Kurt Luchs is the author of the new book Tributaries: Essays & Verses Flowing From & Celebrating Favorite Poems. His other books include Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli.
Q: What inspired you to write Tributaries?
A: When my publisher Jacob Smullyan started the literary quarterly Exacting
Clam, I wanted to contribute something uniquely my own that might be of
interest and use to others.
I felt that most readers had been thoroughly exposed to poets of previous centuries at college, and were familiar with their contemporaries by taking part in the current literary scene.
But it seemed to me that much of the best work of the 20th century had been unjustly overlooked or forgotten. What people remember about an epoch is usually worth remembering, yet what they forget is often worth remembering as well.
There is a sort of parallel development happening now in the world of classical music, where people are remembering that along with all of the well-known male composers of a given period, there were also women composers whose work is being rediscovered and given its proper place.
That’s very exciting. It’s the kind of thing that started the Renaissance.
Q: How did you choose the poems to include in the book, and do you have one or two particular favorites?
A: In each case these are poems that I have lived with and loved my whole life. I have gotten to know them very well, so well that I hopefully have something to say about them that would cause other readers to give them a second look.
I especially love the little Borges poem because I had the privilege of meeting him—he’s the only one of these poets that I did get to meet, and his translator too. And as I explain in that essay, those encounters led me to take up poetry again myself after many years away. That’s a very personal connection for me.
The Kenneth Koch poem is a favorite because, as someone who spent so much of their life writing humor, I appreciate that he brought humor back into poetry in an epic way, and yet with an underlying seriousness of purpose.
I have no way of knowing, but I’d like to think he would’ve enjoyed the villanelle I wrote for him and his New York cohorts who loved the French forms.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: John Lennon had a stock answer for how he came up with the name Beatles: “Well, I had a vision when I was twelve. And I saw a man on a flaming pie, and he said, ‘You are the Beatles with an A.’ And so we are.”
The simple truth is, I’m a comedy guy as well as a poetry guy. I like that Tributaries is a pun. It signifies that all of us engaged in literature—writers, readers, publishers, all of us—are part of a living stream that has come rolling down to us like Moses coming down from the mountain full of visions.
Q: The poet Lee Upton said of the book, “What Kurt Luchs experiences when encountering certain poems is more than affection, it’s undisguised ardor. Companionably, refreshingly witty, he writes about poems as a labor of love.” What do you think of that description?
A: I think it’s a wonderful description and I’m very grateful to Lee for it. And it’s accurate, in that I am far too advanced in years to spend my time as a writer doing anything but what I love.
For years I made a living writing and editing. Even when I was writing comedy for a living it wasn’t for me, as enjoyable and financially profitable as that experience was.
I’m making less money as a writer now than I ever did and having way more fun. There is nothing more inspiring to a writer than having a publisher and an editor who get what they’re doing.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My next two books are already written and tentatively planned for publication in 2027.
The first is a chapbook called A Little Book About the Beatles. It includes a sequence of poems about them, “Fab Sonnets,” which will be the first time anyone’s done that, to my knowledge.
There’s also an essay about a lesser-known part of their history, their interactions with film composer Bernard Herrmann and his work both before and after they became famous. There might be another essay by the time it comes out, I’m still wrestling with that.
The other book that’s already finished is a collection of 10 autobiographical essays called Crumbs from a Smart Cookie. It covers mostly my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood.
I’m working on two other books as well, though I prefer not to say more about them unless and until I can finish them to my satisfaction. And, of course, I continue to write and publish poems, which will eventually become another poetry collection. My working title is Playing Posthumous.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: To quote Mark Twain accurately, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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