Short ‘n’ Sweet with Contributor Nathan Graziano

Guest blogger Tom Weller interviews TRACHODON 2 contributor Nathan Graziano about poetry, superpowers, and bus travel. Nathan's poem,"In Anticipation of My Next Bad Decision," can be read in print and digital formats in Issue 2.

Tom Weller: You’ve taught high school English for ten years and written a book of poetry that explores contemporary high school culture. What’s the biggest misperception that too many adults have about high school students?

Nathan Graziano: I’m actually closing in on fifteen years in the trenches, but after awhile you start to lose track. Let’s just say, I’ve been doing awhile, and I find the biggest misconception adults have about teenagers is that they are somehow fundamentally different than we were at their age. I think it is part selective amnesia by adults, perhaps some lingering trauma from our own adolescence, and some of it stems from the “when I was that age/kids these days” fallacy. Listen, when you were a teenager, most likely, you were uncomfortable in your own skin, too; maybe you had a goofy haircut (I had a mullet), zits (check) and wore terrible trendy clothes, just like kids these days. But adolescence hasn’t changed. It’s always sucked. The main difference I notice is the technology. While I would have to labor over a note I was going to send the girl in my algebra class who wouldn’t have sex with me under any plausible circumstance, today’s students send a text-message. Same circumstance, same result—he’s still not getting laid. A central idea in my book Teaching Metaphors (shameless plug) was that we can still find our adolescent selves roaming the high school halls today. I don’t buy that kids are more insolent, violent, or sexually active. The media may sell it that way, but I disagree.

TW: You’re a poet and a Boston Red Sox fan. Give us a haiku that encapsulates your feelings about the New York Yankees.

NG: I’m going to compose a haiku in English, thus dispensing with the 5-7-5 syllables. I think this captures the typical sophomoric rancor Red Sox fans feel for the Yankees:

In the whirlpool after the game,

Jeter reaches for A-Rod’s thigh.

Swisher licks his lips.

TW: You get to pick one superpower to help you continue to develop your writing. What do you pick and why?

NG: I would burp superior similes. One of the hardest things about writing for me is composing fresh, vivid similes that work on multiple levels. I will literally agonize for hours over a simile and then give up. Now, I also enjoy drinking beer while watching baseball, so I have a tendency belch a lot. If every time I belched I came out with as a superior simile, I could watch games with a notepad or tape recorder nearby. I would imagine that I would soon have so many similes in stock that I could give them as Christmas gifts to my writer friends. I’m not sure what I would be called. Superior-Simile-Burp-Man? The Bionic Simile Belcher? Something like that, I guess.

TW: Describe the type of passenger you’d like to sit next to if you’re traveling alone by Greyhound bus.

NG: There’s a David Kirby poem titled “A Man Like You, But Older” where the speaker’s advice in finding a good restaurant in a strange town is to find someone that looks like you, but a little older and a little paunchier. So I guess, seeing this is a hypothetical bus, and assuming I’m still using deodorant, I’d like to sit next to someone who looks like me, but older, so I could pick his brain about all of the mistakes I’ve made and am going to make in the future. Haven’t you ever wished you could take what you know now, as an older person, and travel back in time to use your wisdom? Problem solved.

TW: What is your favorite last line?

NG: At the risk of sounding trite, I have to say the last line of Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”-- “It’s a town full of losers, I’m pulling out of here to win”--is my favorite. I’d give an honorable mention to James Tate’s “Jan’s Scary Novel,” which I was reading the other day, and it’s a nice way to end an interview: “Bad bunnies,” she says, “very bad bunnies.”