Gabriel Parsacala: The Interview

Gabriel Parsacala is a poet from New Jersey. He writes a new poem every day and is the first poet to be published on Poetry Culture. We caught up with him to learn about his take on creativity, the craft of poetry, and what inspires him and his work.

You have a consistent and consistently impressive output of work. What do you see as the relationship between discipline and creativity? 

Thanks! You know, there was really no intent to turn this into a daily project from the outset – initially, I just sort of wanted to see how many days in a row I could sit down to write and come away with a poem. At almost 500 consecutive days by this point, sitting down to write has just become this non-negotiable part of every day.

I feel as though there’s sometimes this idea that poetry happens when it happens – and to some extent, I think that’s true. But I also feel like that sometimes tethers poetry and the creative process that goes into writing a poem to sporadic bursts of inspiration, when that isn’t always how the mind wants to work. To me, poetry’s this distillation of observation and that little voice you’ve got monologuing in your head when things happen to you, and it doesn’t always come easy. Some days, the bridge between observation and voice isn’t as apparent – but to me, that’s never a good excuse to not sit down and try and sort through the threads. That, and it’s a lot easier to create when you don’t limit yourself to the moments where you feel driven – by inspiration, or some muse or whatever – to create. Just doing this every day without question feels like an exercise in removing any prerequisites to writing and expressing myself, which honestly feels like it’s done me a ton of good. 

Can you take us through a favorite poem or two of yours? 

So for Mankind, the Apothecary - the second piece in the three poem set of mine you featured - I think I was sort of messing around with this idea of poetry, or art, or any creative endeavor as “artifacts” of a sort. Obviously, you can coexist in the same time and space as something you make and justify the choices involved with its inception. Even here with this interview, I’m lucky enough to have the opportunity to explain the thoughts and ideas behind the lines I ended up putting down. But these things have a way of persisting past their creators and detaching themselves, and all of a sudden you don’t have the certainty of the author going “yeah, I was thinking of this” and “this line means that”. You just have the work, and what little the reader or audience can glean from the absence around it. The inferences and the guesswork that in all likelihood might be a projection of the reader’s internalized self more than the actuality of the author’s self. 

And that’s fine - I think that’s a huge part of what makes poetry and art beautiful. There’s this idea in Peter Mendelsund’s book What We See When We Read that goes “River, the word, contains within it all rivers, which flow like tributaries into it. And this word contains not only all rivers, but more important all my rivers: every accessible experience of every river I’ve seen, swum in, fished, heard, heard about, felt directly or been affected by in any other manner oblique”. Once you’re not there to account for it, what you create depends on the resonances and reverberations that ensue when someone else happens upon it. And in that, poetry about the self becomes so much more than just the self. I wanted to treat this piece like a sort of note stuffed in with that apothecary jar on that high shelf. Like, “Hey, I hope you can find some use for this. Good luck. Love, Gabriel”.

Do you have a line in a poem that is particularly meaningful to you?

It’s so hard to pick just one. There’s this one bit from Ben Purkert’s “For the Love of Endings” – the titular poem of the first collection he published back in 2018 – that goes “When I’m gone, / the thing I’ll miss is missing, is describing the world I miss. / So much depends upon you, reader. Look how these words / lean on you, not even knowing your name”.

To me there’s always been something inherently a bit lonely about poetry. It’s this immensely intimate form of distilling thought and feeling that often – especially at this sort of still-formative stage that I’m in right now – feels like a shout into the void. But it’s also an art form that spins this interesting thread that connects writer and reader. The writer provides this snippet of self – a sort of vignette that flashes by – and the reader interacts with it and experiences it not necessarily using the exact lens that the poem speaks from, but using bits from their own sphere of experience to process what the poem brings. Poems are equal parts the intent of the writer and the resonance sparked in any individual reading the poem, and this line always helps me appreciate that this is a two-way road. 

How has your love for craft cocktails influenced your poetry? Do you see the mixing of sensations and feelings as an analogous creative process?

I think it’s actually more that it’s sort of a functionally opposite hobby! There’s this sort of beauty in precision when it comes to mixing a good cocktail – once you’ve got a good recipe, you can pretty reliably recreate this fantastic little self-contained experience for someone as long as you’ve got the ingredients you need. You know how things work – how certain types of bitter, or citrus, or spirit layers on another component to produce a particular taste, or sensation – and you can communicate that and convey that as long as you put in 2 oz of this, ¼ oz of that, two dashes each of these two things, and stir with ice. That’s a kind of certainty I don’t really have while I’m in the act of writing a poem, so maybe it’s that mixology just kind of scratches an itch that poetry doesn’t?

