Interview with Poet Anthony Cappo on 'My Bedside Radio'

BY JOANNA C. VALENTE

If there was ever a poet who was dedicated to craft, it would be Anthony Cappo. Recently, his first chapbook “My Bedside Radio,” was published by Deadly Chaps Press--which is a collection that explores the nuances of family dynamics, and what happens when the family structure disintegrates. What makes the collection so unique is the fact that the poems rely on music, particularly '70s music, as a way to reflect the speaker's own mental state and time period.

I was lucky enough to interview him on craft, how he chose the soundtrack, and more:

JV: Why did you choose to tell the story through songs and popular music of your childhood? How did you actually choose the songs?

AC: Well, it kind of started accidentally. The first poem was one that didn’t even mention a song.  But it was a very early childhood memory of (mis)hearing a radio news report about guerillas escaping prison. I guess that got me in an early childhood space and thinking about the radio and all the songs I remembered listening to. Music has always been very important to me, and song lyrics and childhood memories are always popping up in my poems anyway. So, I started writing about memories directly associated with certain songs, and soon, I had a number of poems like that. Then, I realized it was a theme and just kind of went with it. After a couple of months, I had a draft of a chapbook-length work.

I didn’t choose the songs in any organized way. I just thought about songs that were important to me at the time. And I’m not in any way saying that all of these are good songs, or are ones I would choose to listen to now! But they were important or memorable to me then, and they really brought back the feelings of growing up. Some of the songs are associated with very specific memories, and others kind of more evocatively brought me back to certain places or times.

What is your writing and editing process like? I know you value editing tremendously. Would you say the poems come alive more after the editing process? How do you know when a poem is done? 

I’m a big editor of my work. I looked back on the early drafts of these poems and some are so different from the final versions, but one or two are surprisingly close. In general, I like to write as much as I can in the first draft, which can sometimes be as little as one or two lines if I’m rushing off to work in the morning. Then, after I’ve written a full first draft, I read it over, and look for things that are unclear or words or images that fall flat. And from there it’s just a process of chiseling away. After I feel like I’ve gotten as far as I can with the poem, I put it away for a while. Eventually, I come back to it and tighten it up even more.

I really do liken writing poetry to sculpting—chipping away until I feel like I’ve arrived at the “essential poem.” I know the poem’s done when some time has passed and I feel like there’s nothing else I can do to make it better—the rhythm fits, the images are interesting, and there aren’t any excess or leaden words. But I work very slowly; it can take months to get to that point and even then, I’m always looking to change a word here and there. I follow the old Orson Welles ad line: “We will sell no wine before its time”!

 Other than other writing, what influenced and inspired you during this time?

I went back and listened to some of the songs I remembered. I was listening to a lot of ‘70s songs on YouTube during this period. Not exclusively, of course, but I was allowing myself to indulge in a little nostalgia. 

But really, I’ve been blessed (and cursed, haha) with a really good memory and have vivid recall of many things that happened during my childhood. And because I did listen to music so much during this period (and yes, I did have a bedside radio) it was easy to recall songs that went with the memories, and vice versa.

On the subject of writing honestly about childhood and family secrets, I’ve always been in awe of Louise Gluck’s “Ararat.” I read that book literally with my jaw open, thinking I can’t believe she just wrote about that. In some ways, I’d say that book was a permission-giver.

What part of you writes your poems? What are your obsessions?

My poor little battered heart! But seriously, I try to suppress intellectuality and rationality as much as I can when I’m writing first drafts. For me, poems are primarily an emotional expression (“Since feeling is first”!) and that’s what I want to convey. But, of course, on revision the head enters the picture in a much bigger way. 

Obsessions?  Well, I read an article once that recommended that in ordering a manuscript it was a good idea to group poems into different themes. I did this with mine and one of the biggest themes was “personality disintegration,” so there’s that. But I also write a lot about the search for love and intimacy/loneliness, God/childhood religiosity, and, of course, music and childhood memories.

 What are you working on now? What's a dream project for you?

I’m working on revising a full-length manuscript that started out as my MFA thesis, but has been through several iterations since. I’ve sent it out, to no success, and I really want to get it right. So I’m in the process of picking off my darlings, replacing them with newer work, and trying to come up with a manuscript that reflects the best work I’ve written.

I’ve also started on what might become another chapbook, which features kind of an alter ego character through whom I can make light of my obsessions and misadventures. I’ve started out on a handful of poems, but have been largely bogged down at the moment with other things.  But I plan to get back to them. Mostly, because they’re so much fun to write.

