For poet Tony Whedon, writing means 'finding different layers of yourself'

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Poet, painter and musician Tony Whedon at his home in Darien, Ga.

Credit: Peter Biello

In his new collection of poetry, writer Tony Whedon combines two of his artistic loves: verse and painting. Written over the course of fifteen years, Blue Ray offers lyric poems that capture color the way a painter would. It also explores his grief following the death of his wife. GPB’s Peter Biello stopped by his home in the Southeast Georgia city of Darien to talk about his latest work.

Peter Biello: So, Blue Ray. This book opens with a poem about the color blue, mostly as it's used in painting. And that is a theme throughout. Can you tell us a little bit about the intersection of poetry and painting in this book?

Tony Whedon: Well, I've just always been interested in the sort of intersectionality between the three arts and also music. I'm a musician, and so the idea of playing with words as you would play with sounds is part of what I'm doing. But, you know, it's interesting because these poems were written in Blue Ray over a period of about 15 years, and a lot of them are very recent, and most recent ones are about losing my wife to Parkinson's a few years ago. So there's a tinge of grief through everything. Even the joyful moments have that. But in some ways, I feel the book is unified in that it's got color and it's got blue in it, but it's also unified by grief. But I'm not celebrating grief, because there's a lot of — lot to be happy about.

Peter Biello: This book is dedicated to Suzanne, who I should mention I had the pleasure of meeting. Wonderful woman. Very kind, very fun to be around. What was it like for you to grapple with that grief in the poems in this book?

Tony Whedon: Why don’t I read a poem, because that's the only way I can really handle that.

Peter Biello: What poem?

Tony Whedon: Okay, this is "Tachycardia":

The storm came fast and was nearly gone

before I went out to check the damage –

a patio table tossed over, our sweet

princess of a garden statue ensnared

in vines. A wild down-home rocker

of Low Country storm, & I felt your heart,

your poor heart, beating next me,

your breath coming way too fast.

A slash of lightning, preceded by

throat-clearing rumbles somewhere west

of the marsh, then you were awake,

your voice soft as a prayer. Nothing’s

to be done about it, you said,

and promptly fell back to sleep,

and I lay there awake till dawn.

Peter Biello: That image nearly knocked me off my feet. Can you tell me about where this poem came from?  

Tony Whedon: Who knows? It came from — my wife had Parkinson's. And when you have Parkinson's, you fall down. And she fell down a lot. And we didn't have any caregiver. I was the caregiver and did a lot of picking her up. So that's sort of part of it. Interestingly enough, last year I fell down and broke my femur. Now other people have to pick me up. But I haven't fallen down in the year. And I continue to write and play music. But also, I think, you know, it's about the conversation with somebody who's injured. "'Nothing's to be done about it,' you said, and promptly fell back to sleep." And meanwhile, I'm thinking, "What? What happened?" You know? And so, there's a kind of shock of any kind of trauma like that.

Peter Biello: I wanted to ask you about persona, because these poems, I thought, on first reading, some of them might not be you but a creation you've made on the page. You've done so much traveling. And I know when you travel, you tend to become a different version of yourself when you're in a new country. So, maybe you tell me: What do you — what do you make of the different personae in this book?

Tony Whedon: One of the things you ask yourself when you're writing poetry is who is, what is the real me and how is it being expressed here? And you get out — you come up with nothing, what you come up with are a series of palimpsest that are images of you, but not you itself, you know? It's really complicated. I've lived in France for a few years. I've lived in Greece for a year. I lived in Mexico. Visited, you know, scores of countries. And each time I found something new. Not — I wasn't just discovering a new self; I was discovering something new about myself and something that touched a different sensibility. Now, you could say that we have different sensibilities, that they're all just separate glimmers of the self. I lived in northern Vermont in a cabin and wrote a book about it called Drunk in the Woods. And I was recovering from alcoholism. And during that particular time, I went through all kinds of transformations because of huge cold winters with 30 below and the struggle of surviving being poor. That was another self, but it was really just an — not an embellishment, but an enlargement of myself.

Peter Biello: Well, do you feel like you've reached that version of your authentic self with this book?

Tony Whedon: Absolutely not. And thank God. I think I will one day when I'm dead. But I'm not looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to writing more poetry. Right now, for example, today an image came to mind of living in Paris and walked into a cafe. And there the great piano player, Bud Powell, was playing the piano. Bud Powell in Paris. Good God!  He was one of my favorite jazz piano players. Well, Bud Powell was mentally ill, and he was crouched over the piano, playing brilliantly, but absolutely crazy as a loon. And that image always stayed with me. And I started thinking about that today. And I wrote, "What's this poem going to be about? It's going to be about Bud Powell in Paris." Now, what's happening is, of course, it's not Bud Powell in Paris. It's me remembering about Bud Powell in Paris. Me trying to enhance what I saw before, through all the years. So in a way, writing about the past is inaccurate. It's not the past. It's your take on it. But it's really a development — development of your impression of that time. So writing is a way of not just filtering; you're not so much cutting out stuff as you are enhancing it, growing it. And that thing is going to grow in you, just like when you plant a seed in the ground.

Peter Biello: You gave me a piece of writing advice — It must have been 10 years ago. And that advice was so simple. It was: "The work is its own reward. Writing is its own reward." Do you remember giving me that advice?

Tony Whedon: All the things we've talked about this interview about finding out about yourself, by finding different layers of yourself — different incarnations, as it were — are part of the process. And it's its own reward. That's the reward you get. It's a complex one, but each one of us — and each day we do it — it may be a different reward. But I can't wait to get to that computer every morning to see what's going to happen and see who I'm going to be today.