I will say that I really enjoy the social aspect of craft cocktails, and think that might be something that contributes a bit more to my creative process. There’s just something about preparing someone’s favorite drink for them or sharing a drink that I love with someone else over some bar bites and relaxing ambiance that draws out the best, most thought-provoking talks with my friends, and that always helps. 

Which poets or artists have influenced you?

I think when I first started out writing in earnest, I read a lot of (and I guess subsequently wrote work that read a LOT like) Bukowski. I admired that kind of voice – the coarse, often cranky edge that would occasionally split into moments of jarringly raw vulnerability – and I think his overall style, pacing, and diction was a big part of what helped sort of “demystify” poetry for me from this unapproachable, abstract kind of art form to something that anyone and everyone has the capacity to create.

On a “creative ethos” kind of level, I also tend to pull a lot from Gregory Alan Isakov. I can’t remember where it was I read it, but there was this one interview where he was talking about “meaning” and “intent” in his songs, and how when people ask him what X means in this song, or what he meant to say in Y line of that song, his inclination is more to turn the question back around and just ask the other person what that line made them feel. Where their mind went when they heard it. That sort of attitude really demolishes the idea that poetry needs to be relatable to be appreciated, and centers in on the idea that you’ve only got what you’ve got, and you should bring it to the table anyway. Poetry flourishes in the interaction between the singularly individual and the unknowingly universal, and I love keeping that sort of thing central. 

What’s your writing technique like? 

I’ve got a couple different approaches to writing a poem. For the most part though, it’s pretty freeform. Sometimes I’ll have a soundbite, a vague concept, or a loosely remembered memory or something bouncing around upstairs and I’ll just sit down with that and see where it leads. I feel like I almost never have a concrete image or concept for a poem from the outset – I just sort of find a place to start and then try to write good lines until the picture feels complete. That’s probably why I’m so terrible at poetic forms that are more structurally and metrically involved, honestly. But I like how organic a piece feels when you just sit down and discover it as you go along. You end up with a lot of rough edge, but hey – that’s what revision’s for.

To help things along, I try to “collect” stray thoughts whenever I’m not writing. If my mind dwells on something – the bones of a line, a setting, a weird image – I’ll jot it down in a notebook or a sticky note and I’ll keep it ready to grab for later. You can’t write 24 hours a day (or hell, maybe you can – who knows), but your brain’s just sort of always going, and I think it’s massively important to stay in tune with it. Like right now, I’ve got “piece of mind”, “divide by zero”, and “a pillowcase that doesn’t speak” written on sticky notes above my desk. I’ve got absolutely no clue where those three lines are heading, but I don’t want to discount the idea that they’ve got somewhere to be.  

What’s your favorite poem written by someone else?

Oh man, I feel like the answer to that changes from month to month. Everything from Ben Purkert’s collection “For the Love of Endings” is so solid – I’m just a bit obsessed with it if you couldn’t already tell, but it’s such a good book. I keep going back to “Escape Plans” in particular. It’s hard to quantify exactly what I love so much about the whole thing. You’ve just gotta read it. Odds are, you’ll come away having heard something you needed to hear.

I also really love “Turn Me Over, I’m Done on This Side” by Paige Lewis. I mean – “I just hope I’m forgiven for the nights I spend / on the fire escape, untying this city’s prayers long / enough to hear the first few words. Each one / starts the same, Make this mine, Lord. Make this mine.” – come on. Oof. So good. 

What’s the most poetic thing you’ve done that is not writing poetry?

I did a lot of urbex photography back in college, and I feel like the creative process involved with that resonated in a way that feels similar to how writing poetry feels to me. You sort of creep around in these neglected, long-abandoned places, taking pictures and speaking more to the absences. The things not in the shot, but that are sort of implied by what’s left. Like hey – here’s this decrepit workshop with a half-caved-in worktable and an old CRT TV with a punched-in screen. But maybe the way you’re looking at it is making you think of an old TV you used to crowd around when you were a kid. A sawdust-covered tool table with a pegboard that you maybe remember your dad working on in the garage. It’s the same image association game we lean on sometimes when presenting images in poetry, and I’ve always loved that through-line between the two hobbies. 

What’s next for Gabriel Parsacala and where can people find you and your work?

I’m on that submission grind at the moment – reworking and revising work that’ll hopefully end up in a magazine or hopefully a proper collection one of these days. No bites just yet, but hey – that’s the game. Just gotta keep at it. Until then, I’m keeping in practice over at @gparsss on Instagram.