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Anthony Cappo is a poet living and working in New York City.  His poems have appeared in Prelude, Stone Highway Review, Connotation Press – An Online Artifact, Pine Hills Review, Yes Poetry, and other publications. His chapbook, “My Bedside Radio,” is published by Deadly Chaps Press.  Anthony received his M.F.A in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. 

Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (forthcoming 2016, ELJ Publications) & Xenos (forthcoming 2017, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the chief editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Huffington Post, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She has lead workshops at Brooklyn Poets.

The Death of the Female Friendship

BY ALAINA LEARY

This piece is part of the Relationship Issue. Read more here.

It’s happening again. That’s what I remember thinking as I sat across from my best friend on her Queen-sized bed and listened to her describe her ex. I was starting to have feelings for my closest female friend.

This was a pattern I knew well, and I’d been holding my breath that it wouldn’t happen again. I was incapable of having a best friend. I fell in love with all of them. I loved every moment that came before—long nights, sitting up in the dark, telling our shittiest life stories back and forth without judgment; laughing at the same inside jokes over and over again; catching glimpses of one another and understanding what was being felt without a single word.

It was everything that happened afterward that haunted me: the death of the friendship. I just wasn’t meant to have a best friend, I figured.

About a month ago, I read a fantastic personal essay called “I’m Having a Friendship Affair,” in New York Magazine’s The Cut, and I almost had my answer. Almost. Somewhere in the middle of the essay, the writer has an identity crises and wonders, “Am I into women?” and her friend urges her to think about whether she wants to have oral sex with a chick. No, she doesn’t. The writer shakes her head and moves on with her life.

While I appreciated so many of the complexities of female friendship described in that essay, they didn’t quite add up to my lived experience. When I say I’ve fallen in love with my last four best female friends, I mean it. And I hate that I do.

Fast forward to the point where my best friend at the time, Macey, learned about my feelings for her. This was usually the beginning of the end in my vicious friend cycle. If the friend found out, she was usually not into girls, or even just not into me in that way. I’d apologize, so would she, and we’d stay friends—but not quite in the same way. Once I’d bared every vulnerable part of myself to someone and then fallen in love, I couldn’t go back from that. The friendship would remain, but we’d never get back those eye-catching moments in a crowd where we knew one another’s thoughts. I was always guarded.

To my surprise, this best friend liked me back. And suddenly everything I knew had changed.

Before, I’d always been a witty cynic, the kind of person who didn’t quite believe in fate, and definitely did not believe in relationships. I grew up with separated parents, who took their turns raising me (my mom, before she died, and my dad, after) and as a result, had internalized that independent, single-forever mindset.

For the next few years, my best friend and I carved out what it meant to be dating from the ashes of our friendship. I was surprised to find that our best friendship didn’t die. Even under the pressures of dating—sex, romance, coming out, transitioning to college, choosing a career path, jealousy, competition—our friendship was what kept us steady. If anything, our friendship was the priority. Sometimes, I’d be in the middle of fighting with her, stubbornly unwilling to give up my perspective, and then I’d step back. Would I fight with my best friend about this? No. And we’d laugh, and turn on American Horror Story with our roommates and laugh some more.

Being best friends first meant some weird things. It meant we talked about hot guys still, especially if they were actors or fictional characters. We claimed ‘boyfriends’ and we had a few that we shared—our ‘polyamorous’ ones, if you will, that we both would not let go of. It took us a little longer to talk about other hot girls, but we got there, too. We had all the strange, in-depth discussions that friends would have, but we altered them. Who would you date out of all our friends, if I weren’t an option and you had to pick? What if it were just sex, who would you pick then? Our answers varied depending on the day, but we always ended up in a heap and a fit of laughter, out-of-breath.

A few years into our relationship, my first new female best friend entered my life. I knew what was happening as soon as it started. She and I took a day trip to visit a nearby college and we talked the entire ride. We couldn’t shut up. I stayed over her house that night, in her old bunk bed from childhood, and we passed stories back and forth, her on the bottom bunk, me on the top. I didn’t doze off until past four in the morning.

The next morning, the fear was prominent: would I fall in love with my new best friend? Was this inevitable? Would I slowly fall out of love with my girlfriend, all the while falling for my very straight, very unavailable new closest friend?

