Stephen Gyllenhaal is an award-winning film and television director whose credits include Paris Trout, Waterland, Homegrown, and Twin Peaks. His poems have been published in nearly two dozen literary journals, including Nimrod, Texas Review, Wisconsin Review, Apalachee Review, and Prairie Schooner. This past June the New York-based literary press Cantarabooks published his first poetry collection, entitled Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood, with a foreword by poet Hugh Ogden and an introduction by actress Jamie Lee Curtis. Gyllenhaal's wife is producer-screenwriter and sometime collaborator, Naomi Foner (A Dangerous Woman, Losing Isaiah), and his son, Jake (Brokeback Mountain), and daughter, Maggie (World Trade Center), are actors.
R&T: Tell us a bit about Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood. For example, what are you most proud of in regards to this book? Do you have a favorite poem(s)? And, how does it feel to hold your words in your hands, open the pages and see what you have written and know many others are, and will be, reading it?
Gyllenhaal: I had no idea that I'd have the feelings I've had around this book. I'd never really conceived of writing a book, actually. My wife has been the writer in the family. I've always been focused on movies and television, primarily directing. Poetry seemed so out of left field. And yet it grew in me and continues to grow. But nothing prepared me for how hard I began to work towards the end of the book's preparations. I somehow understood that books are still quite miraculous, unlike movies, they are still—which is to say calm—on the surface and yet potentially powerful, turbulent and provocative underneath (movies are too often the opposite). I don't really know how deep and powerful Claptrap is for others––for me (so far) it's the deepest I've been able to go. Deeper than any movie. I have quite a few poems that I really like: "Shoe Polish", "Canon", "Photosynthesis", "The Man". But it changes from day to day, and, since
I've started doing some readings, those changes seem to be even more radical. It's all a kind of discovery.
R&T: When you decided you wanted to publish your collection of poems, what did you do next? Or if simpler to answer, how did you and your publisher, Cantarabooks, find each other?
Gyllenhaal: Actually Cantara [Christopher] found me. When I first got her letter in the mail suggesting that I publish a collection of my poems with them I carried it around for a week, afraid it was a scam and just so desperately wanting it not to be. It turned out not to be––far beyond my expectations too. Cantara's been tough and passionate and committed, and her husband, Michael, turned out to be an incredibly gifted and patient editor who taught me a tremendous amount about poetry. You have to understand, my poetry was being done in a nearly complete vacuum. I really told very few of my friends I was doing it, I would just send it out to various periodicals. The degree of interaction had been with a few long distance editors, but nothing like what I experienced with Cantara and Michael. It was, frankly, thrilling for me. It remains that way.
R&T: You have published your poetry in over twenty literary magazines, and now have your collection of published poetry. Do you feel validated as a poet?
Gyllenhaal: Yes. And yet, I am aware that I'm at the very beginning of my poetry journey. So much to learn. But I'm on that journey. I've tossed my hat into the ring, albeit a small and rather gentle hat.
R&T: What does it feel like to stand before people and read your poetry?
Gyllenhaal: It has felt wonderful. I haven't really been that scared, not even at the first reading at Housing Works in New York. I actually have felt that I had something to say. I'm not even sure where it's come from, but I've wanted to say it and for me, putting those rhymes and rhythms that came into my head out there into the air has been miraculous––that word again. All of this was unexpected. But then I guess if you just kind of dive into anything, there will be much that's unexpected.
R&T: What do your family and close friends think of the Poet You? And how do you feel about them reading your words, especially since your words many times are speaking to them?
Gyllenhaal: It's felt very rich. Like planting a flag in the ground. Defining myself with those around me, those I care about and love in a more precise way. Poetry is often more precise to me than any other form of communication.
R&T: What poets do you read? And which ones offer pure pleasure, and which do you read for insights into your own mind or your own poetry (or are they all one and the same)?
Gyllenhaal: They are definitely one and the same. I'm still a baby here. William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound. I came back to T.S. Eliot after someone read some of him at a funeral. Neruda, Sexton. The list is going to be growing.
R&T: How important is the writing life to you? Or, I could ask, what does poetry do for you? What does it give to you that you crave?
