This week in Vintage Fringe we’ve got a rerun of three poems by S. Asher Sund that originally appeared in March 2009, in issue 18. Here Asher talks about the poems and about the intersections between poetry and songwriting. And don’t miss the lightning Q&A round down at the bottom of the page.

These poems have changed a little since they first appeared in Fringe. We’ve posted the latest versions. Looking at them now, what are your thoughts?

“You Are Here” V02 feels a bit unwieldy to me, almost unmanageable, on the verge of a meltdown, but even so, or maybe exactly for these reasons, I like the changes I’ve made. “Hispanic Man Working a Weed-eater Against the Bank” is much more in the pocket for me than the previous version. “Sometimes a Mountain” I’ve looked at too many times. There’s still that one particular phrasing that resists my edits.

The poems are part of a full-length manuscript. Two of them represent a thread within it that positions the reader as a participant in what we might call office life, and asks her or him to comment on it. How would you describe the collection and the way these poems fit into it?

My constitution is much too Proust-like for hard labor. Through my late twenties and early thirties, therefore, I found myself working in a string of office jobs that paid well, for sure, but no matter how much I tried to justify what I was doing (it’s a good job, with benefits, and etc.), when I heard words come out of my mouth during the afternoon meetings, they didn’t sound like words I normally used. What am I saying? I often wondered, as I looked at my coworkers nodding and smiling back at me like human bobble-heads. In this tension, in the matrix of work and my so-called real life, during my lunch hour, I learned to write (and read) poetry. These poems are part of that exploration, that odyssey. They helped me find a way out.

In addition to writing poems, you collaborate with singer Andi Starr, coproducing her albums and writing lyrics. What is your creative relationship like—how does your process work?

Many of Andi’s songs originate in one way or another from her dreams. She is a crazy dreamer, I mean nighttime dreams, and once I understand where she’s coming from with a particular mood or image plucked from her subconscious, I help fill in the story. Or I might hear the song as she plays around between takes of other songs, and a line or image will come to me. Regarding the music in particular, I don’t play any instruments, but I know when she hits the right notes. I’m usually the one at the board catching that “moment” or two, picking out what she might not have heard while playing.

Does it feel different to you to write song lyrics as opposed to poems? Do you use a different process?

Very different. Poetry must provide its own music, which involves a lot more work, in some ways, but lyrics can be just as difficult (and as satisfying) for reasons of phrasing—that is, finding just the right match in terms of melody, bridge, hook, etc. As far as process goes, songwriting is much more collaborative and can, therefore, go quicker, but regardless of the genre (lyrics, poetry, or prose), working towards the emotional resonance, with subtlety, is the goal.

This isn’t a new question, but it’s one I think about: Not every poem makes a good song (unless, maybe, it’s set as an art song)—and many song lyrics wouldn’t pass muster as poems. And yet there’s a fuzz between the two, an area where their concerns are the same. As someone who writes both, what are your thoughts on this?

I think they’re both concerned with how they work on the tongue and palate. Timing and rhythm and how the language gathers speed toward enjambment and reverberates out—that’s the “fuzz.” On the other side of things, it’s very hard for me to take (even great) song lyrics seriously as poems, especially when divorced from their accompaniment. Bob Dylan on the page rhymes too much, is too silly, and not in a good way. But Bob Dylan is the greatest (in my opinion) lyricist of all time. That’s the anti-fuzz.

Do you know any poems by heart? If so, describe how you came to know one of these, and tell us whether it’s a favorite or a least-favorite.

I usually know by heart whichever poem I happen to be working on at the moment. As far as other poets go, I have learned and have since forgotten bits and pieces from Louise Gluck and Mark Strand and Gerald Stern. I would like to do more of that. I can see myself in later age, in fact, walking some storm-wrecked shoreline in one of those wool sweaters with elbow patches and with a pipe in hand, reciting Keats or Donne, as my three foot long grayish combover wafts in the wind.

What are you up to of late?

I’m halfway through my Ph.D. in mythological studies. Along with the theoretical portion of my dissertation, I’m doing a creative piece, a novel. More specifically, I’m rewriting the Torah, or remythologizing it.

Aside from The Terminal Situation, the poetry manuscript mentioned above, I’ve also just completed a short story collection that I’m shopping around, tentatively titled Spoken: Stories. One of the stories was recently published in The Kenyon Review.

Lightning Q&A round:

Pen or pencil?
Pen, for sure.

Early or late?
Early early.

V-neck or ringneck?
Ooh.

Cake or pie?
A combination: pake.
Yes!

Cat or dog?
Cat (also dog-like cats).

Phone book or Google?
Phone book for fire starter.

Looseleaf or spiral-bound?
V-neck.

Tetrameter or pentameter?
I don’t know what these words mean.
Awwww.

Veg or nonveg?
Both.

Mountains or sea?
Mountains.

Truth or fiction?
True fiction.

Poetry or fiction?
Poetry with feet. Language fiction.

Coffee or tea?
Does anybody still drink tea?
Yes.

And if you, reader, are wondering where one might find more poems from The Terminal Situation, look to The Pedestal, Juked, Front Porch Journal, and Square Lake.