1. 18 ®Copyright1957 Jack Scott.All rightsreserved.
From Poemystic.com
I’d be pleased if you would visit my website: Poemystic.com, Poetry of Jack Scott. This is a
compilation of the best of my poetry in three volumes, about 450 poems in a varied range of
subject matter in lengths of one to about 35 pages. It's free. Here’s a sample:
I’d be pleased if you would visit my website: Poemystic.com, Poetry of Jack Scott. This is a
compilation of the best of my poetry in three volumes, about 450 poems in a varied range of
subject matter in lengths of one line to about 35 pages. It's free. Please post a comment in the
Guest Registry.
Also, my Interview with Fiona Mcvie can be read at http://wp.me/p3uv2y-4Q7.
I am a retired sculptor, published writer, practicing Reiki Master teacher and a constant poet. I
have been self-employed most of my life working at a wild variety of things to make ends meet.
It has been nearly fifty years since I last submitted poetry for publication or given a public
reading. Now, at the age of eighty I have organized my poetic life’s work- over eight hundred
poems- and selected about four hundred and fifty of the best for publication on my website:
poemystic.com, Poetry of Jack Scott. I also present my poems regularly on my Facebook sites:
Jack Scott, Poetry of Jack Scott and on the many Poetry Groups to which I belong. The
Amazon/Kindle book of my poetry, Spes Phthisica, will released Mid-March, 2016. My Interview
with Fiona Mcvie can be read at http://wp.me/p3uv2y-4Q7.
I am a retired sculptor, published writer, practicing Reiki Master teacher and a constant poet. It
has been fifty years since I last submitted poetry for publication or given a public reading. Now,
at the age of eighty I have organized my poetic life’s work- over eight hundred poems- and
selected about four hundred and fifty of the best for publication on my website:
poemystic.com, Poetry of Jack Scott. I also present my poems regularly on my Facebook sites:
Jack Scott, Poetry of Jack Scott and on the many Poetry Groups to which I belong.
98 words:
I am a retired sculptor, published writer, practicing Reiki Master Teacher and a constant poet. I
have been self-employed most of my life working at a wild variety of things to make ends meet.
I haven’t submitted poetry for publication or given a public reading in nearly fifty years. Now, at
the age of eighty, having organized my poetic life’s work- over 800 poems- I have selected
about four hundred and fifty of the best which I share regularly on my Facebook sites: Jack
Scott, Poetry of Jack Scott and on the Poetry Groups to which I belong.

2. 99 words:
Jack Scott is a retired sculptor, published writer, practicing Reiki Master Teacher and a constant
poet. He has been self-employed most of his life working at a wild variety of things to make
ends meet. He hasn’t submitted poetry for publication or given a public reading in nearly fifty
years. Now, at the age of eighty, having organized his poetic life’s work- over 800 poems- he
has selected about four hundred and fifty of the best which he shares regularly on his
Facebook sites: Jack Scott, Poetry of Jack Scott and on the Poetry Groups to which he belongs.
Jack Scott is a retired sculptor, published writer, practicing Reiki Master teacher and a constant
poet. He has been self-employed most of his life working at a wild variety of things to make
ends meet. It has been nearly fifty years since he last submitted poetry for publication or given
a public reading. Now, at the age of eighty he has organized his poetic life’s work- over eight
hundred poems- and selected about four hundred and fifty of the best for publication on his
website: poemystic.com, Poetry of Jack Scott. He also presents his poems regularly on his
Facebook sites: Jack Scott, Poetry of Jack Scott and on the many Poetry Groups to which he
belongs.
Jack Scott is a retired sculptor, published writer, practicing Reiki Master teacher and a constant
poet. It has been nearly fifty years since he last submitted poetry for publication or given a
public reading. Now, at the age of eighty he has organized his poetic life’s work- over eight
hundred poems- and selected about four hundred and fifty of the best for publication on his
website: poemystic.com, Poetry of Jack Scott. He also presents his poems regularly on his
Facebook sites: Jack Scott, Poetry of Jack Scott and on the many Poetry Groups to which he
belongs.
[1/9/16
I’ve had six German Shepherds, all females, and loved every one of them. You come to
realize that when you adopt a puppy, in ten years or so you’re going to have your heart broken.
Kali was three when she died of the bloat, leaving a terrible void in my life.
My third wife, Betsy, and I were separated at this time, but had remained friendly to
each other. While my interest in a Shepherd was as a pet, a four legged friend, Betsy’s
involvement had become a professional one. She had become passionately knowledgeable
about the breed and had breeding kennels on her property in Carroll County raising purebreds.
When we were together we’d lie in bed reading, me with a novel in hand, while she was
studying German Shepherd bloodlines. This was her one true passion.