Six months passed, and then a year. My best friend was beautiful: she had thick, blonde hair and big brown eyes. She was stubborn, but knew how to speak her mind. She was a feminist with a stark point of view. She was argumentative and funny, with a silly streak that emerged at the most random of times. One night, we spend hours looking up videos of spiders and purposefully trying to freak ourselves out, and then hiding under the covers. I was so certain it would happen again, just like it always did, as I slowly stripped away the layers of my soul to her.

When it didn’t happen, I was both relieved and confused. This was how it felt, I suddenly knew, to have a best friend without the romantic feelings lingering in the background, calling for the death of my female friendship. I didn’t dig a grave for this one. As time wore on, naturally, my best friend and my girlfriend also became close. Since my girlfriend was also my best friend, we lacked the normal third-wheel awkwardness when we spent time with others. It seemed more like a group of best girl friends than one single woman and a couple.

I still consider myself cursed to fall for my friends, but maybe the falling isn’t always a trap. It isn’t always a death sentence. In fact, it started to happen with a best friend while I was in college. And I was already in love with my girlfriend, so my immediate response was, “Is this emotional cheating? Is our relationship over?”

Friendship and love are complicated. How do we define them? If I love someone and I want to protect them with my whole heart, and I also find them aesthetically pleasing, is that romantic love? Or is it only love if I want to have sex with them? Or if I want to marry them? Is it only love if I would actually break up with my girlfriend—with my best friend, my soul mate—to be with them?

I loved my girlfriend, and I loved my best friend. But how could I know if I was in love with her? In the most basic sense of the word, I was. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. But I didn’t imagine the things you’re supposed to imagine, the signs that tell you, “This is definitely romantic love.” I didn’t imagine owning a house together or having a child. I just knew that I always wanted her to be in my life. She mattered.

Did I have to give up my friendship? Was it wrong to want more than just one person in my life forever? Did this make me a cheater, or polyamorous? We’re not taught, especially as women, that we’re allowed to prioritize more than one person in our lives. For the most part, after we settle into committed relationships and get married, we make decisions with our romantic partners. How to live, where to work, what car to buy, how many cats to have—those are all questions we examine with our spouses. But why do we limit our lives in this way? Why couldn’t I factor my best friend in, or any of my friends in? Why couldn’t I want to spend the rest of my life with someone, but not want to sleep with them or to open a mutual IRA?

According to society’s rules, I was either in love with my best friend or not. I was either in love with my girlfriend or not. But the truth is that it’s more complicated than that. The lines between friendship and romantic love are thinner than I imagined they could be, because so many of my close friends are beautiful. And I love them. And I want to factor them in, and make decisions in consideration of them, even though all the usual rules don’t apply.

Did I end up having to choose between a friend and my girlfriend? No. I chose myself. I chose to live my life in a way that doesn’t have a pre-existing formula. My girlfriend and I make major decisions together, but I factor my friends in, or at least the ones who matter. I factor her family and my family in. And our relationship is never just the two of us. It’s the two of us, plus our two adopted cats, plus our hamster, plus our friends and families, plus our celebrity and fictional crushes. It’s the two of us, plus everyone else who matters.

If I fall in love with my female best friends now—and I do, often, usually in the smallest moments, like when I catch them crying or I see them defending someone else—there is no mourning period. It doesn’t feel like I’m standing on a cliff; it feels like I’m jumping into darkness and then landing, and then jumping again, and the cycle repeats.

My girlfriend and I entered a weird new dimension when we started dating. We broke all the rules. We made up our own rules, about how we love each other, how we love other people, how we love the world. Sometimes, we even laugh at other couples—not because we think they’re doing a single thing wrong, but because we have no idea what we’re doing. There’s no script for how to love someone with your whole soul as a best friend, and then slowly introduce physical romance, sex, long-term commitment, sharing finances, living together, making joint decisions, adopting cats, and eventually, raising kids, into that relationship. We redefined what it means to be in love with each other, and in doing so, I broke the curse. 

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Alaina Leary is a native Bostonian currently completing her MA in Publishing and Writing at Emerson College. She's also working as an editor and social media designer for several brands and publications. Her work has been published in Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Marie Claire, BUST Magazine, Good Housekeeping, AfterEllen, Her Campus, Ravishly, The Mighty, and others. When she's not busy playing around with words, she spends her time surrounded by her two cats, Blue and Gansey, and at the beach with her girlfriend. She can often be found re-reading her favorite books, watching Gilmore Girls, and covering everything in glitter. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter @alainaskeys. 

