December 2008
Dean Kostos is the author of the collection The Sentence that Ends with a Comma and the chapbook Celestial Rust. He has taught poetry writing at Pratt University, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and The Great Lakes Colleges Association.

What is the most essential part of a story or poem that makes it worth writing?
When it’s working, writing a poem is like being lured into deeper and deeper rooms. I love the mystery and the exploration.

How much do you revise?
Sometimes it goes on (and off) for many, many years. I recently retrieved a poem that I started 19 years ago and found that I could reopen it with revision.

How do you know when a piece is done?
I simply have to move on.

How do you “practice” your craft?
“Practice” is the right work, for it implies an ongoing process; it is.

In your work, are you more interested in the language or the message?
I guess I tend to foreground language. For me, images and musicality speak more deeply than logical language can. Logic can be the death of a poem because it can’t go deep enough.

What’s your favorite part of the writing process?
I love getting intoxicated by a poem as I’m writing it.

What book have you read recently that you couldn’t put down?
Tina Chang’s Half-lit Houses.

Are there any aspects of writing that you feel can’t be taught?
You can’t teach people to have an affection and fascination for language itself.

How does teaching influence your work as a writer?
One of the problems that students have is that they don’t trust their words. I suppose I see that because I have the same struggle. Through teaching, I’ve learned to follow my own advice.

What’s your favorite in-class writing prompt?
I love ekphrastic poetry, and I love surrealism. Therefore, I enjoy introducing surrealist paintings to students; I then ask them to choose a painting (Dali works well for this) and write about it as if they are inside the strange world they are writing about.

How do you create lessons to appeal to as many students as possible?
I find that if I start with Brainard’s “I Remember” poem, the students start to understand the importance of concrete imagery. (One of the hardest things is to get students away from being overly abstract.)

Do you stick to lesson plans or follow the class dynamic wherever it takes you?
I have a lesson plan, but I change it as the need arises.

How much of yourself—your personal interests, your approach to writing—do you share in a classroom?
The beauty of having a poet teach poetry writing is that we do bring our unique twist to the experience. I am against the notion of “saming.”

What are your grammatical pet peeves?
I have many; I guess my biggest one is verb tense inconsistency.