3. Gretchen Tough love.
Bob Evans
I see you.
tree climber, editor, taxi driver, writer-for-hire, architectural restoration contractor, landscape
architect]
Sleepislittle deaths
The following is something a dear friend wrote
about me, for me:
“Pain
It’s mine
It’s secret
It has mystery
It can’t be shared
It can’t be understood
It’s there when I can tolerate it
It’s there when I can’t tolerate it
It’s my private, constant companion
It screams and can’t be heard by others”
[2/6/16
Showdown on Main Street
High Noon by everybody’s watch.

4. The good guy and the bad guy
Squinting as they walk toward each other
With determined, steady footsteps.
They have no hanky-waver to cue them
Only their sense of timing
And all the time within that.
Facing each other
In this duel to the death are:
The Tolerant
And the Intolerant,
With Everyman watching
From the safe distance of Facebook.
And the Winner is, as always,
the Bad Guy,
because the Good Guy always hesitates,
always pauses in reflection;
in decision
costs him nanoseconds,
costs him life,
Trumps him.
725®Copyright 2016 Jack Scott. All rights reserved.
From Poemystic.com
Looking for the Others
No, I’m not lost.
It’s not a place I’m looking for.
I’m searching for the Others.
If you don’t know just who I mean
you are not one of them.
726®Copyright 2016 Jack Scott. All rights reserved.
From Poemystic.com
It is ironic that the memory of pain
can be benignly merciful
to the same but opposite degree
hat the pain itself was intolerable,
yet absurdly tolerated.

5. See Annotation in Notebook section of Poemystic.com website.
Th/2/11/16, Rick:
Thanks for reading Swan, Rick. Very perceptive of you. I think you put your finger exactly on its
weakness. Or is it its strength? You tell me.
It took me about 6 months to write it as it is. I got so thoroughly caught up in it that I became
afflicted by the same desperation and anxiety that my character felt. I identified with his
quandary so thoroughly that it was as though it had become my own. Having exhausted all of
the logical and realistic (so-called scientific) explorations in search of solving the problem I
went through Religion, Myth, Fiction and Magic and was left screaming at the Universe that
there was time for all of this to have happened before. When my protagonist gave up, so did I
and was unable to finish the poem. I could take it no further, but in a sense being unable to
provide a satisfying conclusion is in itself a very powerful conclusion. We don’t know as much as
we claimto.
Because of its length (half as long as Swan) I felt sheepish about posting Birth. Apart from one
guy who sent me three messages to tell me it did not interest him and that it was too long, I am
pleasantly surprised at how many people have read Birth and commented most favorably upon
it, with no further remarks upon its length.
I asked Duane Vorhees (Duane’s PoeTree) to read Swan, which he did . He said he liked it and
made several suggestions re its revision which I have not gotten around to. Then, quite by
accident, I came across his website a couple days ago only to discover that he had published
One Black Swan quite prominently in its entirety.
So, how concerned should I be about length? (How many pages does a book have? How much is
a car?) And should a reader feel short-changed at the ending of Swan?
The intro is fine. Perhaps you could amend it slightly and tell us about your background (as
sculptor, in various occupations..) in more of a conventional bio. But maybe we could get to that
as part of the Q&A (perhaps even as part of the first question). (I've also moved ahead a bit to try
to get us onto the path to discuss what YOU think is important.)

6. DV: What got you started as a writer--and, especially, how did you ever become a poet, of all
things?
Jack Scott: I started out as a writer at a young age and at 80, going on 25, I’m ending up as a
writer, a poet. I learned to read and write very early, as my mother read to me constantly. She
was my storyteller; I thought she was making it up as she went along and I wanted to be able to
do that. I had an ideal childhood until I went to hell. School. Cast out of the nest. I was bipolar
before treatment was available, and had a very high I.Q., so I became a problem child and an
outsider. Books were my best friends; I read constantly.
DV: So it was being read to and reading that triggered your desire to write, to be a writer?
Jack Scott: It was more than a desire; as I needed to read, so did I need to write. Like inhaling
and exhaling. Writing was not something I did, it was something I had to do. Being a writer had
become my core identity. It was something I could not not do, even when I did it poorly or, for
long stretches of time, not at all. My belief that writing was a dietary requirement of my soul,
magical and healing was my driving force.
DV: Have you ever felt that this was genetic? That you were born with this literary drive?
I’ve wondered about that, but I don’t really believe it. Certainly, there have been no writers in
my family that I know of. For a long time I wrote a lot of things badly. I had no idea how difficult
it was to write well. The literature of my role models seemed so effortless, so clear and so
colorful. So alive. Novels were my first goal and I stubbornly began some, even after I realized
that I had no talent for it. I never finished one. I could write non-fiction well enough, but my
heart wasn’t in it then.
DV: So, when does poetry come into it? And why?
The process of elimination, I suppose. Seeking my niche, I wrote bad poetry. It took me years to
realize how complex and demanding the discipline of writing good poetry was, at least for me.
It was hard work. My impatience was a handicap, both in reading and in writing. I rushed things.
I left things unfinished because of my restlessness. Or I ran out of time because of work. My
focus would become blurry. I'll finish it later was an all too frequent intention.
Another handicap remains true even today. Reading poetry is very difficult for me. I also have a
great deal of trouble reading directions. It may be a form of dyslexia. I read most prose very
fast, but if I have to go back and read something over, I almost can’t do it. It’s as if it becomes a
foreign language. Like Chemistry. I went to several colleges and had to retake Chemistry 101
every time I transferred. Yes, this opacity affects my reading of poetry.
Luckily, I thrived on complexity and hard work. I kept coming back to have another go at what I
thought of as my art, time and time again, no matter how disappointing and unpromising my
work seemed. I’ve done hard work all my life, mostly physically hard work. Believe it or not
sculpture was for me among the hardest. I should have made some money, laid up a nest egg,

