·         Links to an Interview for Jason Mott's Pen & Cape website, Jan. 15, 2010: 

http://penandcape.com/uncategorized/poetry-talk-with-bryan-dietrich-part-1/    

http://penandcape.com/uncategorized/poetry-talk-with-bryan-dietrich-part-2/

 

·     The Text of an Interview with Rich Shivener, Licking River Review, Spring 2009:   

Amazon Daze:  Bryan Dietrich on Superhero Poetry

RS:  The drama (love affair?) between Superman and Wonder Woman continues in Bryan Dietrich’s latest poetry collection, Amazon Days, a follow-up to his Paris Review Prize-winning Krypton Nights.  Checking in by phone, the accomplished poet and English professor talked about his wondrous woman, a forthcoming Batman collection and Jodi Picoult’s take on the archetype of the Divine Feminine. How many characters are you exploring in Amazon Days? 

BD:  It opens with two sets of seven sonnets and they’re both spoken by—depending on how you look at it—Wonder Woman and her alter ego Diana Prince.  The idea of having two crowns is the foreground for the notion that she has a split identity.  There isn’t really a name for a double set of crowns, so I’m calling it an Echo. She talks about saving Steve Trevor—of course, this is from the original Wonder Woman, the comic that began in 1941.  She’s talking about that and Paradise Island and the impositions upon her having to live up to that role, as well as being a woman and entering a land of male-dominated culture. Then it moves from her voice to Hippolyte, her mother, talking about her daughter…then Amazon Days moves on to William Moulton Marston.  The creator begins to talk about his creation and what he attempted to do. Marston is a fascinating character.  He was a psychologist and a researcher in the area of human emotion and had some very progressive ideas about male/female relationships.  Then the final section is voiced by Superman, who has decided that he has fallen in love with Wonder Woman and wants to leave Lois Lane behind.  I suppose the phrase “trade up” comes to mind. 

RS:  Was Krypton Nights a primer for this new collection?  Superman and Wonder Woman have crossed paths often over the years. 

BD:  Well, let’s put it this way:  I wrote Krypton Nights because I was reacting to the death of Superman in 1993 and I was reacting to the knowledge that my dad was getting older and he was becoming more and more forgetful…to use a Star Trek metaphor, “beaming out of this world.”  It was only a few years later that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. A good portion of why I wrote Amazon Days had to do with the fact that I met the most wondrous woman, in my mind, on the planet, who was a skydiver, is still a scubadiver, rides a motorcycle, teaches English and writes stories and is just an absolutely incredible heroine—I suppose in both senses of the word.  She got me thinking about this archetype, in the same way my father got me thinking about Superman and all the satellite figures around that character. The first Wonder Woman poems I wrote were ultimately love poems…for the woman that was going to become my wife, and now is my wife.  I suppose if you think of Amazon Days as a weird poetic sequel to Krypton Nights, that does make a lot of sense. 

RS:  So you’ve finished this collection.  Do you have another superhero in mind? 

BD:  Indeed.  If we’re thinking about it as a trinity, then of course there is only one other and that would be Batman.  I’ve begun a little bit of work on that and I’m going to get far more serious this summer, and that collection will be called Gotham Wanes, a pun on Bruce Wayne. I think part of what I’m going to be dealing with in the Batman poems is the beast within.  From a Jungian perspective, Superman is the ultimate male, or the animus, and Wonder woman is the ultimate archetype of the feminine, the anima, and Batman is the shadow, the three parts of our persona.  I’ve had some experiences with my father and his anger and then the anger that has naturally passed on to me which I try to keep in check.  I’m sure all human beings are forced to deal with now and then the residual bestial part of ourselves.  I think Batman represents a lot of that.  These poems on Batman….it’s going to be a little different than the other two books.  It’s going to be a dialogue—as I’m imagining it now—between Batman and The Joker.  A lot of what they both do is the same.  They both strike terror into the heart of terror.  I find that fascinating. 

