David Clisbee Self Interview for Botched Heroics

    You write a lot about your mother, family, and girlfriends. Do you ever worry about how the people you write about will respond to the way you have written about them?

That’s an audience concern, which means it’s a complicated concern, so let me see if I can answer this without over-complicating the question. I never know how anybody will ever respond to anything, especially myself, so if I sit around wondering what people will think about what I’ve written, well, that’s what I’ll be doing instead of writing, sitting around wondering what people will think about what I’ve written. I like to think that you’ve just got to be honest about the ways you write about anybody and by that I mean you’ve got to include both the good and the bad versus what you would like or what you don’t know because those two are too convenient to be even halfway human. To be more specific, there’s an extremely fantastic chance that I will have a long talk with my folks about what I’ve written, but that’s the nature of the beast. The thing about writing about any topic is that regardless of how well you think you might have remembered something, memory is inherently faulty and imagination just turned my hair blue in this very moment. Striking a maintained balance between faulty memory and imagined spontaneity in the hope of recreating an authentic past you can live with whether it be good or difficult seems to be the main point of interest to me.

   Are the poems you write always based off of real things that have happened?
Of course, even the imagined ones. I like to think that the imagination’s invention and recording of imagined events is as historically and authentically accurate as a journalist with tape recorder.

   But what about the historical and dialogue accuracy of how you write?
Having a personal history means having an imagination, to me. As for the “accuracy” of how I write : 1.) Testimonial accuracy is a concern best dealt with by lawyers and epistemological philosophers. 2.) In epistemology it’s a pretty widespread foundation that if you go around questioning the accuracy of any type of testimony from anyone that’s all you’ll do. You’ve got to have something to roll with first. This is why giving the benefit of doubt and beyond reasonable doubt are two very different statements: one is a basis for art; one is a basis for law, two very distinct pursuits.

   I’m not all that satisfied with that answer.
Okay.

   Well, let’s move on to something else.
Will it concern the historical accuracy of what I write about?

   Sort of.
That’s a fantastic, honest answer to a question about historical accuracy.

   Thank you. Now, how is this chapbook different from the previous ones?
A lot of things changed in me when I quit drinking. I like myself better now because I’m not so defensive and I’m not walking around thinking that the sky will fall at any moment. Correction, I am still thinking that the sky might fall at any moment because I wonder how amazing that might look. Imagine the horrible beauty involved there—airplanes just dropping all over the place and then a cloud is sitting beside you on your couch wondering if it would be rude to ask if it can have a bite of your nachos. That thought probably wouldn’t have come to me if I hadn’t changed the course of my life. You’d think that I would have changed my ways when I was in de-tox, but that, in itself, would have been a convenient epiphany that wouldn’t have lasted very long because it was brought on by an outside intervention. Don’t get me wrong, outside intervention does work for some people, but I think I needed to process the sort of self hate that was going on in my mind long enough to realize how stupid I’d become so I could crawl out of alcoholism. It’s easier to open a can of beer than actually deal with yourself. It’s more rewarding, embracing the inner wackiness of your batshit crazy brain. I think this chapbook reflects that. There’s a batshit crazy hug-fest bumbling between what I’d like and what I invent and what I don’t especially dig, but do because what else can you do?