In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Johnny Cordova

Where were you when you first had the idea for “Li Po took a driving test?” What inspired this poem? Where did the impetus to use the title as part of the piece come in?

It was the last day of a generative workshop with Jose Hernandez Diaz. I’d had a poor night of sleep and didn’t feel up to the final exercise. But I wrote down a single title. And then the first line immediately followed: “and all he saw was the moon.” The next morning the poem wrote itself.

I often find it awkward when a poet uses the first line of a poem as its title. The repetition is awkward, and perhaps a little archaic, or formal. But sometimes the first line is the right title, so why not have the title bleed into the piece? As an editor I see more and more poets putting this into practice. I think there is something about the prose poem as a form that lends itself to it. Perhaps it’s the conversational quality of a prose poem? A lot of my prose poems use the title as part of the piece.

There are a lot of opposing forces within this poem; wanting to have the freedom to drive, but being constricted by the rules; the bustle of the city versus the space on a “lonely country road.” How did these images help build this poem?

I think placing Li Po, the quintessential poet of antiquity, in a modern setting sets up endless juxtapositions. The opposing forces are multiplied when he is asked to do something as mundane as a driving test. Li Po, from what we know of him from the historical record, was a person whose sole reason for existence was to write the next poem. I think his fixation on the moon throughout the poem symbolizes that singularity of purpose. 

The poem is built upon the tension between the tedious challenges of the driving test and Li Po’s obsession with the moon. Once he has that license in hand, he is free to give himself over to the “lonely country road” and the “great, drunk, glorious moon.” That freedom is ironically his undoing, which could be interpreted as a statement on the undoing of self that is demanded by art. There is also a not-so-subtle allusion in “dying to touch the moon” to the mythology of Li Po’s actual death—falling off the deck of a boat in a drunken moment while reaching for the moon.

It feels like there’s a lot of longing in this poem as an undercurrent. Can you talk about that?

“Li Po took a driving test” is the first in a series of three poems in which I’ve placed Li Po in modern settings. What arises in each poem is a longing to get back to his time and place, symbolized in this poem as an obsession with the moon. None of this was by design. I simply put Li Po in various situations and let him speak. One of the things he seems to have wanted to say is that this modern world is no place for a poet. 

Another thing is that these poems are part of a collection whose themes are alienation, loss, regret, and coming to terms with the dharma of impermanence. The Li Po poems add levity but are also riffs on those themes. It’s easy to think of longing as a wanting for something that is elusive or just out of reach. There is also a kind of longing for that which has been lost, for the distant past—which is different from nostalgia. In “Li Po took a driving test” there is longing for the elusive moon, and at the same time an undercurrent of longing for the days of the Tang Dynasty.

What made a prose poem format feel right for this piece? Did it go through other forms first? What does your editing process look like?

It felt right as a prose poem from the jump and I never questioned it. In fact, it gave birth to a series of prose poems featuring Li Po, Ryokan, and Ikkyu in modern settings. I find the prose poem to be the perfect form for placing historical characters in modern settings. There’s a kind of surrealism to such a scenario, and the prose poem excels as a surrealist form.

A lot of my poems are composed while in formal meditation practice. I work them out in my head and jot them down in a little notepad once the session has ended. These poems often have the opening lines and the landing worked out, but the body of the poem is sometimes skeletal. So I spend some time at my desk fleshing out individual lines. The next morning in meditation I work out kinks or compose new lines. Shunryū Suzuki might say to me, “When you sit, just sit. When you write, just write.” And he would be right! But for me poetry takes precedence. I can sit anytime. Poems don’t always arise.

What themes do you return to in your writing?

When I was younger it was street life, working-class life, alienation, the fight to keep one’s soul intact in a world gone wrong. Now that I’m older it’s death, loss, regret, and the dharma of impermanence. And the occasional touch of mysticism. 

What books are your favorites? What authors do you admire?

When I began studying poetry in earnest, back in the mid 90s, I found a lot of the Western canon inaccessible. I turned to the classical Chinese and Japanese poets, of whom Li Po and Ryokan were my favorites. I was already a serious meditator and had a sensitivity to the ways Zen influenced their writing. I appreciated the simplicity. Letting the image speak for itself. Stylistically, these guys had a profound influence on my writing. They taught me how to land a poem.

I also cut my teeth on Charles Bukowski, Jack Micheline, Gerald Locklin, Todd Moore, Fred Voss, Adrian C. Louis—the street poets. Sharon Olds, early Sherman Alexie, Rilke, William Blake, Baudelaire, and Raymond Carver—Where Water Comes Together with Other Water is a book I come back to probably more than any other.

In addition to editing Shō Poetry Journal and being exposed to a wide range of contemporary voices, I read a lot of craft books. Gregory Orr’s A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry sits at the top of my stack.

A few favorite fiction writers are James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and John Steinbeck. I think it’s important for poets to read across genres.

What are you working on now?

My debut collection, The Broken Buddha, is scheduled for release by Roadside Press on March 18th. Now I have to figure out how to get people to read it!

I’ve also begun the process of organizing a collection of “early” poems, written between 1994 and 2004. My working manuscript from those days was a finalist in several book and chapbook contests, but was never published. There are some very energetic poems there that I think work well as a group.

Johnny Cordova dropped out of the literary scene for 17 years, then started writing poetry again in 2021 upon returning from 10 years in Southeast Asia. Recent work appears in Chicago Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, Moon City Review, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere. He lives at Triveni Ashram, in northern Arizona, where he co-edits Shō Poetry Journal with his wife, poet Dominique Ahkong.