7. but I didn’t. Every time I’d get a little ahead doing paid work for others, I’d withdraw from the
treadmill, parole myself from the prison and write until I ran out of money again. This
synchronized pretty well with the wave lengths of my bipolarity. My work came to be almost
exclusively poetry. Oh, I’d write a so-so short story from time to time, but I never got really
good at fiction.
DV: Surely, you must have had some positive reinforcement from others. Didn’t you read
your work to friends, lovers?
Until I made it to college, there wasn’t anyone who might have taken an interest even if my
early scribblings weren’t so primitive. I think they were mainly cries for help and goopy crap to
girls which I never delivered. I think I thought or hoped that the right girl or woman would come
to my rescue and make everything all right.
OK, back to the spaceship. I had a great English teacher in high school and did some writing
there which I shared with her, getting encouragement, but I didn’t really start cranking it out
until college. I kept writing down ideas for novels, I wrote essays, short stories, a column for the
college newspaper, a lot of poems. I did read some to friends, especially girlfriends who said I
was good and I was naïve enough to believe them for a while. I have, from embarrassment,
destroyed the evidence of most of this. I spent a lot of time in the theater in college and later,
acting, directing, some playwriting. I’ve only ever taken one poetry course, given by Dr. Robert
Hillyer at the University of Delaware. I majored in bullshit and beer (English, actually)
DV: How did the bipolarity affect your working life in the “real” world? The work-a-day world.
Jack Scott: After about three years of college I moved to Baltimore looking for paid work. My
first job was as a tree climber while I scanned the want ads for the perfect writing job. I was
hired by one of the two daily papers as a reporter, but was fired when they discovered I had an
ulcer history. “Sorry, son, we give ulcers here.” I then worked for the other daily as a
“Merchandising Supervisor”, whatever that is. The pay was the same: $47.00 a week. When I
quit, I tried breaking into TV and radio, although now I can’t think of anything less attractive
particularly since those slots were mostly filled with free interns. Then I became editor of The
Baltimore Guide, a weekly shopper in Highlandtown for $47.50 a week (coming up in the
world). Got fired for insisting on printing a headline that was forbidden. Knocked up my
girlfriend, got a divorce, got married again. My first Marriage (both of us 17) had lasted about a
month.
I went for nearly a year to Morgan State College, a black college with a 2% white population,
until my wife had the first of our two sons. We couldn’t live on the $50 a week she was making
so I dropped out and went back to climbing trees, eventually establishing my own tree service.
The bipolarity brought me down on and off throughout these years. The depression was
crippling at times and the mania was ruinous in terms of my acting rashly on bad judgement.
DV: There is widespread belief in a correlation between manic depression and creativity.

