What propels speed and puissance in your poems? The banal equivalence of this question already posed by ABC and XYZ would be: what is your sense of a poetic line/diction?

Speed, or how fast or slow the information is delivered, is primarily controlled by line length and by punctuation. Puissance implies a kind of potency, strength, or force that might have to do with expectation and surprise. There probably is a sexual dynamic to that in poems, because some expectations vis-a-vis tension are fulfilled and others not fulfilled. Lately I have been interested in achieving musicality and rhythmic interest in a very long line; to see how long a line can maintain music before it collapses. Interestingly, the difference between poetry and prose is the line break. To increase surprise and to put maximum pressure on the language can be exciting to read and hear.

You’ve mentioned on many occasions that labels are limits “and they’re really meant to kill you.” Do you think this strong association of jazz with your work is imposing as a label for you? Is it limiting your choices?

It’s an important question. I don’t worry about being thought of as a “jazz poet,” though I think I’ve not been pigeonholed that way. I don’t want to repeat myself, but I also find I can write about jazz’s expanded metaphor without writing jazz as subject matter. Hopefully if jazz or anything else limited my choices, I would be able to recognize it and do something else.

Some of your cartoons and political caricatures have also appeared in a literary journal… how has drawing cartoons and sketches played a role in your creative life?

I was always interested in expression, but I was drawing long before I was writing. I think if I hadn’t become a writer I would have become some other kind of artist. I don’t have any technical skill in drawing, but it comes easily to me and it’s fun to do. I have stacks of sketchbooks. I used to draw a lot more, but as I get older and life gets increasingly complex, I draw less and less.

What are your thoughts regarding the poetry scene in New York today?

New York has more poetry happening than probably any other place. You could hear a different literary reading every single night, and you can always find something to hold your attention. There are, of course, different factions within that, but I don’t have a clue what they are. There is a freedom of the mind in New York that you can’t find elsewhere, and there is a sense of the footsteps of others: O’Hara, Hart Crane, Melville, etc. who walked the streets. And there are many universities and colleges with poetry classes being taught all the time. This will hopefully engender a new generation of readers of poetry.

Where are you now?

I’m in my apartment at a North-facing window in Harlem, New York City.

(Laughs) I meant to ask, where are you now in terms of current projects?

For my Ph.D. work in American Studies, I’m writing a cultural history of Newark since the 1967 riots. I’m looking at poetry, photography, and other arts, to find out how these artists (such as Lynda Hull) were viewing Newark at that time during the urban crisis when major voices were saying “abandon the cities.” I am seeking a publisher for my second manuscript, of which all the poems have been published. I’ve begun writing my third manuscript. I also wrote a paper on the meaning of jazz in Francis Ford Coppola’s film, The Conversation (1974).