Cynthia Cruz’s poems have been published in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Boston Review, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review and others. Her first collection of poems, RUIN, was published by Alice James Book and her second collection The Glimmering Room is forthcoming from Four Way Books. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and is the Hodder Fellow in Poetry at Princeton for the year 2010-2011.
TTQ - What role do you see poetry playing in an increasingly digital world?
Cynthia Cruz - I see poetry living in the digital world: showing up on facebook, and in online journals and sites such as Poetry.org and PSA, for example, --places where people who don’t want to buy a book can browse, sample poetry and hopefully eventually buy an actual book.
TTQ - Do you feel the e-book will ultimately take the place of the printed page?
Cynthia Cruz - No, I don’t. Or, rather, no, I hope not. I am a bibliophile, I love the paper, font, the feel of a book in my hands. I love libraries and bookstores, have in fact a small library in my home. I collect copies of books—1st editions, and so on— Maybe the world will move onto e-books (seems possible) but I’ll happily remain in the dust: reading and collecting books.
STAR
In the homeless shelter-slash
Greyhound Station in Springfield,
Mass., the loneliest man and woman
Just limped past me
En route to the shooting gallery
Called the men’s bathroom.
Dead, I think, but happy.
And the world lives on
Inside the TV set bolted above
The plastic seats of the bus station:
Glue sniffing boys in Basra,
A UN supply truck
Carrying food and water, held up
At gunpoint. And tanks plow
Into the burning city--
Is it true, we are all passengers,
And this world a room
We are traveling through?
*Note - Originally published in The American Poetry Review
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