Poet Mike Lala Explores Urban Glittering Hellscapes in “The Unreal City” [INTERVIEW]

Mike Lala is a poet and performance writer living in New York City. He is the author of The Unreal City (Tupelo Press, 2023) and Exit Theater (Colorado Prize for Poetry, 2016);  several chapbooks, including Points of Return (Ghost Proposal, 2023); and a contributing translator to Tales of Dionysus (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2022). Lala’s installations, performance, and libretti include Whale Fall (2021), Madeleines: Tell Me What It Was Like (2020, with Iris McCloughan), Oedipus in the District (2018–19), and Infinite Odyssey (2018). Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

James: ”The Unreal City” opens with a series of stream-of-consciousness style poems, with disorienting enjambment and surprising uses of white space. What are some of the poets who influenced your style?

Mike: “In my writing life, the most important poet was my mentor in undergrad, Diane Wakoski. While my poems don’t have much in common with hers anymore, I still read her books and find phrases or lines that were significant to me. I see the way I construct lines, think about phrasing, and approach imagery as influenced by her instruction. In terms of contemporary poets, Jorie Graham was vital for me, especially in thinking about line movement and the amalgamation of thought and feeling to create an experience for the reader. During grad school, Anne Carson and Yusef Komunyakaa were also crucial to my development; Carson was my thesis advisor. Currently, Nathaniel Mackey stands out to me. His work in syntax, narrative, and music feels distinct from anything else I’ve read. As for ‘The Unreal City’, it draws heavily from high modernist poems about urban experiences. There are plenty of references to T.S. Eliot and Hope Mirrlees, a poet and sci-fi writer from early 20th century Paris, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf on Hogarth Press. I often look back to that era of poetry, which I believe forms an analog to our current times in a cultural and technological sense. The poetry then was grappling with significant changes in the economy, modes of production, and culture, much like we are experiencing now.”

James: Building on that question, when talking with Safia Elhillo last year we deep-dived into her use of the ampersand. In the poem “Danny Aisle”, and in other poems, you introduce unexpected line breaks, where the enjambment is at the apostrophe pushing the “s” to a new line. The poem’s opening is one example:

                 $40,000 expense
                              report this month
's exchange rate, my dream
                 of a unified and standardized

where “month’s” is enjambed at the apostrophe. Talk about how you incorporate form choices like this into your poetry.

Mike: “I think in many of these poems, especially in the center of this book, I aim to offer readers the experience of walking alongside me through the city, absorbing the changing landscape and the dynamism of downtown New York. There are extensive catalogs of stores, objects, and events, along with interactions with technology and people, whether through verbal communication or simply observing and being observed. Regarding the lines themselves, how a poet breaks a line doesn’t force a reader to read in a particular way, but it facilitates a certain type of reading. When there’s an unexpected break, as a reader, I feel compelled to move quickly to the next line to resolve the unfinished thought. When a line resolves and then breaks, introducing another meaning, it reflects the possessive nature. For example, breaking before the apostrophe in ‘month’s exchange rate’ allows an idea to seem resolved, then shifts to indicate it’s not yet complete. This technique mirrors the constant flux of understanding, akin to the experience of being downtown at five PM, leaving work, and navigating the journey home. It’s a wink to the reader, suggesting that everything you think you know is always changing.”

James: The poem “1982”, which you’ll recite later in this episode, is infused with a collage of cultural references. One example:

                       a mini MENTMORE-1855 estate
                         sold five years back to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's
              Transcendental Meditation 501C3, FOUNDATION
MAHARISHI-which hosts the English glam
              band Roxy Music, on location filming promo
                            for their single "Avalon." It stars an 18-year-old
              Sophie Ward and singer Brian Ferry.

I had to pause at this point and re-watch the video for Avalon, which I hadn’t seen in years, which ended up perfectly setting up the next portion of the poem. How do you approach the inclusion of cultural references? What are you looking for?

