Kevin Carey

Kevin Carey teaches in the English Department at Salem State University and Endicott College. He has published two books—a chapbook of fiction The Beach People, from Red Bird Chapbooks (2014) and a book of poetry, The One Fifteen to Penn Station (Cavankerry Press, 2012). He has recently completed a documentary film about New Jersey poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan, called All That Lies Between Us,” and a new collection of poems, Jesus Was a Homeboy (CavanKerry Press, 2016). I had the pleasure to interview him on my Somerville Community Access TV showPoet to Poet: Writer to Writer.

Doug Holder: Would you be comfortable with the label of poet of the working class?

Kevin Carey: I think so. I’d like to think that is a world I know. I am comfortable writing about these issues—these people. I would be pleased to be identified with this.

DH: Do you ever write about different folks—different sensibilities?

KC: I don’t know if I have written a lot of other things. I write mainly about my own life. A friend of mine said: ‘” I may not be much, but it is all I think about.” I was thinking if I was going to write another book, I would have to look at other things to write about.

DH: You got your MFA and MA when you were in your 40s. What took you so long?

KC: I had young kids. I dabbled in writing. I liked the idea of being a writer, but I wasn’t writing. My idea of a writer was someone sitting in cafes in Paris—living the bohemian life. I never really led that life. When I started to write seriously, I wrote about a lot of different things. Eventually writing became a job, another day at work. Once you feel you are in the writing world it is hard to get out of it. You can’t really stop doing it—because you really love it. I sometimes say I am not going to write something for a week but then two days later I am writing something. It is a blessing and curse. And you have to develop a thick skin—there are usually a lot more rejections than acceptance when you start out and beyond.

DH: You went to get your MFA in New Jersey, and feel under the spell of the poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan of Patterson, NJ. I know William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg and other poets came from there—a sort of Patterson School of Poets.

KC: Well I had friends who were New Jersey poets and they would go on retreats with Maria. I went, and I found out that we wrote poems from Friday to Sunday. I also found I really liked her as a person. She looked at poetry as a way of per serving history. Her poetry is about people, places, and things that happened to her while she was growing up. She made her life into narrative poetry. There is something about Patterson, N.J. that is really interesting. You see the city come alive in her poetry. It certainly has been the birthplace of some great poets. So there is something about Patterson and its urban life. There is a certain way poetry is treated there.

DH: Your new chapbook of short stories Beach People takes place in your hometown of Revere, Mass. It is written in a prose/poetry fashion. Why did you choose to do this?

KC: I am not sure how it first came to me. I had the idea that I had to capture these moments—in a brief manner. I never spent much time with one of the character studies without going on to something else. The book consists of these short snippets of these Revere characters that felt really wonderful to me.

DH: These Beach People are a rich mother lode of material. And they live and work on a spit of land near the ocean. Do you think the expanse of ocean provides a horizon to their dead end lives?

KC: I suppose it could be a horizon, but it also can be a place that these people are never going to get to. I think the ocean always does that. I think it could work either way.

DH: Have any of the folks portrayed in the book—recognized themselves?

KC: I haven’t heard anything. The characters are often combined among two or three different people. There are a lot of fictional aspects to these characters—so people may not recognize themselves. The

DH: In your book of poetry The One Fifteen to Penn Station, in your title poem , you write about about your experience of travailing on a train from Boston to New York City. I always find trains a great place to write, travel and ponder one’s existence. You are in sort of limbo between two points, neither here or there.

KC: I just love trains. I think they are very cinematic. In this form of traveling there is less rush—you slow down. It has a sit-back quality—everything will take its time. I love to look at the passing neighborhoods—the street scenes.

DH: How does teaching help or hinder your work?

KC: I think the experience of teaching certainly helps writing. I don’t write as much when I teach. I feel privilege to be in a discussion with other people about literature. But so far as teaching being complimentary to writing—I wonder if I would be better off with a day job that had nothing to do with writing. Because I spend a lot of mental energy on both. With teaching you are always thinking about the craft. If I was stocking shelves I wouldn’t be thinking of writing. I am usually able to generate work when I am teaching.

DH: Why do you feel MFA programs are valuable for writers?

KC: In my own case I got a lot of feedback. You need to be proactive. You are surrounded by great writers. Network with them, learn things.

The One Fifteen to Penn Station

Ten minutes out of Back Bay Station
and I am reminded of a long-ago train
and the futile mission I was on then
and where it brought me and why 
it cornered me into thinking I was 
onto something, something more 
than the wrong hard turn that left me
high but hungry and hurt, 
and when I woke up I realized 
some things can’t ever be fixed
no matter how hard you try.

The tracks connect us like telephone lines
and power grids and graffiti walls
and parking lots and barbed wire 
and chain link and churches, 
miles and miles of churches, 
and acres of trees flipping by my window 
like the clips of conversation around me.

You can see it all out a train window, 
you can see the signs: checks cashed, 
cold beer, rooms by week, shows nightly,
hawk here, bet here, pay for junk here,
the spray paint broken glass plywood walls,
make peace, Jesus saves, funk lives,
the clothesline, the cardboard, 
the vapid faces of the children, 
long lines of blank-faced children, 
and it reminds you how easy it is 
to walk a mile like a rummy in both directions, 
run farther and farther away and closer to yourself,
until the worst bet becomes the only one left 
and the trouble follows you like soup cans 
tied to a wedding car.

But sometimes you catch a glimpse 
of a hundred sparrows bursting 
from the cover of a lonely maple tree, 
or some kid hitting a rubber fastball 
high over the telephone wire in slow motion, 
or you pass a man standing in a junkyard 
pointing to the bottom of a scrap pile, 
and you think no matter where you go
you’re always trying to get to the bottom 
of the junk,
the junk you choose,
the junk you hide from,
the junk that keeps you riding the rails,
and the train sneaks into the city,
as if someone left the back door open.