Ask The Author: Ori Fienberg

Check out Ori’s Fienberg’s four poems in the February issue of PANK and catch up with him as we talk about where poems go to die, beating up nature, and living in a world without typos.

1. What happens when a poem dies?

Perhaps it goes to a heaven, the same place where the Library of  Alexandria rests, alongside letters to Santa, and prayers that have  disintegrated in the Wailing Wall.  It is almost certainly part of the  genetic imperative of a strong poem to reproduce, to live on through  offspring, influence, and citation, or  to lodge itself so firmly in  the consciousness as to transcend poetry and become idiom.  And even  once a poem dies there is the possibility of spontaneous regeneration  in another country, culture, and time.  Scientists will probably never  discover immortality by studying a writer’s body, but I hold out hope  that a student poring over a writer’s body of work may have better  luck.

2. If you were an entry in a dictionary, how would you be defined?

There would be many different meanings.  Precocious middle school  students would giggle at the 3rd and 5th meanings, while the 7th form  would only be invoked in times of extreme stress.  The 8th definition  would be debated by linguistics experts, meaning and origin obscure.  Almost certainly there’d be a gerund form.  Beware my 4th definition.

3. How would you fight off rampaging leaves?

Watch in late summer for the forerunners, the solitary precocious and  rebellious explosions on trees, but know that you cannot win unless  you join in.  If I could meet anybody in history it would be the first  person to jump into a pile of leaves for fun.

4. Would you arm wrestle Strunk or White?  What would be your training regimen?

No.  I’ve never been particularly keen on arm wrestling.  On the  other hand I would be willing to challenge either to a thumb-war.  I  fancy myself pretty good, provided the rules are strict and the  opponent isn’t allowed to bring their arms into the battle.  I’ve got  a slender, whippy thumb, good for escapes, and quick side attacks once  my opponent’s initial barrage has been fended off, especially if  they’ve got a pad-like thumb and go for those heavy hay-maker  take-downs.  But having been unable to find a picture of Strunk or
White’s hands it’s hard to say.  I’m certainly not in the same league  as writer-wrestlers luminaries such as Norman Mailer and Oscar  Villalon.

5. What would happen to you if we lived in a world without typos?

This world scares me.  In one scenario I can imagine anarchy has  dominion over language: there are no typos because anything goes.  In  this scenario I will stand on a street corner wearing a sandwich board  neatly listing the 19 most common usage errors, because I suspect that  this anarchy will herald the coming of the apocalypse.

Chaos is bad, but I also fear the excess of order: technical written  perfection. The change would probably come on gradually the result of  some unexplained thermodynamic law of language: first the homonyms,  misspelled words, and dangling modifiers.  The commas would be the  last to slide into lock step.  Old copy-editors would drink  desperately, trying to reach a magical point of intoxication where  errors would reappear.  Old, typo-laden manuscripts would be put into  museums.  I would probably live reasonably well by selling once  worthless drafts of high school English papers to fetishistic  collectors in dark alleys.