Pitymilk is geeked to share a scene with DUETDUET 7 contributor Peter Burzynski. Their work is top shelf shit and we love the vibes they ride high by our side in MKE. Here’s a little Q & A.
PITYMILK: Where are you from? Where are you trying to go? Where have you been that has really stuck with you? How does place put its weight on the things you write and think about? How do your poems situate?
PETER BURZYNSKI: I am originally from Milwaukee and trying to get into poets’ heaven someday. Brooklyn sticks with me like citrus-glazed love sticks to one’s ribs. I miss it a lot, but I have come to understand that Milwaukee is also an amazing place for artists and poets to live and work. Both of these places as well as spaces in Poland and Ukraine weigh on me heavily. There is glitter, glumness, and joy. My poems tend to be happy in a sad Slavic sort of way. I can’t help but have these spaces in mind at all times. I inhabit them and I inherit their histories—holocausts, wars, and oppressions. All the beauty and duende of them, too. I also grew up in a very specific place—the back booth of my parents’ immigrant-run restaurant. My next book will be about this family busy-ness. My poems situate themselves in these places and they pop out as Miłosz says “rarely and reluctantly” as poetry, at least my poetry, should be written.
PM: What is your relationship to sound? Do you write these poems with your ear so to speak? How important is rhythm? What are you listening to lately? What was your favorite band as a teenager?
PB: It is love. Wordplay and cringy punning by my father began my open relationship with sound in language. I don’t intentionally rhyme in my poetry, because I would make an assonance of myself, but the slants and slips and spice comes naturally. I am driven by sound at times to the conscious expense of meaning.
I can’t live without music either. I listen to music each night as I desperately grasp at sleep drifting away from pensive anxiety. Rhythm is important, but it has to be intuitive. I don’t measure anything, especially beats and ingredients. I have a PhD in poetry, but I don’t dare ever think about troche or dactyls or any kind of pentameter, iambic or otherwise. Perhaps my relationship to rhythm will change as I continue my new hobbies of learning to play bass and balalaika.
Oooo. Like how teenager? 13—The Misfits; 15—Black Sabbath; 17—Pink Floyd; 19—Beirut and The Walkmen and Camera Obscura and The Decemberists and Arcade Fire and The Bird and the Bee. It’s impossible to give a single answer.
PM: What writers keep you on your toes? Who do you keep coming back to?
PB: Roger Reeves, Camonghe Felix, Natalie Diaz, Patricia Lockwood, Soham Patel, Ilya Kaminsky, Ana Božičević, Valzhyna Mort, Tyehimba Jess, Craig Santos Perez, Tod Kaneko, Douglas Kearney, Sampson Starkweather, Matthew Zapruder, Franklin K.R. Cline, Ae Hee Lee, Mark Bibbins, Grzegorz Wróblewski, Claudia Rankine, Jennifer L. Knox, Daniel Borzutzky, Harryette Mullen, Allen Ginsberg, George Oppen, Tongo Eisen Martin, and so many others.
Whenever I am a gloomy cloud I go back to Miłosz, Szymborska, and Różewicz. Time and time again they remind me “how hard it is to remain one person” and convince me to keep reading and never hang up the scarf.
PM: How do you feel about favorites? Do they come easily to you or are you afraid of commitment?
PB: I am more afraid of being committed. I was once briefly. I don’t like to play favorites, but I can’t pretend to not have them. I think the list of poets above is evidence of that.
I am as fiercely loyal, kind, vulnerable, and passionate as I am pretentious, arrogant, pedantic, and sloppy. The loyalty part speaks to my commitment, which can be over-commitment at times. I acknowledge the flaws are as important as the strengths.
PM: If you could travel to one country in the world on an all expenses paid foodie vacation — where are you going? We hear you are quite the chef yourself?? What’s your fav thing to cook for special someones’?
PB: I really want to experience Oceania and its cuisine. It’s so far away and costly to get to; maybe that’s the allure, but I always want my tongue to always be challenged. If you don’t tell the rest of Southeastern Wisconsin I would be thrilled to make you and any of my closest friends some pierogi. I also love the versatility of vegetables. Onions are oxygen.
PM: HOT AND FAST CHALLENGE: Create for us a quick tasting menu of Polish-West African fusion –
PB:
Pork Loin Palaver
Jollof Rice Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
Yassa with a side of Dried Forest Mushroom Soup
and I don’t normally do dessert, but how about some Farmer’s Cheese Cheesecake topped with Moin Moin?
PM: How do you find your DUETDUET partner Greg Zorko? Was it a fun date? Any highlights? Any awkward moments?
PB: I think he is a poet who is truly in love. I might be envious. Almost all of my love poems were unrequited. I admire how he weaves the historical and the mundane—Mario Kart and the immutable. He is a very human poet in the best sense of the word (either one). I don’t know why, but in my heart I knew, so I asked Greg almost immediately after the reading (at the Bell Tower!) if he spoke Russian (in Russian) and he said that he did!
PM: Do you believe in astrology? Aliens? Are you into conspiracy theories or are you like — a totally boring grown up? What is the role of imagination and dreaming in your life and work?
PB: I still haven’t grown up despite how much Captain James E. Hook tries to make me. I still build LEGO. Conspiracies, no. The realities of capitalism are brutal enough. Aliens, maybe, but I think we are arrogant to think that they have any interest in visiting Utah. Astrology, sure! But only because it’s great and also insane to live in a sometimes othered body with a Scorpio soul and mind. My best friend is a Tarot personality on YouTube. His wisdom and kindness never cease to fascinate me. Also, I’m starting to get into Paganism if that counts.
PM: Tell us what you are excited about? Any upcoming projects, publications, performances? What’s your favorite eatery in Milwaukee RN? How can people keep up with what you are doing?
PB: I am working on a chapbook called Unclehood. It’s about being an uncle and how cool it is to have that kind of relationship on a weekly basis. I am also working on the book I mentioned above about how it is to occupy the liminalities of immigrant other and privileged American simultaneously in the aftermath of Chernobyl and the unraveling of the Cold War. Oof. Heavy. There’s also stuff about cooking! I could never write this book until now that I am done restauranting after 25 years. I air a lot of grievances about abuse that immigrant workers and working-class people of all ilk face and what it means to be the wrong kind of European—unfashionable, ignored, derided, and mostly forgotten—in a world of Western European White supremacy. It’s definitely my angriest book, but still wry (Rye, lol) and witty. It’s also weird to work on a third manuscript while the first two remain unpublished. I cannot wait for the day when I can bring all of these poems to the world.
People can read my work at: https://peterburzynski.com or ask me to send them poems! I love poem exchanges and handwritten letters with my poet friends. Also, follow me on Insta @Peter_Burzynski and TikTok @poetrycats. The cats are involved and they are the trinary stars that keep me in orbit.
MKEatery!? I mostly grocery shop at small, ethnic grocers. Oyf, just one? I’m always down for a burger at Kopp’s. I wish I could say something more elegant here, but simple food made by human hands with heavy seasoning, onions, and love is often the best food. Food, like poetry, only needs flavor and soul to win my grizzled, hopeful heart.
FIND PETER’S WORK ALONGSIDE GREG ZORKO IN DUETDUET 7.