8. Jack Scott: And rightly so in my opinion. I’ve always had the fear that meds would take away my
enhanced abilities. Be that as it may, I voluntarily admitted myself four times to mental
hospitals to try to get relief from the depressions, each time quickly discharging myself Against
Medical Advice. The shrinks had not yet figured out how to treat bipolarity, so the best they
could do was to zombie us with Thorazine and other toxins. When you complained, they upped
the dosage. Back then those drugs left you with no comfort zone. Standing, sitting, lying down,
asleep, awake was all the same misery. Imagine a sensory deprivation chamber in which,
instead of Epsom salt brine, you are suspended on a supersaturated solution of unremitting
wretchedness.
Intermittently clear of that revolving door, we managed to buy an old farmhouse isolated atop
a hill overlooking the Baltimore Beltway in the County. In the summer of 1966 while I had
pneumonia I wrote over a hundred haiku in a month. My business expanded to include
landscaping design and landscaping. We had a second son and a bad marriage. We were both
alcoholics and that property, along with our children, was pretty much all we ended up with in
common. I once killed myself, really – dead, with Quaaludes and gin when I found out that my
wife was fucking her psychiatrist. I woke up strapped to a hospital bed. We separated, and
eventually divorced. The children went with her and I lived in the house alone for about a year
before moving back into the city.
DV: Sounds like there was a lot going on. Were you writing during all of this – turmoil?
I took a job maintaining and improving the grounds for a company that owned seven suburban
apartment developments. I had a landscape crew of about thirty day laborers. Before I got fired
I replaced the men with girls, women, most of them college graduates. It was the first female
landscape crew that I’d heard of. They were better at the work than the men. I entered the first
and only period when I was having sex with a different woman almost every day. Actually, it
almost got boring – but not quite. I hitchhiked to Mexico. I wrote a lot of poetry.
I moved back to Bolton Hill in downtown Baltimore. Somehow, people came to believe that I
could do almost anything so I did my best to accommodate them. It’s funny; people have
always assumed that I have a college degree. I don’t, but no one has ever asked. I advertised
“experienced problem solving in landscape, construction and restoration”. My ex-wife-to-be
moved back into our house with the children and I moved from apartment to apartment doing
nearly everything to houses and gardens that can be done to houses and gardens. I could build
or repair almost anything, but not computers, my diabolical nemesis. My second home was the
Mount Royal Tavern, where I drank a lot of beer and wrote a lot of poetry.
It was then that I met the love of my life, Betsy. She was a student at Maryland Institute College
of Art- MICA, a fine arts major. I hired her to type boxes of my handwritten manuscripts of
mostly poetry. I fell in love with her. She was 19; I was 38. I wanted her to move in with me, but
she resisted. I went to the Florida Keys to fish and drink beer, while Betsy came to my
apartment each day to work. I called her every day. Then one day, she said, “I’ve moved in.” I
said, “I’m coming right up.”

9. I’ve been self-employed almost all my life. The other jobs have been varied and short term. I
had learned early on that any job I might want would never be advertised in the classifieds. So I
had usually pretty much written my own job descriptions. One of them was a Writer for Hire ad
I ran in the Sunpapers for three or four years. For a couple of really bad people I ghost-wrote
two bad books, one of which was published by Prentice-Hall, the other by Doubleday. For
others, I wrote all kinds of things from resumes to speeches. The phone was always ringing with
people who had a story that wanted to be a book; all it needed was a writer. “You write it and
I’ll split the proceeds with you- right up the middle.” Yeah, right. I still couldn’t make a decent
living so I went back to work as a glorified handy man in wealthy historical preservation
districts.
Shortly after my mother died and left me some money, Betsy and I got married and bought a
house at about the same time. I had promised to quit drinking when she said that she wouldn’t
marry a drunk. I had been dry, though not sober, for about thirteen years, when I started
drinking again. We had lived together for about 23 years when she left me for good reason. The
drinking wasn’t the whole picture, though. We had simply grown apart, become other people,
strangers to each other.
While we were together, because she had a good job and could afford the materials to rehab
our house, which was a disaster, I stopped being an outside contractor and worked at least ten
years on the house, alone, for the most part. I got very OCD about the house at first. Betsy
wanted me to finish the it so that we could sell it and move out to the country so she could
raise German Shepherds. To make a long story short, I balked, she moved and I stayed behind
with the house.
I’d been making three dimensional artwork off and on most of my life, not enough to interfere
with my writing. Living alone again, I began learning ceramics for one thing. I was a slow starter,
but once I got the idea I became a natural prodigy. My teachers said that I could make things
out of clay that can’t be made out of clay. I made eagles and elephants and birds and abstract
pieces. I made an eight foot dolphin of clay I threw on the wheel. I had to cut into four sections
to fire it in a kiln and I never put it back together.
I took a sculptural ceramics class and quickly discovered that if I could visualize it, or dream it I
could figure a way to make it out of clay. I could never draw, had absolutely no ability to work
in two dimensions. But the world of three dimensions was my native habitat. It’s really curious-
and I’ve encountered this so many times in so many different ways- that when enough people
say you are this or that, well then, that’s what you become. I don’t mean because of them, but
rather because of a self-recognition of that which was not before clear to you. People told me I
was a sculptor, and that’s what I became. Actually that’s what I was. I just hadn’t realized that I
was a natural born sculptor.
Maybe not world-class, but I got some attention, some recognition. I got a Baltimore’s Best
award for Public Art. I got the sculptural commission for the Columbia Festival of the Arts. I got
my first and last, one and only bronze plaque for a permanent installation in the Enoch Pratt