Gyllenhaal: The poetry, particularly preparing this book, has jettisoned me into screenwriting in an unexpected way. I'm just finishing one screenplay and doing a rewrite on another. Poetry seems to have released something for me. I've even begun to play with the idea of a novel. And of course more poems. The writing life, being at a desk a good number of hours a day, has become a deeper and deeper pleasure for me. The process of trying to capture something so elusive, getting even a part of it––better than almost anything, I think. And you can do it anywhere. And you don't need a film crew and actors and millions of dollars (though I like that part of my life too). They seem to be complementing each other.
R&T: Pertaining to the above, in a world which would force us to make difficult decisions, would you ever give up your film and television career for poetry? Or do you feel as if the two are fused and cannot be separated?
Gyllenhaal: I think I just answered that. I want to do both for the rest of my life.
R&T: How is your circle of friends and colleagues reacting to The Poet You versus the Film and Television You?
Gyllenhaal: At worse they pretend they notice, at best they seem deeply moved and excited. It seems as if there's been a subtle shift with many of my friends as if, perhaps, they've been introduced to me for the first time.
R&T: Do you feel poetry quiets something inside of you that needs to be soothed? And, does poetry give something to you that you do not get from work, family, friends and, even, success?
Gyllenhaal: Success (to the degree that I've had it) seems to give very little, really. Family is boundless in what it gives back and what it allows me to give. Poetry seems bound up in both those poles. The ironies, pain and joy of living this strange life I've found myself in. It seems to occasionally take the confusion I feel and make some corner of my universe clear––a part I never expected to be clear before. A part that is often quite quirky.
R&T: What motivates you to sit quietly and create poetry? Certainly, it must be an entirely different world from creating images for the screen - one spent sequestered instead of surrounded?
Gyllenhaal: They aren't so different. There's some truth to the concept that it's lonely at the top, if you want to count directing being at the top. It isn't in television, it's certainly not perceived that way and yet it sort of is. Even with all those people, you're kind of alone. I sometimes feel more connected around writing poetry because I often get up afterwards and wander around my house, bump into my wife, maybe even read it to her. Or drift off and hang a little with my friends.
R&T: Do you have a regular schedule for when, and how long, you write?
Gyllenhaal: I get up in the morning. Early. Around 5am. Out of dreams, it seems. Or every once in awhile I just get hit with something and I sit down wherever I am. I'm writing this around midnight, so go figure.
R&T: What mistakes do you see new writers/poets/anyone at all make in regard to finding success?
Gyllenhaal: Looking for it. I've made that mistake a lot. America––and other places––are obsessed with the thing. I've been around a lot of it. It's way overrated. Ridiculously overrated. Far more satisfying to sit under a tree.
R&T: Do you ever get writer's block, or become exhausted from all you do? If so, what do you do to overcome it so you can move ahead?
Gyllenhaal: I don't seem to get exhausted at the moment. I seem to be pretty happy and when I've been exhausted before it's because I wasn’t. Happy. Why? I think part of it was I didn't quite know what I wanted to say, I'd wander around in circles pretending I did. That was when I'd become most obsessed about success, as if somehow shortcutting to
success would allow me to avoid getting to the truth of it all (or the truth of something). I've found no direct correlation between telling the truth and success. If there is one, it's more likely that the two don't really go together very often. Scary.
R&T: What are you working on now?
Gyllenhaal: A screenplay called "Perfect Divorce" and a rewrite on a movie called "Keys to the Street". And these questions.
R&T: Thank you, Stephen, for taking time from your busy schedule to do this interview with me.
Gyllenhaal: A pleasure.
For more information on Stephen Gyllenhaal, visit Cantarabooks.
Kat Magendie is too quirky-chaotic to survive in the real world, so she left behind her beloved moss-filled grandfather oak trees in South Louisiana and escaped to her mountain fiction world in North Carolina where she spins tales, drinks Deep Creek Blend coffee, an occasional glass of wine, and even more occasional glass of vodka tonic with lime, and contemplates the glow of old Moon. She is the author of three novels, numerous short stories and essays, and a few hopeful poems. Visit her website.
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