Start with the Trouble
Poems by Daniel Donaghy

How would you describe your writing style?
I’m a Philly kid and, as such, I have a very good b.s. detector. This has gotten me into some tense situations over the years, but all in all it has given me a good sense of direction. I’m very much in line with William Stafford’s idea of poetry as considered speech, and with Ginsberg’s notion that poetry is what happens when you catch yourself thinking. I try to speak to the reader (and by that I mean anyone who cares to listen) in language that is clear, precise, conversational, and inviting, and that is driven by a strong rhythm. I hear Rilke’s question “Must I write?” in my head all of the time as I work. It drives me to engage the mind and the heart in an artistic struggle to say something new, urgent, and true about the world we live in. And in order for a poem to feel true to me, it has to be written in language free of pretense.

The biggest compliment I could receive about my work is for someone to come up and say, “You know, I’ve always hated poetry, but I really like yours.” I love the idea that anyone could pick up my book and understand it. I work very hard to approach what Langston Hughes calls “the epitome of simplicity”––not simplicity of thought or content or form, but simplicity as being something synonymous with organic. Simplicity in the sense of each poem being stripped of artifice and pretense down to its emotional core, so that it contains intellectual and emotional urgencies––along with the names of people and places––that readers can identify with.

What many people misunderstand about poetry is just how hard it is to write a clear, precise, interesting poem that also speaks to the mysteries surrounding us. It is far easier to write a gratuitously difficult poem that no one understands and congratulate yourself for being obscure, then look askance at anyone who dares to try. That may sound cynical, and I don’t mean it to be, as there are many difficult poems whose form is warranted. In any case, I hope that the speakers in my poems sound familiar and welcoming to readers, and interesting enough to hang out with for forty lines or so, or for however long it might take them to read the book.

How and when did you become interested in poetry?
In tenth grade, back at the George Washington Carver High School for Engineering and Science in North Philadelphia. For whatever reason, I was pulled out of tenth-grade English class to listen to a visiting poet read from his work in our library. I thought I hated poetry. I’d certainly never read much of it that I enjoyed at that time, and none of my teachers seemed to care too much about it. Truth is, I’d never known what poetry was until that visiting poet, Etheridge Knight, walked into our library. As I remember it, Knight sat on a stool while the bunch of us students sat o the floor in front of him. I don’t think he had any poems with him. As I see him now, he has them all memorized. The first poem I ever heard that gave me chills was his poem “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane.” After those first lines, “Hard Rock / was / "known not to take no shit/ From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:”, I was sold. A whole new world opened up for me. In many ways, I keep trying to write poems that will move people the way Knight’s moved me that day.

Start with the Trouble is your second book of poems. What is its connection to its predecessor, Streetfighting?
Start with the Trouble is the second book in what I see as a trilogy of poetry collections inspired by my coming of age in inner city Philadelphia. Streetfighting is centered around emotionally intense experiences related to adolescence and young adulthood. Start with the Trouble picks up where Streetfighting leaves off. There are plenty of more Philly poems in the new book, but there are plenty of post-Philly poems, too. And then there are a number of poems that move back and forth between my past life and my present one. Those make up the emotional core of the book, I believe, because those poems reflect most accurately who I am at this particular point in time.

As I’ve grown as a writer, I’ve become more and more convinced of the marriage between past and present. The thread between now and then, between here and there, is endlessly rich and rewarding and mysterious. I never know when I’ll make a connection between what appears to be an ordinary object and an emotionally charged memory or idea that could transform that object into a symbol of something much bigger and more universal.

What is the significance of the book’s title?
The title poem of this book presents its biggest claim and raises its biggest philosophical question when, in the final lines, the speaker’s father tells his son “Start with the trouble,/ you hear me? Make it through that,/ mark my words, and you’ll be home free.” That poem as inspired by my relationship with my father, and it raises questions like “Are we ever really ‘free’ from our past? Can we ever completely forget our formative experiences?” And the answer seems to be no, but we all spend a lot of time and energy, like Oedipus, trying to break free from the ties that bind us, good or bad, to those formative experiences.
I know I certainly did. Growing up, I spent a lot of time worrying about what was going to happen to me. Where I grew up, I didn’t feel like I really fit in all of the time, or even much of the time. But I couldn’t imagine that I would ever live anywhere else, though, so I felt kind of trapped. Then I read a lot of novels and autobiographies, and listened to a lot of music, in which the protagonists felt like kindred spirits––searchers, like me, I guess. Their words gave me permission to imagine a world beyond our second-floor apartment on Lehigh Avenue. Also, their words taught me the power of words. It might have been Elvis Costello who said that one of the most powerful things about a good song is that it stays written. I’ve taken those words to mean that a well-written piece defeats time, because carefully crafted words will always have a place in the world. Very inspiring and greatly challenging.

What my poems have become, then, are places for me to search for meaning and truth, and to confront the things that continue to eat at me and try to put words to them as best I can. I’ve begun to write short stories, too, and I enjoy how they complement the poems. They allow me to get at subjects that for whatever reason don’t fit into my poems. The best stories I’ve written so far are about literal life-and-dead experiences in inner city Philly. I’ve published a few of them in literary journals recently, and I hope to have a collection together before too much longer.

How did you decide on the order of the poems?
Start with the Trouble is arranged, as the title suggests, in roughly chronological order. It’s front-loaded with a lot of Philly poems, then moves into some poems inspired by experiences or cultural, historical, or news events outside of Philadelphia, then in the final 1/3 or so of the book moves into a group of poems that move back and forth across time in the way I mentioned earlier. I’ve worked very hard to craft Start with the Trouble into a book that presents a broad arc of experiences, styles, and emotions.

What other projects are you working on?
I am currently working on a new poetry collection, which may end up as the final book in the trilogy about Philadelphia, as well as the short story collection I mentioned earlier. Those should keep me busy for the foreseeable future, as far as writing projects go.