10. Central Library. Penny, my copper Fish-Out-Of-Water entry, brought $9000.00 at auction at the
Walters Art Gallery. And so on and so on, to a modest degree.
I am a creature of serial passions. The list of my fixations seems endless, but in each case I fell
into love and step with something, became intensely and intimately involved with it, then
gradually or suddenly lost interest in it and drifted on to the next obsession. Clay, sculpture,
orchids, reptiles, cacti, succulents, coreopsis, seeds, growing plants from seeds, thrift shops,
lawn and garage sales, you name it and I’ve probably collected it. I’ve spent a fortune and wish I
had some of it back. I’ve also spent a fortune on cigarettes and alcohol. Now I have a big house
full of things, I neither need nor want. Since the above narrative I married and divorced for the
fourth time. When I was seventy five I married an eighteen year old ghetto girl who had been
severely abused by her family and her environment. Naively, foolishly, I thought I could help her
improve her life. I was the one it changed. We had a friendly divorce last year. After being a
prostitute to raise the money she needed to be a cocaine dealer, and having others raise her
daughter, I believe she now lives in a homeless shelter.
I live alone with my German Shepherd and her cat. I go out only when it is absolutely necessary.
I have come to prefer solitude to the company of others. Nearly deaf, I live in a world of silence.
I’m constantly at work on my computer, posting my poems on Facebook and elsewhere. And
I’ve been trying to teach myself how to use Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Evernote, yWriter,
Kindle Fire- the whole arsenal. None of this comes easily, my mind’s not wired for it, but I see
these things as tools that can maybe make it easier to write and circulate my poetry. I wish I
had a teacher, but I don’t. This leaves me really no time for anything else. Not even my beloved
movies and books.
I have, at last, found my niche. I’m 80. Better late than never. I’m in the best place I’ve ever
been. My poetry seems to be appreciated by others. The poetic content of my website is being
made into an Amazon/Kindle book due to be released later this month (March, 2016). My
poetry is being published at last. When my son gifted me with the website, I quit drinking and
smoking. I don’t miss the drinking, but I would hobble a mile for a cigarette- which I won’t let
myself have. I hope I quit in time to add that hypothetical ten years to my life so that I can
follow the course of my poetry.
The point I want to make with this mini-circumnavigation around my world is that the one
passion that stayed with me my entire life that was too often the only ray of light in my cyclical
darkness was my writing, which, as I have said has been almost exclusively poetry. Poetry has
remained my one genuine passion. The only strong passion that has been with me my entire
life.
DV: Would you say that it has healed you?
Don’t I wish. Let’s imagine that I have fallen overboard. Poetry has been my life preserver. As
long as I was able to hold onto that, I wouldn’t drown. The first ten years with Betsy did a lot to
stabilize me. She was at first good for me, but I began to flat-line. My work on the house
became too heavy, too everything. I needed to make more art, and to do that I needed more

11. freedom than was possible in that situation. Once the creativity level began to rise again, so did
my bipolarity cycles. You see, the manic phase (and often, but not always the alcohol) is the
rocket fuel for the heights of accomplishment I felt I needed. I made a lot of sculpture and I
wrote a lot of poetry- again!
Because of my early experiences with the psychiatric community I swore I would never again
talk to a psychiatrist, psychologist or therapist. Then something happened to alter my course.
That someone, actually, was a manic depressive who had written a book called An Unquiet
Mind, A Memoir of Moods and Madness. Its author, Kay Redfield Jamison, is an American
clinical psychologist and writer, herself afflicted with bipolarity to the extent of attempting to
take her own life, almost successfully. I was so deeply affected that I had to read her other
books: Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Night Falls
Fast: Understanding Suicide, and Exuberance: The Passion for Life. A door had opened. This was
a life-changing event.
My travesty of a marriage was pulling me down faster and further than I wanted to go and I
seemed helpless to pull out of that spiral. Because of Ms. Jamison’s influence I felt it might now
be possible to find some outside help I could turn to. I applied for admission to a mental
hospital that was open only during the day on an outpatient basis. I was accepted and did my
best to submit to their procedure. It was basically four different group therapy sessions daily,
five days a week. I forget how many weeks it took, but I “graduated”. I had a large problem with
its effectiveness because I could barely hear, having not yet gotten my hearing aids. Most of the
other patients were black, which was in itself no problem, but Ebonics being what they are, my
hearing was even less effective. All in all it was worth doing.
The really life-changing occurrence that came from the hospital was my assignment to the best
therapist I can imagine. We’ve had twice a week conversations for over four years now. He
once asked me what I thought he was to me. You’re my friend,” I said. I’ve also got a
psychiatrist whom I can respect. Nowadays, psychiatrists have become psychopharmacologists,
the ones who prescribe the meds. Bipolarity is incurable, but medications have been gradually
improving to the extent that some actually provide some relief, some stability. The problem is
the side effects, which can be many and varied. I’ve been through quite a few meds and have
finally settled into three that have a benign effect.
Yes, I believe my illness and my art are deeply intertwined. I think the intensity of the former
has fired the latter. My poetry became the language of the only voice I could speak with about
my indescribable highs and lows. My poetry became the only language I could speak when I
absolutely needed to try to describe life, in order to survive. There was a song, “Is the Going Up
Worth the Coming Down.” As a rule, at least while drinking, I would say,” Hell, Yes!” And I
wrote poetry.
DV: You say you gave some readings back then.
Jack Scott: Yes, some. A few. I enjoyed them.