RS:  Do you think Superman and Wonder Woman’s relationship should be romantic or strictly Platonic? 

BD:  I don’t know if what I think is all that interesting.  I know that when I was writing from the point of view of the characters that they decided it should be romantic. I was in a relationship and I found myself being drawn to this wonder woman.  In Amazon Days, Superman begins rationalizing why he’s gravitating toward Wonder Woman.  I think the reasons that he gives are veiled pretty strongly…not to name names, but it gives me an opportunity to talk about why I was leaving a relationship and entering another.  I’m not sure that we ever have a real reason.  I think we attempt to cover that with mythic residue. Certainly,  I think Superman and Wonder Woman are far better matched. 

RS:  What do Wonder Woman and her story bring to your imagination that other superheroes can’t? 

BD:  It’s that message that Marston was trying to get across for one:  You have a hero that doesn’t have to beat the crap out of everybody.  You have a hero that turns people on the basis of them recognizing the need to change, as opposed to beating them up and throwing them in a cell; or, in the case of Batman, making them jump off a building because they’re so frightened. It’s a very different approach, and interestingly, back in the mid-70s, they reprinted several issues of Wonder Woman in one big volume simply called Wonder Woman, old stories by Marston and Peter.  Gloria Steinem did the introduction and she said that’s what drew her to the hero:  Here’s a story of not just a female hero like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Xena who take on the male heroic role…instead it’s truly a different approach to fighting crime that’s at least what Marston believed to be feminine. I’ve written a scholarly book on Wonder Woman as well, called Wonder Woman Unbound, that talks about all kinds of things I find interesting about Wonder Woman. 

RS:  How do you view Wonder Woman’s status in the DC Universe? 

BD:  I think she is often neglected and forgotten.  I think some of the best comic book writers have ignored her entirely—say, Alan Moore or Frank Miller.  In The Dark Knight Strikes Back, she plays a major role in the beginning of the graphic novel, and then as soon as we find out she’s pregnant, she disappears.  She becomes a mother and that’s all we need.  I find that at least problematic if not offensive.  I think a lot of comic book writers have this tendency to think that if their characters aren’t action oriented, they’re not going to grab the reader’s attention.  Wonder Woman is far more philosophical than these other characters. 

RS:  Where do you see the character in ten years? 

BD:  It depends on where some of the writers they’ve recently had take her.  Recently, Jodi Picoult took over the writing of Wonder Woman.  She’s a very well-known writer of traditional “literature,” and DC has summoned her services to re-imagine the Wonder Woman story.  I’m not sure it’s going to be as groundbreaking as the stuff we saw with Superman and Batman in the 80s, but we’ll see where it goes.

 

 

 

 

·         Radio Interview with Bryan on Sept. 18th, 2008: Tales of the Unexplained with Ken Hudnall, KHRO, 1650 AM, Radio Free El Paso,  8 p.m. Central Time  / 7 p.m. Mountain:  www.khro1650.com  

  

 

 

 

·         The Text of an Interview with Dr. Curtis Shumaker's Introduction to Poetry Class, Riverside College, Minnesota, 2003: 

Student: Mr. Dietrich, I am a student of Dr. Curtis Shumaker and we have just begun our in-depth study of your poems, Krypton Nights.  As I was reading the acknowledgments, I noticed the thank yous to your father, mother and sisters for their part in helping to inspire your writings.  Also, I noticed that Curtis Shumaker, was one of the people you credited for finishing it.  It's nice to have the connection between our instructor and you, so we get the full understanding right from the author.  Thursday night will be our first discussion of the poems themselves but I just wanted to let you know how much it is appreciated for you to take the time to answer our questions.  Would you please give us a little background information; why you chose this topic?  As a young boy, were you obsessed with reading "Superman" comic books?  How long did it take you to write "Krypton Nights", just some general information before we start our discussions? Thank you, Susan Swenson.           

