Douglas Cole’s The Gold Tooth in the Crooked Smile of God
Douglas Cole writes, teaches and lives in Seattle, Washington. He has published six poetry collections, as well as a novella. His work has been anthologized in Best New Writing (Hopewell Publications), Bully Anthology (Kentucky Stories Press) and Coming Off The Line (Main Street Rag Publishing). His work also appears or is forthcoming in journals such as The Chicago Quarterly Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Off the Coast, Owen Wister Review, The Galway Review, Slipstream, Red Rock Review, Wisconsin Review, Two Thirds North, San Pedro River Review, Badlands, Common Ground Review, The Ocean State Review, The Raven Chronicles, Solstice, and Midwest Quarterly.
He has been nominated for a Pushcart in both poetry and fiction and for a Best of the Net Award. He received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry; the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House; as well as First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway.
I interview him here about his new collection, The Gold Tooth in the Crooked Smile of God.
You work the word ‘beauty’ into several poems in The Gold Tooth in the Crooked Smile of God, including in one piece where you list beautiful things. Interestingly abstract word for a down-to-earth collection. How would you define beauty, and how would you say it makes its way into your work?
My first thought is John Keats’ definition: “beauty is truth, truth beauty…” I know the things I list in that poem you mention might not be what most people think of as beautiful, but they’re truth and that is beautiful to me. True, as in that’s what happens in life. And that’s how I understand Keats’ definition: beauty is everything, everything in life, everything that is amazing and that we imagine, as well as everything tragic and quickly slipping out of reach…it’s all beautiful. Beauty is accepting truth, accepting life as is. Once you accept truth, accept life, it all becomes beautiful. And accepting truth is seeing that everything simply is, so, it’s neither ugly nor beautiful, really, and that way of seeing is beautiful. Because think about it, Keats wrote that poem (“Ode on a Grecian Urn”) knowing he was dying, knowing that he would not live to be with his love or create his art, but from that place he could still look at the world and say….beautiful. I agree with that stance.
I sense a theme in your writing that life will still be okay, even when it feels mediocre rather than glorious. Such as in the piece about the man’s garage, and another where the speaker urges someone who feels like a failure to ‘sit down and have a drink/you’ve got all of us.’ Would you say this is accurate?
Well, if you accept the truth that the world simply is and that we apply our judgments of good and bad and beautiful and ugly, yeah, it’s always okay. I mean, it just is, so it’s okay.
What does the title ‘The Gold Tooth in the Crooked Smile of God’ mean to you? How do you choose titles?
I had other titles in mind for a while, a lot of them involving the idea of a carnival, like life is this carnival you get tricked into with wild rides and lights and sounds…yet it’s a little bit of a sham. Then that phrase popped into my head, lifted and altered from the film Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus, which is about a guy looking for beautiful music and stories in a gothic south and a bizarre world. I could identify with that. Then the image unfolded nicely: the crooked smile, god’s crooked smile as though god fooled you into being born (hence it’s crooked), god with a gold tooth like a gangster, a charlatan. But gold is also the alchemist’s symbol of enlightened being and purity, so it works nicely, a little ironically, and goes back to beauty being found in the strange… I didn’t do a whole lot of analysis about it, though. Most of these thoughts are after the fact. I liked the ring of it, the image. But it works on these other levels, too, I suppose. I probably shouldn’t even say what I think it means. I don’t know.
How do you transition from poetry to prose? Do you work on both poetry and prose manuscripts at the same time? How do you know when a particular idea should be a story or poem?
Yes, I do work on both at the same time, but there’s no real conscious transition involved in going between them. I don’t really see them as all that different. The effort is about the same, the issues are pretty much the same — hook into the language. And I don’t really work from ideas to form, like have an idea for something and then figure out if it’s going to be a poem or a story. I mean, if it’s going to be a story, I see a story, a movie. But then again poems are often little movies in my mind, too. But the poetry is a little more liberated because it doesn’t have to be a story. It can be more associative, more snap-shot. I think a story has to at least move as a narrative the reader can inhabit, so I slow down to describe a scene or listen to dialogue. And I like a story that feels natural and real but also has the hint of the strange, the not quite right, even the poetic… But essentially, I don’t really see big boundaries between poetry and prose. They both come from music, language, and I just go with it.
Some of your poems, particularly in ‘The Blue Island’ are quite the long, rambling ride! (In a completely positive sense, of course!) Do you know or plan how long a poem will be in advance, or do the lyrics overtake you?
I don’t plan a lot ahead of time, make an outline or anything. They come as they are, as what I’m seeing at the time. In revision, though, I might start to structure things, especially with a longer poem, as I discover patterns. But even with a narrative, which the longer ones often are, I really want the language to have an aural beauty, to sound graceful, to travel through the mouth easily…but always as a journey of some kind. Always like a good strong dose of mind opening organic chemistry…
I notice an occasional nod to spirituality, particularly Buddhism, in your pieces. Would you say that a spiritual aesthetic informs your work?
Well, Buddhism fits pretty closely with the way I see the world, and I have read and studied it quite a bit, so I’m not surprised you see that. But I’m never out to preach a message. I’m more interested in experience. Politics, religion, social justice…if those things are happening in the story or the poem it’s really just because I’m embedded in a time and place. But I’m wary of writing with an agenda. I think that limits the experience and leads to timely but ultimately temporarily valid art, which might put me outside of the herd. I know a lot of writers and poets feel that writing should serve a social purpose. I guess I just want to entertain. Step right up! Well, maybe not just that. I think my writing is a byproduct of trying to see a bigger reality than the one we’re limited to through the historical facts. Although, the facts, the imagery, the people and the events are doorways…
What’s your writing process? How do you develop, craft and revise a poem?
Write a lot, publish little? I find it a pleasant way to spend my time. I’d be up to no good, otherwise. So I do it, then something might stand out, like a bit of gold in a panhandler’s dish. And I follow it. I write by hand, usually, first, just because I love the freedom of it. No rough technology necessary! Then, if I like something, I type it up and start to evolve it. Stuff crossbreeds. A poem might influence a story, a story might fall back into a poem…it’s a discovery. I just keep opening the doors.
The Gold Tooth in the Crooked Smile of God is available here from Unsolicited Press.