12. DV: And you haven’t given any readings or submitted any poetry for publication in almost
fifty years? Why not?
Jack Scott: I’m not sure I really know. Part of why is that I don’t like multi-tasking in any form.
And I’m sure I had- hell, have a fear of rejection. I’m pretty thin-skinned, easily wounded. I think
I was afraid that rejection, non-acceptance of my work might have a negative effect on my
willingness to continue writing poetry. Also, crazy as it sounds, I think I might be afraid of
success. I don’t handle compliments or gifts very gracefully. Let’s not get into why.
I’ve been timid about putting my poetry out in view for public inspection. Before I set up my
website- poemystic.com- I had no idea what I had. I had no idea how it would be accepted. You
see, I not only have to work hard to read poetry, I have also not read much poetry throughout
my lifetime. I guess you could say I’m a visionary in that I am little-influenced by a poetic
education or broad exposure to poetry. Sometimes, I feel like a traitor, or an imposter. Surely
that man can’t be a poet, don’t you say. A lot of nerve he has, acting like a poet. As with “being”
a sculptor and other things, I suppose any claimto my being a poet arises from others saying
that I am.
OK, I’m done. What I’ve said isn’t what I set out to say, but I began to feel that showing the
context in which the poetry was written might reveal a useful dimension to the poetry itself.
DV: You once wrote, "I am extremely interested in the nature of poetry. I believe it is
broader, deeper and higher than is commonly recognized. It’s really gotten a bad rap. Poets
themselves are the villains. 'If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with
bullshit.' To express oneself with clarity, one must truly know what he is talking about, even if
the subject is mystery itself." You have an opportunity now to start untangling the mess (or
neatly cutting through it, like Alexander did to Gordian's knot?). How do you thinkpoets are
responsible for baffling readers (or listeners) with bullshit rather than brilliance?
Jack Scott: I ran across an interesting quotation from another poet recently, who, when asked
what one of her poems meant, said, "When I wrote it, only God and I knew the meaning; now
God alone knows."
Poetry is like music in that in describing either, you are essentially trying to describe a
description. Both are created because their creators met with an offer they couldn’t refuse.
Both describe, both can be said to have meaning of some coin, to resonate with some aspect of
our being as in a symbiotic relationship of tuning forks. Both exist in their respective forms
because there is no other form in which they could possibly exist. Ideally, both should be self-
contained, whole, needing no annotation or explanation. They are intimately connected, but
neither could exist as the other.
It is basically in the matter of clarity that I think poets are at fault, because, for one thing, they
believe that it is traditionally expected of them to be deliberately difficult to understand. Here, I
think, poetry departs from musical comparison; because of its language it is easier to accept

13. that music simply is. We feel less generally impelled to explain music, whereas an explanation
of much poetry seems to be tacitly expected.
One aspect of poetry that separates it from prose lies in the delicate matter of resistance,
delicate to define, delicate to control. Poetry is supposed to resist the rapid assimilation that
prose affords. Poetry is, by definition, the most complex form of language. Complexity is
resistance; because of this the reader is not only forced to slow down his pace of reading and
funnel his thought into a different time universe, but should want to do so, to savor the
experience, the difference between beer and wine. This is where the difference between great
poetry, good poetry and verse lies.
A poet has the duty to communicate what he is trying to say so that a broad range of readers
can understand it more or less fully or it has failed as communication. In other words, if his
efforts fail as communication they fail as poetry. Forget word music for the moment. The poet
may intend to target his audience, or let the chips fall where they may. For a poet (or poetess,
ALWAYS included by implication) (Blame the language, dear.) to deliberately embed barriers to
comprehension or to recognize that they exist and not remove the obstacles within his work is
to fail as a poet.
Forget meter and formal versification; it is irrelevant here. Use it or not, as you like; the
universe is indifferent. Here’s the real heart of the matter. The first reading of a poem is like
meeting a person. A definite impression is made in a nanosecond. We have something like a
meter that registers: yes, maybe, no. Hot, medium, cold. Promising, neutral, repellant.
Interesting, acceptable, indifferent.
A poem will resonate with only a specific audience of readers at a given time. The reception will
vary with time, and this cast of characters will also change. Much poetry is written to exclude a
certain set of readers, whether this is deliberate or inadvertent. I think this is contrary to the
basic idea of poetry. What valid reason can there be for a poet to limit his audience. He should
speak clearly to as many people as possible or, if I may court the absurd, he betrays his poem if
it is valid, as well as his readers.
DV: Because of the sheer diversity of poetry readers, wouldn’t you say that it would approach
impossibility to come up with watertight generalities or rules in an attempt to define poetry?
Jack Scott: If watertight or even airtight applied to any use of language there would be no need
for poetry. Readers, poets and poems are all equally diverse. However, the core subject of
discussion here is communication. Therein lies the rub with much, if not most, poetry. A lot of
poetry is masturbation, self-satisfaction of the lover with no thought for the pleasure of the
other, loved or not. Many poets are smugly satisfied to reap a harvest of that which they did
not sow. There is a conspiracy among some poets (you know who you are or you used to before
you started believing your own blurbs), some critics (who’d be put to better use reviewing
restaurants), some academics (Literary scholars being the squintiest.) and some poets-as-
readers (who will laud your poetry as long as you applaud theirs with equal hollow
effusiveness). This can be a con game, with the Wizard of Oz penning Odes to Pretension.

