The Fire Landscape
Gary Fincke

The Fire Landscape is organized as a series of poem sequences. Was that its design from the beginning?
Not from the beginning, but once I had collected a dozen or more poems that were set in my childhood and adolescence in the 50s and 60s, I began to separate them by “eras,” and the sequences began to form. The atom bomb, the Salk vaccine, Vietnam, the Kent State shootings—creating sequences gave me a chance to work deeper, the idea of vertical writing that Andre Dubus spoke of when commenting on the method he used to create his great short stories. Trying to know everything about a character or a place or a situation.
Behind all of the sequences were the attitudes of the blue collar, heavy industry world I grew up with in Pittsburgh. That world resonates throughout. Most of it has now disappeared, and though the air is cleaner, the world I knew seems a lesser place now because now so few people “make” anything.

You were a student at Kent State when the shooting occurred in 1970. Has that experience stayed with you?
Without a doubt. It took me more than twenty years to write anything whatsoever about it that wasn’t angry graffiti. When I thought I had perspective, I went back fifteen years ago and became as angry as ever. That surprised me, and I wrote about that experience as nonfiction, and then a bit later I wrote a short story that is set just after the shootings. In a much earlier form, the sequence in The Fire Landscape was published years ago, and then I revisited it and opened it up as a chapbook that was published recently by Cervena Barva Press. Now it’s been worked back down to the fundamental narrative and stands in the center of this collection as a sort of tipping point.

Besides being in sequences, are there other structural similarities among the poems?
Nearly every one is in syllabics. I’ve come to trust the discipline of this form as a way of forcing me to reconsider every word, and then the order of every line so that I keep the form as well as the rhythm. There are a very few exceptions here, but I know when I read my work that adhering to syllabics has helped me rid myself of bloat in my poems.You write fiction and creative nonfiction as well as poetry.

How does that influence your poetry?
I came to poetry first, so the influence may well work in the other direction. I’ve always been attracted to narrative poetry, poems that are about character and place and incident. Philip Levine, in particular, was the poet that showed me that the voices I’d been hearing all my life could make poetry if I listened and watched well enough. And at some point a few of the poems demanded so much space that they suggested short stories.

What’s most important to you as far as audience response to your work?
I want my readers to feel something when they read my poems. I write for the heart first, so emotional resonance is what I’m looking for. And because I’m attracted to poems that do more than simply extend a narrative thread, I’m most pleased when the poems make a leap through the use of science or history or culture or even odd trivia. Like a lot of writers, I think and write associatively. It’s how the world comes to me. I just hope I’m up to the task of presenting those associations effectively on the page.

What are you currently working on?
I was fortunate enough to win the Flannery O’Connor Prize for short fiction a few years ago, and that gave me the confidence to immerse myself in short fiction. I’m shopping a new collection and have nearly finished a second collection. What I mean by that is I’ve worked as many as thirty stories down to eleven or twelve in each case. The stories have found good homes in magazines, but organizing the best of them into books is always the goal. And I’m about to complete a new collection of poems that remain narrative but are connected in other ways besides my personal history. Nearly all of the poems have appeared in magazines I admire, so that has given me confidence. For now it’s called The History of Permanence, which might give you some idea where it’s headed.

How about nonfiction?
I published a book called Amp’d a few years ago that is about my younger son’s life as a rock guitarist in two signed bands. I had a wonderful time writing it because I went to about 70 shows in four years, spent time back stage and on the tour bus, and did my best to write a father/son book that gave an honest, close up look at rock and roll. The second band is called Breaking Benjamin, and they’ve been very successful, headlining arena tours now, but back then, when they were trying to break into that world, everything was new and exciting, both for him and for me. Lately, I’ve put together a series of essays into what I’d call a “subjective memoir.” They’re organized chronologically, but also by concern—work, religion, weakness, etc. Writing nonfiction sharpens my eye and all my other senses as well. I welcome returning to it.You direct a large undergraduate creative writing program and teach a full schedule of workshop classes, yet you have published fifteen full-length books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in the past twenty years.

How do you find time to be so prolific?
I don’t feel prolific, but I do know that I make time for writing nearly every day very early. I try to be ready to write by six a.m. There are days when nothing comes of it, but I make myself available. I work most days until around ten, eat lunch, and give myself over to my teaching and administrative work at Susquehanna University for the rest of the day. I have the same schedule on weekends except for the teaching part. I love my job and look forward to going to work. It’s not hard to get out of bed when you want to be working.