Dietrich: Thanks for having me. 

I'm honored to have a chance to talk to all of you.  As for your questions: I really didn't read a lot of Superman.  Hardly any.  Though I do remember my father sneaking one into me while I was recovering from my tonsillectomy.  My mother thought comics were evil (unless they were Hot Stuff or Casper).  Demons and ghosts were okay, but not men in tights.  Later I collected a lot of different comics, but never the Man of Steel.   

So, then, why did I pick this subject....  The most honest answer I can give will of course be a lie, since any reason for writing a poem is never singular; however, here goes:   

Driving home from a conference through Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma (1992, right around the same time that DC Comics had just killed off Superman) I turned on the radio and the Crash Test Dummies tune "The Superman Song" began to play.  I began thinking about Kansas, about Clark Kent growing up there, about my own father and step-father both growing up in Oklahoma, about how different one father is/was from the other, about how my step-father was literally dead and how my biological father is metaphorically dead (not one to seek out the "new" in life, in any fashion), about death and resurrection, about my old Baptist faith, about Christ....   

And I began ruminating on the fact that the Superman story is basically the same as the Christ story (which is the same as the Moses story, the Mithra story, the Osiris story, the Zoroaster story, the King Arthur story, etc.).  In the midst of thinking about myth and heroes and how their sacrificial deaths amount to similar patterns throughout history, I couldn't shake the building awareness (and this is probably the important part) that both of my most immediate heroes (my fathers) were dead, one literally, one in spirit. 

As the song played on (it's a haunting piece, one that speaks of the loss of the Man of Steel, of the consequent loss to the world), I grew sad and the landscape grew sad, and the idea for a sad set of poems began to germinate.  Having to lose one's fathers, having to lose everyone one loves (in Superman's case, because he's effectively immortal; in Jor-El's case, because his planet, Krypton, is blowing up)...what must that be like?  Having to lose one's identity in order to try to save the world....  Whether one is Christ or Superman or Inanna (or a father trying to "save" his son, the son trying to "save" his father) the job must not be the easiest occupational choice in the spectrum.  

One must always sacrifice in order to save, one must face terror to witness the sublime.  This is the message of the hero's journey, no matter if your sun is yellow or red, whether you are father or son, Father or Sun.  Siegel and Schuster, the two, teenage, Jewish kids who created Superman knew this; they saw Hitler on the horizon and called up a hero, one Uberman to face another, a Moses for a Pharaoh.  

In Campbell's "Hero With A Thousand Faces" he shows us that the journey of the hero is the journey of humanity, man or woman, father or mother.  The individual life mirrors all life, and all life mirrors our own.  Thus, when one man, like Superman's father, is about to lose his son (as well as his planet and his life), his memoirs should be a memoir even someone from Earth could understand.  His tale would be Moses' father's tale, Joseph's tale, Jephthah's tale.  And, more, his son's tale would be Jesus' tale, Arthur's tale, my tale.   

Part of what I'm trying to do in the poems is to tell my own story, talk about the life of a boy grown to man, a man about to graduate with a Ph.D. (I was nearly finished with it at the time), a man who still hadn't come to terms with his origins and his responsibilities. The other part is me attempting to draw parallels with all the rest of human history, attempting to bridge that gap between the past and the now, and, in so doing, bridge the gap not only between eras, but also between what my fathers must have once been and the men they became.   

I think of these poems as an exercise in embracing the sadness of knowing who we are, who we will never be, who we have had to become to recognize that the tomb is never as empty as we might at first have thought.   

Student: Bryan, Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with our class about your book.  While I did not personally post a question earlier, I enjoyed reading your responses to all of the questions.  Your knowledge of mythology and religion awed me. Especially in the ways you were able to relate it back to the Superman storyline.  

While I was in New Orleans last week, I heard the Superman song that you referred to in this response.  It was the first time I've ever heard it, and I thought instantly of your reply to this question.   

Having done my oral presentation for this class on Superman and the characters that you refer to in the book, I find it hard to imagine that you weren't a Superman fanatic at one time.  Since you said you weren't, did you have to research the Superman story in order to write the book, or were you just relying on common knowledge? 

Dietrich: You're very welcome.  I enjoyed chatting with all of you as well. 

As to your question:  Yes, I did do some research, which consisted of rummaging through my old comics and "origins of" books, but keep in mind that though I wasn't a fan of Supes growing up, I do follow all of the characters and the comics in general pretty closely still.  I also collect comics to this day, though now I mostly opt for the more challenging/cerebral titles like Sandman, Watchmen, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell, the Inhumans, etc.  Comics have changed a great deal since the Eighties. 

Student: Thanks for participating in this interview.  It is a rare opportunity for us to be able to contact the author!  I have some questions for you. 1) How was the idea for this book conceived?  Was the entire book envisioned or did it begin with a single poem?  If a single poem was the beginning, which one of the poems was it? 2) Which of the poems is your favorite?  Why is this poem your favorite? 3) Could you tell us about the process of having your work published?  How did you select a publisher, lessons learned, etc.  Thank you, Jeff Fette 

Dietrich: I'm happy to be here.     

As for where the book started, I just posted part of that answer, but I didn't address which poem came first.  Actually, I think the very first line I wrote was "Every woman wants one, a Superman / to carry her away...", and I wrote it in my notebook while driving through Nebraska.  That whole poem and its sisters didn't manifest until some months later.  I actually began the book with the Jor-El poems. 

When I got back from that road trip mentioned in another post, I enrolled in a class titled Poetry as Midrash.  The class was meant to see poems as responses to other poems, as a continuum.  Well, I was already thinking about Superman as part of a mythological lineage/tradition, so it seemed natural to write poems for that class that would show this lineage.  We had to write one a week for seven weeks.  This is where the seven Jor-El poems originated, but meanwhile I was also tinkering with other voices:  Lois Lane, Superman, Clark Kent, Luthor.  I actually began the Clark Kent Sonnets while finishing up the Jor-El Tapes.  I got four sonnets into the crown before realizing most of what I had written was crap, saved the best lines, and started over, using the best lines in the first sonnet of that crown. 

So the short answer is that the first finished poem of the book was "Krypton Nights" itself.  I had already worked out that title as a pun during the afore-mentioned road trip, and I knew it would be a poem title, and probably a book title (I tend to always work with cycles of poems...it's a sickness, I know).  

The longer answer must include the fact that "The Model" was actually written without this book in mind and even earlier.  It was just added last.  And a whole section was cut, which I might talk about later. 

What is my favorite poem in "Krypton Nights?"  Probably the last one I wrote:  "Through a Glass Darkly."  In some ways the whole book was written just so that poem could be written and have a home.  As much as the book is about me and my fathers, about myth and myth's fathers, it's also about signs and symbols and whether we can know anything when HOW we know is predicated upon something as slippery as signs themselves.   

If meaning is arbitrary, subjective, infinitely interpretable, then can there be "a" truth?  If not, what does that say about a man who "stands for truth," for the Law?  What does it say about the Law, or the Torah, or anything we believe we understand, darkly or not? 

The final poem of the book was one I had already been thinking about for years.  I had wanted to write a poem that deconstructed itself and found that Lex Luthor would be the perfect speaker.  I wanted "Satan" to talk Satan into a hole, so that nothing, not himself, not his ideas, and not their opposites had any singular meaning left...only the multiple.  And it had to involve the discussion of interpreting a text that was itself about interpretation.  In doing so, hopefully, Luthor/Satan, Superman's arch enemy, would re-invest the world with meaning, making multiplicity and postmodern confusion a wonder rather than a reason to mourn.   

In other words:  "S" means Law.  "S" means lack Law. Most Postmoderns would say that if both are implied in a text then the text means nothing (thus the universe, which is itself a text, also means nothing).  I prefer to believe, and I hope Luthor "accidentally" proves, that meaning is not math.   

Binary opposites, alternative readings, cannot cancel each other out; they merely make the world more lovely, make each of us who interpret more powerful, make eachof us Superman.  Everybody has their own "S."  The sign IS universal and eternal, because it is universally indeterminate.  It is all because it is no one thing.  I know the above is a bit thick and convoluted, but this is why I write poems more than prose.  Sorry. I blame comic books. 

"S" means lack OF law.  This is what the sentence in the second from the last paragraph should read.  Amazing how much difference two letters make.  Or, like "S", one. 

We are the fathers of meaning, the mothers of sign.  We are creators.  Everything we know is predicated upon these strange little marks on paper.  And they don't mean anything but what we imagine. 

Does the fact that we can imagine anything make us gods?  Are we all Supermen dressed in primary colors?  What are primary colors?  Who made them primary?  Who named them, called them colors?  Do colors even exist, or is color only light that fails...to be absorbed?  All we see is perception, all we know.  We create by sending our words into the void like Jor-El.  We create by hating like Lex Luthor.  We create by believing the one good, the other, evil. 

There is no spoon. 

Shumaker: I think you're scaring them, Bryan. Too many postmodern concepts at once. For anyone who hasn't seen it, the "there is no spoon" line comes from The Matrix.  

We've had a couple of basic discussions about Postmodernism, Bryan, but I was looking for a good website with basic definitions and examples that I could link to our home page; do you know of a good one? All the ones I've looked at so far seem to be written for graduate studies--i.e. virtually unreadable. For one search, I used the term "postmodern definition," and in true postmodern fashion, I got a lot of websites that defined the "concept" of definition from a postmodern perspective. Maybe you know of a good site--you know, something that covers sign, signifier, icon, etc. in simple language.  

Student: Hi Bryan, I too am part of the class that Curtis Shumaker is instructing, and I am interested in getting the story behind the poems we are reading from the author himself.  Thank you for taking the time to explain these and I hope we gain a better understanding of these writings as we continue to ask questions about them. 

My question is on the line in The Forth man in the Fire line 4 ( shall we say less Pericles than Prospero). 1. In that line Prospero is who and what was the true meaning behind that line. 2. In the poem On Jephthah is the sacrifice the so or the plant?  In our discussion in class we identified the sacrifice as  either the son or the plant, as God sacrificed his son by sending him to die for us is this the same thing? 

Dietrich: Prospero is the magician of Shakespeare's Tempest, a magician who has given up his magic, who is in love with books.  The line, "less Pericles than Prospero" suggests that Clark Kent sees himself (perhaps his true self) as more bookish and less heroic.  Also, it was just too cool to be able to rhyme Pericles with spectacles as an "eye rhyme." 

In "On Jephthah," the sacrifice Jor-El makes is both his son and his planet.  He is giving up his son for us, and giving up his planet because he has no choice.  The sacrifice for him is double: the figurative death of a son he must send away to save, and the literal death of a planet he must say goodbye to.  Though in telling us something about himself and his life, even the least little bit of his world, he is, in a way, "saving" his planet as well. 

And Superman (Kal-El, his son) will come to save us.  The question is, which gift--his son or his words—will have the greater potential for salvation?  Does force of arms, the strength of a Superman have a better chance of saving us, or the words of a man whose planet is ending?  Is it possible that the text he is sending us through space is more important the babe in its space-ark? 

Student: In "The Theft of the Firstborn" were you attempting to make the reader consider our own motives.  It seems to me that not only is Superman wondering how he would describe himself, but also the idea of how would any of us defend our decisions.  If we take away all external trappings, can we justify our actions?  An example for myself is my decision to take these college classes.  I enjoy reading and learning but the actual driver was to get a better position which you need a college degree for.  If we took away the employers and possible pay increases would I still be here?  Probably not.  Was it your attempt to make us evaluate the decisions and drivers that we are currently living with and have us look for the higher meaning.   