14. DV: Obviously not all poets or poems are equal. Should they be graded, then, according to
some form of ranking, as in the military, for instance? An elitism?
Jack Scott: Nature has already done that and supplied copious clichés to describe the matter:
“No two people read the same book.” “Birds of a feather flock together.” And so on. But,
because what we’re looking at is called poetry, there seems to be a conspiracy brewing. The
name and aimof the conspiracy is obfuscation, a dimming of the lights of understanding with
frequent blackouts. Poetry should not be arbitrary or contain arbitrary elements whose lack of
relevance or meaning will deprive a poem of its power to transfuse a satisfying state of being.
Poetry doesn’t have to be “pretty” to satisfy any, but the narrowest definitions of poetry.
DV: Your passion seems to have a tinge of anger.
Jack Scott: Oh yeah. I’ve got quite a head of steam about this issue. I’m going to rattle off a few
admonitions to so-called poets who, by shooting themselves in the foot or wherever, insist on
driving away potentially satisfied customers.
Don’t refer to non-existent antecedents.
Non-sequiturs may seem cute to you, but they leave big holes in your poems.
Knock it off with passages in a foreign language, however brief, if not in common world usage.
Inoculate yourself against clichés.
You can be derivative, but learn what plagiarismis and don’t copy or claimthe work of another.
Don’t write down to your reader. S/he will detect and resent it.
“Don’t let your reach exceed your grasp.” Don’t write up over the head of your imaginary
reader if you have to stand on a dictionary, a thesaurus and a stack of reference books. Don’t
write over your own head.
Seek and find your own level; it’s good enough for the specific group of readers you will
naturally attract. You have no need for pretention.
Write about what you know best in your own tongue.
Minimize the dictionary-speak. Odds are the first trip to a reference book loses your reader.
Immerse yourself in the language until you both love it and are in love with it.
Fall in love with concrete detail. Be specific. Show; don’t tell.

15. Seek and find your own level; it’s good enough, you have no need for pretention.
Write about what you know in your own tongue.
Getting heretical here: as soon as I see the words Jesus or god (substitute your own blasphemy)
I stop reading. Even if God may not be dead, the word has been used to death. Ditto Love, etc.
If you’ve read one love poem, you’ve read them all. B o r I n g. In truth, perhaps one in a million
will make it past the jade wall and move us to genuine emotion freshly. If you must make the
attempt, show, don’t tell. Metaphor is my friend even if it isn’t yours. Better latent than blatant.
Good nature poems are also among the most difficult to write about well.
C’mon folks. There is an infinitude of things out there to write poetry about, why are you all so
stuck on love and religion? Both god and love are in the detail. This kind of diabetes is
contagious.
Don’t take the easy route.
To write good poetry you must become more a rewriter than a writer. You may feel that your
first draft was heaven-sent, dictated by god, but here as elsewhere any god helps only those
who help themselves. You might write one great first draft in your lifetime, and then spend the
rest of it waiting for the same lightning to strike again. Sacred crap remains crap. You’re
supposed to be the artist; do your job. Rewrite that poem-to-be into existance. Make it live.
To write good poetry, be authentic. Write what you know even if you’re learning as you go.
Write with the utmost possible clarity and simplicity. Let your poems be inevitable.
Read. Read. Read.
DV: You speak with such passion about poetry. You’ve never sold any?
Jack Scott: I’ve never made a nickel from poetry. And I also didn’t make a full living from
sculpture; I had to supplement by doing other things, but I have almost always been self-
employed. I’ve done a lot of different things to support myself. And my poetry. Two things have
sustained me through the hardest times. I have almost always been in love. I love being in love.
I’ve always felt I needed to be in love. Some would call that Limerance. (Look it up.) That’s what
my passions have been: falling in love with women and with a lot of other things. I love them,
but I just might have been a serial monogamist. I’m not in love with anyone now for just about
the first time in my life, but my poetry is still with me. I think maybe it has always been my first
love.
DV: Do you like your own poetry? Has it stood the test of time well?

