Bare Ruined Choirs: Radio KRUU interview link and commentary

My radio interview with local poet Rustin Larson about my poetry and soon-to-be-published book Bare Ruined Choirs has finally been posted on KRUU's website.

I listened to the interview with some curiosity and trepidation. These were my two hopes:

• That I didn't sound like Donald Duck
• That I didn't come off as incredibly stupid

And I can say with some certainty that I don't sound exactly like Donald in the interview--and that I come off at least as intelligent as Donald and his pal Goofy. Whew!

Here is the link to the interview: KRUU interview with Tom Kepler

From the interview:

• Rustin Larson: Do you feel poetry is a journey or an expression of the journey?

• Tom Kepler: I think it's both. I think that if you look at what many poets have done, it is their means of diving within themselves and really exploring who they are. I think very much any artistic endeavor is beginning at some point and then refining through revision if you are a writer or through the manipulations of color or form if you are a physical artist, and then coming to some deeper understanding. I think that is a refining process.

• Tom Kepler: At the same time it is a chance to express who we are. Practicing the TM technique gives me a chance to probably work more on the level of expression rather than the level of using [poetry] as an evolutionary technique. I think that [if you use writing poetry as an evolutionary technique], you end up like [poet Phillip] Lamantia, banging your fists against the portals [windows of perception], wanting to get through, realizing intuitively that there is some further way to go, that language stops at the relative and that the transcendent is beyond that, the field of pure spirituality.

I hope you get a chance to listen to the interview.

Copyright 2010 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved