Contributing Editor Interview -- Daniel Wolfe

Daniel Joseph Wolfe posts poems in his native Baltimore, MD. He is a doodler and and enjoys the company of people who moan with joy over home cooked meals. A sample of his work can be found at sadbumblebee.wordpress.com and internetpoem.tumblr.com. Since I live in Baltimore, too, I found it especially interesting to hear his perspective on taping up poems in our city.

I noticed you posted some poems in Fells Point, which is a pretty heavily trafficked area of town. Did anything funny happen while you were doing it? Did anyone look at you funny?
Did I post pictures in Fells Point? I was pretty afraid to actually. See (like most people), without a companion, these things (posting haikus) can be tough for the exact reason you specify: the funny looks. So, with my back pocket full of poorly cut pages, I drove my brother's Honda Accord down those damned cobblestoned paths, while giving my recently-moved-here friend a relatively bubble'd tour. I mean, I chickened out (even with a companion!) FP was very trafficked. There were many people. I start to sweat when there are a lot of people out laughing and walking, and (as a result of my parent's miscegenation {i'm half vietnamese}) I don't usually sweat!

What other parts of Baltimore did you hit?

BUT, I did actually get to posting. In the FEDERAL HILL and MT. VERNON areas the following day. This time I did it alone. I chose these areas because I knew where to find free parking (with minimal stress). I started at the BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF INDUSTRY... actually, because I really wanted to get the DOMINO SUGAR FACTORY in the background of a poem. I think a lot of Baltimore-familiar-people think of that when they think of the downtown area. Maybe I'm wrong? But our WTC isn't exactly a stand out in the city skyline. Again, maybe I'm wrong.

You grew up in Baltimore, right? Did it ever strike you as funny that it has called itself "The City That Reads"? What are your general impressions of our fair city?
Hmm. I'm mentally / emotionally (and for awhile physically) 5 years old, so I can't pin any place as a catalyst for GROWTH. But hey, I came downtown a lot when I got a DRIVER'S LICENSE, since I actually hail from SECURITY / or WOODLAWN.

What's the history with that? The SUN was running that for awhile right? I recall seeing a story that I read in elementary school pitched as something for a high school reading level (it had mouses as main characters... illustrations included). Now I've only become an "avid" reader lately, so I assure you I'm not trying to boast here about any unnaturally gifted early reading abilities. YES., very funny that the paper ran a series called "The City That Reads" and that shortly after people clever-ly invented "The City That Bleeds" as a retort(?), and (maybe more) that the same city that reads has an ad (public works?) campaign that solely consists of one word ("BELIEVE"), and then (then) that those stickers, fliers are posted on evicted homes.

BUT MAN, do I love this city (<- not sarcastic). I'm wary of jobs (I'm currently unemployed) that will pull me away from here. I have a tremendous amount of fond emotions for unkempt marble steps. It's sort of Baltimore's take on the TREE-GROWS-IN-BROOKLYN metaphor. We're gorgeous on the inside (maybe stepped on?) but solid.

Does the Baltimore backdrop affect what the poems are like for you? Does a poem that you read in your apartment seem different from a poem that you read in the Inner Harbor?
Yes yes yes. So (are these pictures put up yet? not yet, but take a look when they are) when I was making my way around I was trying to specifically get backdrops that would affect the reading of the poem. The one about walking by graveyards (for example) and re-remembering about death, I put on a wall nearby that latest housing development by the American Visionary Art Museum--the one where (if you have a boat, and one of these condos) you can slide it into your slip when you get home. So I guess it's my snark-y take on the poem. Condo units as gravestones, etc.

What draws you to hanging up poems?
I've been thinking of it as guerrilla warfare. There's a lot of writing out there, and a lot of creativity that's been co-opted (< dangerous word) by the advertising industry. I like the idea of the invasion of privacy. I like the idea (maybe more) or fantasy that these people will be walking about their day, and then find a funny poem about leopard print bras on the handle of their Jetta and then go, oh man!, to their friends (or them-self). It beats telling someone about a clever commercial at dinner, or rehashing how bad traffic was.

What is one of your favorite places that you hung up a poem?
My federal hill cannon one! It was probably my most nerve-racking one (see funny looks question, sweating, etc.). There were a lot of people walking around that park, and up there on the hill you get this ambiguous sense of history (I'm speaking personally because it always takes me a moment or two to conjure the lessons). And because of that I thought I was committing a crime by posting this poem by some ancient cannon that fought off Brits and stuff. But I thought it was too perfect and fit the poem well, so I might as well do it (and that nobody, not even their beautiful puppy dogs, noticed me). Check it out-- tell me if you agree (the clever-ness, not the dog thing).

I've enjoyed your posts at the Sad BumbleBee. Great drawings, and I love that they seem to be on scraps of paper. How did you start doing this? Are you a chronic doodler?
Thank you! Sad Bumblebee came to me from a variety of things: first, I tend to doodle (yes, I've been doodling for a long time, it's genetic all my brothers {three others} doodle VERY WELL so do my mother and father) whenever I'm really upset at something that I can't verbalize, you know...; second, I was in a Macro(Micro?) econ class with a very good friend of mine, and I looked over at his notes and saw the entire margin of his page filled with box-shaped unhappy faces; third, I really missed this friend of mine while I was living in Japan. The unhappy face doodles seemed to encompass his character perfectly, soon I was doodling them to relive that moment of choked laughter in a stifling econ lecture; 4, in Japan, everything has a cartoon avatar representing it... this one book store has a bumblebee that likes to read named "Bunbun san," (which is funny, right? because BUN {boon} is onomatopoeia for BUZZ and means like literature / sentence / text in Japanese... VERY PUNNY. Okay, so in missing him I started drawing "Bunbun san" but sad, and found the result cute. When I got back to school (English major) I was very disillusioned by all the sad-white-writers out there (in the canon) so the frustration (un-verbalizable) became the impetus for SBB who (of course) vents on his BLOG. Originally all the posts were going to be clever parodies of the beginnings of the great works of literature... but now he's doing his own thing... with his own friends (cheepcheep) and ex-girlfriends (sabeeshee). They all, I guess, are characters of the Internet.

Scraps of paper are my attempts at recycling the scores of phone number notes laying around... but came out of drawing him (originally) in class.

Thanks, Daniel Joseph Wolfe!