16. Jack Scott: Oh yes. I can even say without embarrassment that I love it, even though now only
god understands some of it. Just kidding. I’ve always thought it absolutely necessary to make it
accessible to the broadest range of people possible. Clarity is a requisite, although by definition
poetry is intended to stretch the language and lead people to places they might otherwise
never visit. Resistance is generally a necessary ingredient, although a delicate, but firm hand is
needed to hold it back from overcoming clarity. The so-called poets I have no patience with are
those who try to make you follow them to places where there is no oxygen. The only example
I’ll give is The Wasteland, lauded by the self-anointed lords of language as the greatest poem of
the 2oth Century. Well, the Emperor’s New clothes were the best fashions of the same period.
Now that was a con. In all fairness, I love The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and enjoy some of
his other work. But his “Masterpiece” has made gibbering ninnies of infinite English Professors.
And there are still many who still faux fawn at the rustle of its pages. I wish Mark Twain, Will
Rogers and could have read it.
DV: Could you characterize your poetry for us generally. Do you have what we might call
signature subject matter, mood or style?
Well first of all me and my racing mind don’t have the patience for metrical versification, or the
inclination. The same goes for working within any strict form, boundaries or rules. Or rhyme,
eve, although it sometimes occurs spontaneously and I‘ll let it lie. Free verse is my forte.
Sometimes I lead it, sometimes I follow it, but we dance if things work out right. Form doesn’t
keep me from enjoying the work of others; it’s just not for me.
I’ll write about anything. As I said I enjoy complexity, and demand simplicity, which usually
works out to mean that little things become surrogates for big things. I’m going to exaggerate
and say that everything is metaphor and leave you guessing how fully I mean that.
Treating poetry as if it were sculpture, I’d have to say that the universe is my model. I’m
fascinated with time, always have been, not because I’m old. I hate euphemism; I’m not a
senior citizen or a gray panther- I’m old and you should think about the significance of that. It
means that I know more, having experienced more, longer than most of the people around me.
I can say quite humbly that I have in some ways acquired what is called wisdom. I know, I can
scarcely find my way around my computer and don’t really understand or trust my cell phone,
but I remember Hitler, and the bountiful fish in the Delaware Bay, and a sleepy small town at
the tip of Florida named Key West. I remember a big basket of great tomatoes costing 25 cents,
same as a dozen cherrystone clams. I remember gasoline being three gallons for a dollar,
cigarettes three packs for a dollar, and three quarts of beer for a dollar. I agree: those are just
the surface of things, but have a look at my poetry and you might experience some of the
things inside, or on the other side of those things. I am very impressed with any mind that can
remember and recall so many, almost if not literally, an infinitude of thoughts and memories.
I have always been aware of the space between people and of the void within myself. The two
are so intertwined that it would be impossible to pull them apart without killing their host. I’ve
always been a willing outsider, yet too often a reluctant loner. My serious relationships have
been anything but casual. My intensity eventually drove away the very women it attracted. I

17. have spent my emotional life seeking the deepest, closest intimacy possible. It took me many
years to realize that no human relationship was going to lessen my distance from other and
heal the pain of apartness. No one was going to offer what I felt was missing in me.
Communication between people always reaches a frontier, an outer boundary of the comfort
zone where language segues into hieroglyphics or simply comes to an abrupt stop. There was a
song in the sixties, “If you’re not with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” I love the
English language. I love to work with it and play in it. I like to storm or seduce that frontier open
with the essence of words, attempting to convey what can’t be expressed directly. In that
sense, words might be thought of as symbols on a combination lock which, if manipulated
properly, can open sesames. I am a describer, a poet. I can’t cuddle or hug my words, but I can
sleep and wake with them as solace for the lack of other things.
How did you get started writing?
Who influenced you?
Do you have a favorite book/subject/character/ setting?
What advice do you have for someone who wants to be an author?
Where is your favorite place to write?
What else would you like to tell us?
Self-published on Amazon and CreateSpace.

18. Notes re DVInterview:
It’salive!
A transfusionof experience
“congealed wisdom”
. I did keep all my notes; more about that later.
As if the meaningandimportof a paragraphof prose were perfectlycompressedintoaline of poetry.
“Genuine poetrycancommunicate before itisunderstood.”TSEliot
offer the other sides of things
Idiocracy
Restlessness agitation impetuosity
I hit the world looking for paid work.
I had a hole inmy life.
Jack Scott: You might be sorry you asked me to do that. I’m going to assume that we don’t
have a deadline here, but I will be as brief as possible. I’d like to put some things in context so
we can see how they fit together.
DV: I’m in no hurry and the reader can take a break at any time. Maybe go read some of your
poetry.
Much of it’s pretty long, too.
“You make poetryrelevanttoourgenerations.” –DavidCuayahui
Jack Scott We can nottolerate those whowouldsnuff usif theycouldgetawaywithit.That wouldbe
treasonagainstoneself.Yes,we are atwar.Let us recognize the enemyandbe alert.There canbe no
reconciliationwithhatred.