Mike: “This poem is a good example for this question. The core of the poem is about a hypothetical painting I would have created if I were a painter, but I’m a poet. It imagines a large canvas populated with various cultural figures, ranging from George Washington and Hillary Clinton to the Terminator and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Around 2016 or 2017, I was contemplating how conspiracy logic forms associations and imputes meaning, even when there’s no real connection. I was particularly reflecting on the 2016 election and the internet conspiracies at that time. The poem didn’t originally come together for me until after a reading in Colorado. I was hanging out with students and was fascinated by the song ‘Avalon’ and its peculiar music video, where Bryan Ferry falls in love in a castle formerly owned by the Rothschilds, now a golf course. The Rothschilds are often the subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Including this music video in the poem brought together various ideas, highlighting the impossibility of the unpainted painting. My writing often involves realizing something is missing in a poem, which can be resolved by introducing a new element that ties everything together. In this case, the music video was perfect for a poem about conspiracy, regret, and a life not lived. It touched on conspiracy, British imperial fantasy, and the particular politics of that time, drawing parallels to the current moment. It was the element that made everything click.”

James: The core of this book is the long poem “Work: A Poem”, spanning over fifty pages, and accompanied by 173 footnotes. Before discussing specific elements of the poem, how did this poem evolve from an initial idea, and how did you approach revising and editing the poem, which can be challenging with long poems?

Mike: “I started writing ‘Work: A Poem’ around 2010, after moving to New York from Michigan in 2009. It was a rough time; I had no job and was just slumming around, not writing much. I was at a point where I needed to find a new way to write, distinct from my mentor Diane’s influence, but my writing practice was inconsistent due to my chaotic life. I began by accruing lines, references, and quotes from other poems, things I had heard or overheard on the street, and arranging them in a document or emailing them to myself. Over seven or eight years, I kept adding to this collection, writing lines to connect everything.

“The poem was a mishmash of quotes, my own writing, and overheard snippets from the streets and subways. I was influenced by Hope Mirrlees’ ‘Paris’, which incorporates observations and signage. The process was slow; I kept rewriting and breaking down the poem over a decade. I doubted anyone would publish such a long poem, but it eventually came together. The layout in the book is remarkable, with particularly intense typography.

“The beginning and end of the poem came together quite quickly. The middle was the hardest part due to its length; it was even longer, and I had to cut it down. The entire process took about a decade. It feels like the poem captures my journey in developing my poetics and represents all the work that got me to where I am now.”

James: Part I of “Work: A Poem” ends with this beautiful phrase:

                                                                         Time

                                                                                                           clicks

                                                                                              on

with a pump of blood, slips between moments. Made

                of a dry-down musk, one slick red smile tears my clothes.

The train bolts in, and she—I exit, turn the corner, stalling

                in a seam.

As is the case with many phrases in this long poem, “smile tears my clothes” is footnoted to Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva’s “The Poem of the End”. The frequent references to, and phrases from, other poems reminds me of William Burroughs’ cut-up method which was discussed in my interview with songwriter Daniel Ash last year. What was your approach to incorporating such a rich tapestry of references in this long poem?

Mike: “I don’t have specific advice, but I believe for every book you write, you should read a thousand books. It’s about committing to the craft. In terms of incorporating references, we’ve touched on how the early 20th century feels analogous to our current era. I wanted to approach the rapid socio-cultural and technological changes we’re experiencing by looking to the past and seeing how poets have thought through similar transitions. During the time I wrote this poem, there was a conversation about appropriation that was necessary, though often lacking nuance. I aimed to be in dialogue with this conversation by ethically and diligently appropriating historical sources.

“Formally, this approach reflects our hypertextual world where texts are interlinked, creating a web of relationships. This mirrors how we, as individuals and thinkers, relate to others and their thoughts. I wanted to create a web of interrelation through the poems, showcasing how our digital experiences with text and content are interconnected in a vast network of relations.”

James: The military industrial complex surfaces multiple times and in different ways throughout “The Unreal City”. From death count posts of @dronestream, to companies “spewing forth into the occupying forces’ mouths”. You also draw stark contrasts between Western privilege and the challenges faced by many countries. How do you approach incorporating your point of view into your poetry while avoiding preaching?