Polyamory Commands Intimacy, Not Just a Fling

BY GHIA VITALE

This piece is part of the Relationship Issue. Read more here.

As someone who has been polyamorous for seven out of the 11 years I’ve been with my partner, I can say with utmost certainty that polyamory is not an experiment for me.

It is the path in life my heart wandered down and never turned back. And suddenly, the mainstream dating world knows about polyamory. Now that I can simply check off the “polyamorous” box in an OkCupid profile, I am still hesitant to dip my toe into the icy waters of online dating.

One of their most recent additions is a feature that allows you to link your account to a partner’s account in order to let users know whom you’re currently dating on the site. It’s actually no better than how Facebook only lets you be in one relationship. In other words, to Hell with the rest of your lovers if you’re poly because according to these websites, only one of them is worth mentioning. The threesome requests were frequent enough when I confessed that I was bisexual in my profile. I’m worried that no matter how much I stress that I’m not looking for flings, that’s all others seem to want me for. That’s how it went in the past, anyway.

One of my biggest hang-ups about poly dating is the same issue other experienced poly people struggle with: the risk of becoming collateral damage in someone else’s quest for self-discovery, novelty, freedom, and most importantly, love. A recent spike in popularity has saturated the poly community with widespread interest. That means the poly-curious population is increasing. While that might mean there’s more to love, it also means there’s more people there to mess it up. Many newbies embark upon their poly journey with pure intentions; others mistake our permanent lifestyle for whatever they wish would fulfill their temporary and misguided desires. How do I know their desires are misguided? I know this because I’ve been directly implicated in these personal quests for self-fulfillment that end in nothing except breakups.

I let everyone know that polyamory is the only way I roll. While people are more than happy to enjoy my company as a fling, the idea of having multiple significant others that are actually significant is beyond most people’s comprehension and it seeps through their behavior. Once I let them know there’s zero chance of a monogamous future happening (or even a monogamish one), the tone of our interaction change drastically. All of the sudden, our relationship is no longer headed in any kind of committal direction and I lose my viability as a “serious” partner whom they envision a future with. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not pressing for commitment before it’s appropriate. I’m all about free love and I believe each relationship being a unique expression of love. But even though we’ll both claim we want poly relationships, I’m the only person who means it. What they actually mean is that they want to indulge in multiple relationships at once without strings attached. That’s fine, but that’s not polyamory.

It’s always different variations of the same scenario: I meet someone who claims to be poly-curious, poly-friendly, or “open to being with a poly partner.” Then they realize they’re not as poly as they thought they were, that they just wanted to date around and explore before meeting a monogamous partner. Whether or not I consented to this involvement never mattered, so I’ve learned how to recognize the unique smell of this trainwreck smoke so I don’t have to stand the heat later on. I understand that these people usually mess up because they don’t know better. As the person who’s actually poly, I basically have to be the person who knows better. It just sucks to become seriously invested in someone because they seemed to say the right things at the right times and gave you the impression that polyamory was a long-term consideration for them. It no longer felt like a carpet being pulled from beneath me once I developed a healthy sense of paranoia about it. Even educating these people about poly doesn’t seem to make them go back into the hookup culture that better suits their yearnings.

Polyamory is about maintaining multiple relationships, not just the freedom to have as many flings. Too many people enter polyamory with the “playing the field” mindset. They’re more than happy to practice polyamory, but never actually be polyamorous. If they were actually living polyamory as opposed to practicing it, they would see polyamory as a part of their future rather than a quick fix. That’s just the problem: They don’t see polyamory as a part of their future. They only see polyamory as a situational means to their temporary ends. Yes, polyamory absolves you from having to choose 1 person over another, but there’s so much more to it than that. Polyamory is far more about building and maintaining connections than it is about driveby romances and hooking up.

As a polyamorous person, I want more than a good time. I want love.

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Ghia Vitale is a writer from Long Island. She graduated from Purchase College with a BA in literature as well as minors in psychology and sociology. She has written for Ravishly and Quail Bell Magazine.

Here Are Some Women Directors Whose Beautiful Work Deserves More Love

CURATED BY EMMA EDEN RAMOS

Each Women’s History Month, The Library of Congress, The National Archives and Records Administration, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Gallery of Art, The National Park Service, The Smithsonian Institution, and other institutes pay homage to pioneers in The Women’s Movement. As this celebratory month just came to a close, we want to acknowledge a group of female artists who deserve (more) recognition and (more) admiration. So, given that it's Friday today (which means you can Netflix ALL weekend), we are proud to offer you, our lovely readers, a “playlist” of films directed by women. Put these films on your queueor Amazon wish-list. You won’t regret it. Trust us.

