1. When you revise, what does your process look like—from first pass to final polish? 

My revision process is iterative. I usually have four or five poems simmering on the stove top at a time. I go from poem to poem most mornings, seeing which one is talking to me. If one is, I'll read the poem again and again for the music (not the right word, but neither is "meter") of the poem. And revise according to the seed of the poem inside. In addition to the aural, I also push on the poem in different spots, feeling where it is still unripe; looking to see if the line too long/short, the texture of the words too rough/smooth; the punctuation functional but aesthetic. I'll give eahc poem as much time as it gives me that morning. Again and again I do this, and save every draft of a revision. Sometimes I branch off on an edit and chase that for a while only to have to return to the trunk. I usually revise one to three poems a morning. But when a poem is really close, I'll focus on that one for a week or two. If it stops talking and I'll set it down for a bit and go back to the stove top. Eventually a poem lets me know when it is ready to be done. The draft of the poem you selected is "Quartzsite 15 2024 7b" and it has roughly sixty forebears. Like Jackson Pollack said about painting and sex, you just know when you're finished. 

2. What’s on your nightstand right now—anything you’re currently reading (or meaning to start)?  

On my crowded nightstand is The Man In the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick, which I just finished; The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, which I am enjoying now; and Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf, which I will be re-reading next.

3. When you sit down to write, what’s your writing process—how do you go from idea to finished draft?   

 Ohh that's a long answer. I feel poetry is a practice, like meditation. In short: the practice is lovely, the process is labyrinthine. I freewrite longhand a few times a week, sometimes a la Judith Cameron's morning pages method, just letting my mind spill; sometimes when I have a specific inspiration, something I heard, something I saw. Every six/nine months, I do a big transcription of my freewrite journals. I try to be like Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times" -- jerkily mechanical. I don't review the writing or consider it, I just type all the chicken-scratch, leaving all the little red wiggles under typos, etc and save it to a "rough freewrites" folder. Then when I need to craft a new poem, I explore that folder and look for one with heat. If one seems especially promising, I'll start editing the prose form. I'll start to correct spelling, cut obvious "glue/nail" words and look at parts that may need cutting. Eventually I'll toy with breaks and when it starts to look and smell like a poem, I'll move it out of the "rough freewrites" folder and save the file as, for example "Quartsite."

4. Anything else we should know - upcoming book, personal website? 

No upcoming book and no website. But if you are ever up in Anchorage, find me on the trails near Campbell creek -- the bend by Turnagain Brewery. We can have a lovely chat about poetry over sour beers!

Brent Schaeffer's poetry has been published in Rattle, LIT, Poet Lore and Green Mountains Review, among others. He was a finalist for the 2023 Tucson Festival of Books Poetry Award. He was born and raised in Eagle River, Alaska.