Award-winning poets and founding editors of the groundbreaking journal, New American Writing, Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover talk with Roxi Power about their most recent books from MadHat Press and how poetry canreveal then reconstitute the brokenness of the world.  Hoover says of writing poetry, “You have to purposefully break a few dishes along the way. The brokenness and emotional force bring the pieces back together.”   

Chernoff, writing under the shadow of Covid, says, “We stand at the margins of this bustling, often cruel but beautiful world and, in a way, the poem writes itself because the world gives us conditions to think about at the same time—the ecology of the world, governments falling apart, etc.  It’s happening to all of us.  Part of being a writer is simply noticing the moment you’re in, personalizing and capturing it in a way that only your particular words at this particular time can do.”

These beloved Bay Area poets collage philosophy, film, history, and—in Hoover’s newest work—Old Testament stories and cadences in poems that redesign rather than restore theshattered surfaces of the world in new forms—like poetic wabi-sabi.  

Peter Johnson recently called Chernoff the most important contemporary prose poet born during his generation. Marjorie Perloff wrote of Paul Hoover’s most recent book, “He’s atthe top of his game.”  Tune into this interview with two of the most articulate poets about their own craft.  It’s part 1 of a two-part interview.  More to come! 

 Maxine Chernoff is professor emeritus of creative writing at San Francisco State University. She is the author of 19 books of poetry and six of fiction, including recent collections from MadHat Press:  Light and Clay: New and Selected Poems (2023) and Under the Music: Collected Prose Poems (2019).  She is a recipient of a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry and, along with Paul Hoover, the 2009 PEN Translation Award for their translation of The Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin. In 2016 she was a visiting writer at the American Academy in Rome. A former editor of New American Writing, she lives in Mill Valley. 

 Paul Hoover is the author of over a dozen collections of poetry; his most recent book of poetry is O, and Green: New and Selected Poems (MadHat Press, 2021). He has also published a collection of essays and a novel, and translated or co-translated a few books, including Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry.  Founding and current Editor of theliterary annual, New American Writing–now published by MadHat Press–and two editions of the indispensable Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, Hooverteaches at San Francisco State University.  He’s also won an NEA and numerous awards, including the Carl Sandberg Award in poetry which Chernoff has also won.