Agnès Varda: Cléo from 5 to 7

"I'm too good for men."

Sally Potter: Orlando

Orlando: "If I were a man...I might choose not to risk my life for an uncertain cause. I might think that freedom won by death is not worth having. In fact..."

High Art Trailer 1998 Director: Lisa Cholodenko Starring: Ally Sheedy, Patricia Clarkson, Radha Mitchell, Tammy Grimes, Gabriel Mann, Official Content From Universal Pictures Lucy Berliner, a once famous photographer, finds her career has been revitalized when she meets Syd, a beautiful young assistant editor for a prestigious photography magazine.

Agnieszka Holland: Copying Beethoven

"Forgive me. I may be a woman, but I am the best student."

Faces of Classical Music http://facesofclassicalmusic.blogspot.gr/ * Copying Beethoven (2006) - Trailer A film by Agnieszka Holland A fictionalised exploration of Beethoven's life in his final days working on his Ninth Symphony. It is 1824. Beethoven is racing to finish his new symphony.

Ava DuVernay: Selma

"Our lives are not fully lived if we're not willing to die for those we love, for what we believe."

Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUn Like us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73 Follow us on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/1ghOWmt Selma Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Oprah Winfrey, Cuba Gooding Jr.

Lisa Cholodenko: High Art

"I'm Greta. I live for Lucy... I mean, I live here, with Lucy."

High Art Trailer 1998 Director: Lisa Cholodenko Starring: Ally Sheedy, Patricia Clarkson, Radha Mitchell, Tammy Grimes, Gabriel Mann, Official Content From Universal Pictures Lucy Berliner, a once famous photographer, finds her career has been revitalized when she meets Syd, a beautiful young assistant editor for a prestigious photography magazine.

Laurie Collyer: Sherrybaby

"From the ages of 16 to 22, heroin was the love of my life."

Informace o filmu na http://www.sms.cz/film/sherrybaby Drama, USA, 2006, 96 min. Režie: Laurie Collyer Hrají: Maggie Gyllenhaalová, Michelle Hurstová, Sandra Rodríguezová, Anna Simpsonová, Giancarlo Esposito, Caroline Clayová, Rio Hackford, Brad William Henke, Vivianne Bucherová, Bridget Barkanová, Ryan Simpkinsová, Stephen Peabody, Danny Trejo, Cassidy Hinkleová, Sam Bottoms, Kate Burtonová, Michael Dillon, Helen Coxeová, Jayden Vargas, Heather Schachtová, J.D.

Deborah Kampmeier: Hounddog

“If you don’t you keep on singing, keep on feeling the spirit. If your dreams go underground for a while, buried so deep in the earth so they can survive, you just keep feeling the spirit even in the dark.”

Official Theatrical Trailer of "HOUNDDOG" starring DAKOTA FANNING, ROBIN WRIGHT-PENN, DAVID MORSE and PIPER LAURIE. Directed by Deborah Kampmeier, and produced by Kampmeier, Scott Franklin, Jen Gatien, the Motion Picture Group, Deerjen Productions, Full Moon Films, etc. Released to theaters by Empire Film Group, beginning Sept.

Leah Meyerhoff: I Believe in Unicorns

“I have so much to say… but I don’t know where to start. Maybe when I learn how to breath.. I’ll know how to speak."

Web: http://blogdecineindie.com/ Tráiler Subtitulado en Español de la película 'I Believe in Unicorns'. Una de las últimas películas en ser rodadas en formato de película de 16mm. Escrita y dirigida por Leah Meyerhoff. Protagonizada por Natalia Dyer, Peter Vack & Amy Seimetz.

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Emma Eden Ramos is a writer from New York City. Her middle grade novella titled The Realm of the Lost was published in 2012 by MuseItUp Publishing. Her short stories have appeared in Stories for Children Magazine, The Legendary, The Citron Review, BlazeVOX Journal, and other journals. Ramos’ novelette, "Where the Children Play," was included in Resilience: Stories, Poems, Essays, Words for LGBT Teens, edited by Eric Nguyen. Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems (Heavy Hands Ink, 2011), Ramos’ first poetry chapbook, was shortlisted for the 2011 Independent Literary Award in Poetry. Still, At Your Door: A Fictional Memoir (Writers AMuse Me Publishing, 2014) is Ramos' third book.