Interview with Michael DeFrancesco

When the crystal droplets

wet the sky

the city sidewalks

grow black umbrellae.

RC – Yes! I could see how all three elements come together – imagery, Latin, and Zen poetry.

MD – Well, I was only 16. But I think I had this Zen concept that creativity, whether it was art, music – I was also learning to play guitar at the time, or poetry, had to be spontaneous and autonomous. It wasn't until many years later when I was in college and afterword, that I learned about people like Jackson Pollock and Jack Kerouac, who were essentially doing the same thing.

RC – The same thing as each other, or the same thing as you?

MD – As each other, and as me. I was doing similar stuff in theory but on an infinitely lower end of the spectrum. I understood the concept of stream-of-conscious at an early age, having read the Zen book and similar writings like William S. Burroughs's, Do Easy. I would play long improvised pieces on the guitar. A few of the non-representational paintings I did were mostly intuitive as well. As for Pollock and Kerouac, they almost seemed to be two diamonds cut from the same stone.

RC – How did you arrive at writing longer pieces?

MD – That didn't happen until recently, like in the past year. I wrote a handful of poems in high school. I showed them to my English teacher, but I don't think she got it. She crossed out the "e" in umbrellae with her red pen and wrote an "s" in its place – totally missing the point.

RC – You must have been discouraged.

MD – Not really, although I didn't write any more poems until 40 years later.

RC – What! How did that happen?

MD – Lots of reasons. I became much more interested in painting, and I studied art in college. Then I was focused on getting a job, any job. I got married, had kids, etc. Like John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you make plans." And, even if you don't make plans, it happens.

RC – So, as far as your writing is concerned, there's a huge gap in time.

MD – Yeah, but as I said, I was busy with other things. Eventually, I stopped painting as well. I only recently started doing small drawings again – sketches, to be precise.

RC – What made you decide to draw again?

MD – It's interesting that you should ask. But before I answer, let me briefly go back to the poems. About ten years ago, in 2010. I started writing poems again. I don't know why, after almost 40 years, I decided to write them. Stylistically, I pretty much picked up where I had left off. They were often short, spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness writings. And they were usually visually descriptive as well.