Mike: “What makes preaching boring is a kind of didacticism where you’re telling people what to do, and I’m not interested in that. I’m more focused on rendering my view of the world in a way that compels the reader to consider it. There’s been a long conversation about the role of politics in literature, which I find somewhat pointless. People argue that politics in literature could alienate readers, but I’m not trying to convince anyone of my viewpoint. Instead, I aim to present my perspective on world events and let it stand. We may not share the same views, but we’re all witnessing the same events. My strategy is to include these observations in my poetry, allowing them to be seen. Ultimately, as artists, we don’t control how people perceive our art or whether they find it ethical. Our role is to present something and let the audience react. That interaction between the viewer and the text is the essence of literature. My poems try to incorporate parts of the world, history, and current events because they are happening.”

James: I love how you phrase it, acknowledging that we all see the same things but interpret them differently based on our belief systems. Focusing on what you are seeing rather than trying to convince or preach to someone is a more open approach. Overly preachy poetry can become dull and uninteresting, as it tends to close down interpretation rather than open it up.

Mike: “And I think a lot of poetry lately has tried to enact its politics through a personal connection to the subject matter, which is fine, but I’m not particularly interested in that approach. It doesn’t matter what I think personally about world events. I don’t believe that people should be overly concerned with my personal views or feelings about these events. My approach is to present what’s happening and let the reader form their own reaction. This method creates space for the reader’s own interpretation and interaction with the poem.”

James: In the long sequence where you collage images of the city, and search for a holophrase to capture its meaning, you format words and phrases in numerous ways: all capitals, italics, centered, staggered. The sequence is striking on the page. How do you approach the visualization of your poetry, and how does the visualization affect the words you choose? 

Mike: “It varies with each poem. Discussing the long poem ‘Work’, I incorporated many references, as you mentioned, around 173 to various texts. Two texts are particularly important: Hope Mirrlees’ poem ‘Paris’, which is a journey through Paris similar to my depiction of downtown New York, and Dante’s ‘Inferno’. I view downtown New York as a sort of glittering hellscape, beautiful yet concealing the violence enacted for economic domination. Mirrlees’ poem served as a model for moving through the city, hence her lines are integrated into the main body of the text, aligning down the left side of the page. 

“I also wanted to use Dante, and by extension Virgil, as guides through the inferno of downtown New York. Dante’s and Virgil’s language, particularly from Virgil’s didactic poem ‘Georgics’, is central to this concept, positioned in the middle of the text. This layout allows the reader to oscillate between experiencing the cityscape on the left and being guided through it or having that cityscape commented on in the center.”

James: Near the end of “Work: A Poem” you re-imagine “November Cotton Flower” by Jean Toomer, interleaved in such an intriguing way, into a collage of references and samples. You write:

Another war's coming, the winter's grown warm,
Corn aborts, seas rise, land loses form.
Clean air, scarce as any snow,
Vanishing: every branch, so pinched & slow,
Fails in its functions, carbon spikes,
Pest-fighting toil causes streams to take
Poison from soil; dead bees found
Everywhere,

In a way your book reminds me of the Beastie Boys album “Paul’s Boutique” which employed hundreds of samples to create something new. What advice do you have for poets considering a form of “poetic sampling” in their work?

Mike: “In terms of using other sources, it’s important to be aware of legal frameworks for fair use. There’s a gray zone, but referencing quotations fastidiously and not just openly stealing is both wise and ethical. In my work, few of the quotes are direct; I changed phrases, verbs, and nouns to fit the poem, turning them for my own purposes. It’s not straightforward pilfering. 

“Regarding how this approach changed me, being in conversation with authors you’ve read and your literary experiences as both a writer and reader is crucial. My intention was to engage formally with the question of appropriation while also paying homage to writers who articulated their times, many from the era of high modernism. This reflects the idea that as people, we are in constant relation with the world and each other, not separate from the natural world or from each other’s writings and thoughts. We’re building on and relating to others’ work, whether we explicitly recognize it or not. The poem makes it clear that it’s in relation to these many influences, and as a writer, I owe my ideas, my being, and my way of writing to many people who have been writing.”

Listen to the full interview on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast to hear Mike recite selections from the book.