A Conversation with Poet Michael Earl Craig

by Mitchell McInnis

During a recent evening, HoboEye editor Brad Bunkers and I conversed with Earl Craig over Chinese takeout in Bunkers’ painting studio.

Sitting down with Michael Earl Craig (he goes by Earl) is much like the experience of sitting down with one of his books—engaging, filled with artful subtleties and utterly amusing.

Craig’s second book, “Yes, Master” has recently been released by Fence Books. Fence also published Craig’s 2002 book “Can You Relax in My House.” That book was well received, drawing the praise of no less than James Tate. Tate said of Craig’s work, “I like being in the world of Michael Craig's poems. Anything can happen, and probably will, and it will affect me in small or large ways that I couldn't have imagined. The precision of their imagery keeps me reeling with delight."

A student of Tate’s, Craig wears the praise rather lightly, showing himself the opposite of the stereotypically self-serious writer. Craig called poetry a “hobby,” but was careful to distinguish the point as semantic, pointing out anything by which one doesn’t earn his or her living is considered a hobby in our culture. Zeroing in on his point, remaining self-effacing, he asserted, “The idea that you’re going to write something that will last forever is rather silly.”

Craig is a shrewd character. His simple, bucolic appearance belies his thought process and academic pedigree. He is a walking paradox, and is insouciant in the face of that paradox. This is, I believe, because his paradox isn’t accidental, it’s calculated.

“Yes, Master” follows the thrust of these comments. It is playful, but utterly intelligent in its playfulness. Craig is capable of near rapture in the face of the seemingly mundane, as is seen in the opening poem of the book, “This is How an Anvil Comes to You.” While this poem playfully contrasts an anvil’s form and function to that of a boxing glove in its third stanza, it moves to a poignant pitch by its sixth and final stanza:

From the anvil’s many surfaces and edges
come loaves of bread, sacks of coffee,
your poultry, your beef, your woolens;
for an anvil is a workbench
across which all your labor must pass,
humbly, despite the sweat
and sporadic bursts of hammer violence.
And from that labor: the paycheck.
The fruits, some say.
Boxing gloves produce no fruit.

But Craig doesn’t hold the reader there for long, bringing the poem back to a final turn regarding the “totally sad” anchor. Such turns are part of his process. As he stated in our conversation, “When I feel like I know where I’m going, that’s so boring to me… I try to change it.”

Face to face, Craig is cagey. Interviewing him reminded me of seeing Kazuo Ishiguro speak in Portland, Oregon in 1995 when his novel “The Unconsoled” was released. It was one of those awful, post-dinner gatherings held in an upscale theater, Ishiguro and his interviewer on stage, the rest of us down in the audience. One questioner—clearly loosened by booze—kept trying to box Ishiguro in regarding the ending of one of his novels (I hadn’t read the book, so my recount is only general). When he told her the ending was an ambiguity for the reader to solve, he asked “does that answer your question?” Half in the bag, she retorted, as she replaced her overly aerobicized behind in her seat, “Good God, NO!”

After that exchange, Ishiguro launched into a polite diatribe about the slippery slope of book tours, openly wondering how William Faulkner would have done on such a tour. Referencing Nietzsche, Ishiguro spoke about the essential “ball of snakes” in a writer’s proverbial gut—the essential mystery of self that must be retained in order to continually produce interesting work.

It’s hard not to be sympathetic with Craig’s or Ishiguro’s caginess. There’s a fundamental contradiction in requiring introverts to sell their work. It’s the fundamental paradox of writing for a commercial press, and few writers learn to manage it with aplomb. Craig’s caginess reminds just how distinct the experience of reading is from the experience of talking about writing. In short, it’s reassuring.

Read poems by Michael Earl Craig >

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