squirrels.

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Was the white duck in 'Bird-Watching' your first pet? As a kid, you were not that close to her. It seemed to be a creature from another planet, though at the same time you tried to be kind to her. I find a certain degree of detachment in your work related to animals. Is it intentional?

 

The white duck wasn’t my first pet. Dogs and cats were always around the house where I grew up. We also had an aquarium with tropical fish; the puppies did the best.

 

The duck was brought by my father as a gift. I don’t remember where he got it, and I might be misremembering this episode entirely. The duck was kept in our back yard. There were no other ducks around, and the creature must have been lonely. It became sick and didn’t recover.

 

At the end of the story, my brother and sister and I release the duck into a stream, but this is fictional. It’s what we should have done.

 

If you see a detachment, it is there. But it isn’t intentional. I try to tell things as they are, but perhaps I’m more of an (uninvolved) observer than I should be.

 

'My brother and I carried the duck to the nearby creek; our sister followed ...

She floated slowly away, with her neck extended and her head up.

When she reached a distance from us, she looked like a white flower

bobbing on the surface.' (from 'Bird-Watching', Safe Colors)

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These short stories remind me of the prose poems you submitted to us for Issue 9. You wrote from a bottom dog’s and a horse’s perspectives. Interesting. Was that your first time writing from an animal’s perspective? Why a bottom dog and a stubborn (strong-willed?) horse?

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I don’t often write from an animal’s perspective, but those pieces in Issue 9 of Pause for Paws aren’t the first time I did so. The piece written from the dog’s point of view came from a prompt for my workshop: Write about this title, 'The War Between Cats and Dogs'. The idea was to write about something unfamiliar to you, but to use what you know to create a story. I talked about the 'war' from a lowly dog’s point of view.

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As for the piece from the horse’s perspective, I was thinking of the phrase 'The horse is out of the barn'—once something is out in the open, you can’t hide it anymore. But I was also interested in the literal meaning of the phrase. Why would a horse want to leave a barn? I combined those ideas with the fact that I am a Horse on the Chinese zodiac.

 

I also wrote a piece from a baby kangaroo’s perspective. This character testifies in a 'kangaroo court'. That piece isn’t in any of my books.

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So you are both a poet and a story writer. I have always been amazed by poets who can write stories. How can you do that? Is there a constant switch in the way of thinking?

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I think poetry and fiction are separate, yet they overlap. A story usually has a plotline—events unfold, the stakes rise, and there is a resolution. A poem is often an expression of a strong feeling, with no storyline.

 

That said, there are poetic stories, and there are story-like poems. I work in the space between the two. A thought or fragment can become a poem or a story. I start with an image, a memory, or an overheard conversation and see where it goes. I work from the inside out. The shape comes later.

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Of course, the process doesn’t always go this way. A thought or fragment can remain just that—incomplete. I can come back to it, or I can move on.

 

Which do you spend more time on, poetry or fiction?

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I spend more time on fiction, because it’s what I studied. I was in the fiction section of the graduate Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

 

I was around writers of all sorts during my college years, beginning at Cornell University. I enjoyed listening to visiting poets, going to open mics, trying out my own stuff.

 

I majored in fine arts as an undergrad, but I was trying to write prose and poetry all along.

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I will always remember you are the first one who submitted your work to Pause for Paws. I am grateful for that. The poems are about your pet turtle. How is she now?

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I’m grateful you accepted my poems for Pause for Paws! Our pet turtle is doing well. My wife got the turtle for our daughter about sixteen years ago. The turtle, a red-eared slider, was in a pet store and available for free. She was fully grown when we got her, so we don’t know how old she is. She could be around twenty.

 

She eats packaged food (including mealworms), and fresh grapes. She basks when the sunlight hits her aquarium, and she splashes when she is hungry. We’ve become attached to her.

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Had you been writing about animals prior to those poems? What made you write your first animal poem?

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Yes, I’ve been writing about animals ever since I can remember. When I was a teenager, I wrote a poem about a housefly that was buzzing around my bedroom. The poem was called 'The Crazy Fly'. The fly wasn’t crazy. It was doing what flies do. But it was driving me crazy. That poem is in my first book of poems, 'Border Crossings'.

 

I wrote about a dog, our family dog, early on, but I had a teacher who didn’t like those pieces. I applied for a workshop with that teacher after I finished college, and he turned me down. When I asked him why, he said, 'Well, your story had a dog in it.”

 

I’ve also written about butterflies, spiders, a skunk, bears, deer, monkeys, seagulls, seals, mice, and other animals I’m forgetting. Most of these were encountered on visits to where I grew up, or on my travels. But the mice were right here where I live.

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'I wonder if these early-morning cries

have come across the water

and echoed off a building,

so I walk to an open alley

and look out at the dark ocean,

but the noises don't come again.

...

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A child is swinging. The swing chain

is rubbing against its metal anchor.' (from 'Seal Sounds', Tricks of Light)

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You have written about wild animals in your neighbourhood too. The poems published in Issue 6 show your keen observation. Have you been living in close contact with nature and observing animals is one of your hobbies?

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Those poems in the sixth issue were written about animal sightings in various places. Not necessarily my neighborhood in New York. You won’t often see a fox or an osprey here. You will, however, see many animal tracks when snow covers the ground: the footprints of pigeons and squirrels, mainly.

 

I get excited whenever I see a black squirrel in the park where I frequently ride my bicycle. Black squirrels, however, aren’t so rare, and I’m sure there are many black squirrels in Hong Kong. I haven’t seen a white squirrel yet.

 

I’m interested in nature because I grew up in the country. I pay attention to both plants and animals whenever I walk outside.

 

What’s next? Are you working on your next poetry book? 

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I’m always working on my next book. I have poetry manuscript and a prose manuscript, and I work alternately on each. I’m not sure how they will take shape, or when they will be finished. But, in that vein, nothing is ever finished, even after it comes out in book form. It just leaves your hands.