Dietrich: Yes. 

Student: You stated earlier that our perception is what governs us.  I have always believed that unless we have the ability to talk to an author, like yourself, we cannever really understand what message they are trying to tell us.  We can only understand the message we perceive.  Is it possible for any one to wrong?  If 5 different people understand 5 different meanings from the same passage, which one is correct?  Thank you for this opportunity for us to be able to understand what you meant by your poems.  I hope that we don't stray from your intended messages too much.         

You stated that the Jor-El Tapes were the first sets that you did.  Are the Jor-El Tapes an attempt to make us understand that the world would not survive if we had all the answers?  If there were no mysteries left what would drive us?  If we knew all the answers, and there were no more questions to ask, wouldn't we be as dead as a planet that was destroyed?      

In "The Mysteries of Azazel"  we read, "We have studied you, you know.  Know more than maybe you do yourselves.  I say maybe.  Perhaps.  It is this word that makes me curious.  Do you understand more by not knowing?"  and "I am dead after all.  Yet my eyes have been others.  When I knew our doom, I began sharing yours.  I have lived this way, with your lives."        

Is this your way of motivating people to find their own answers?  Not to just sit back, dead, and let someone else, some alien, tell us what the answers are.  But to live searching for what we need to know.  Living our lives, constantly asking the questions and searching for the answers ourselves. 

Dietrich: Wonderful questions....  As for the first one:  There are no wrong interpretations.  Reading and understanding are not calculus or chemistry.  The beauty of language, and of poetry in particular, is its ambiguity and multiplicity.  I believe the reason a great poem is a great poem is because it continues to generate new meanings for each new reader in each new setting or era.  What we can paraphrase easily, what we can make static and singular in meaning too readily, is not what I consider poetry.  Poetry is a swoon of meaning, what overtakes us with possible readings.   

The fact is, in my poems I'm never trying to say only one thing, and what I am trying to do, finally, doesn't matter.  I cannot be there to look over my readers' shoulders and say, "Uh, no, that is not what I meant at all."  Rather, I juggle as much as I can within the poem itself, send it out into the world, and hope it speaks to many different people on many different levels.  If I've done my job, I will move them.  Not necessarily in a particular way, just move them.   

What I think my own poems mean is only as interesting as what you think (maybe less) as long as the interpretation, whatever it is, IS GROUNDED IN THE TEXT ITSELF.  The thing is, I've been writing long enough to know that I often don't know what I'm doing while I'm writing.  Much of it comes second-nature, like driving home from work and not paying any attention to the road....  I still get home, but then retrace my steps and think, wow, I'm actually still alive though I don't remember making the journey. 

This being said, when I go into a poem and when I revise, I also have a very fine-tuned notion of what I want to happen--whether it does, or whether I end up where I was headed...well, it all depends on these wily things called words.  And they have lives of their own (just look in a dictionary).  And they make colonies and perform strange rituals together (just read any book).  And they often rise up against the ruler (just think Salman Rushdie or the Dixie Chicks).  We cannot control what we have made.  Neither could Frankenstein.  And why try?  The loveliness I find in some other poets poems is still there, whether my reading is what she intended or not.  Ideas, what words make, are always the possession of the reader, not the writer.       

As for the Jor-El tapes, I like your interpretation.  It indeed jibes with my intent, which was to say that what we say is not real (which is to further say that what YOU say is only as real as you need it to be).  What we interpret is not real.  There is no answer, no right interpretation.  In fact, the poems themselves, I hope, do a better job of addressing what I've addressed above than I do myself;  my poems are not me, nor is this them.  See, the poems, the "answers," are only ever questions.  All words make us associate, and in association lies all beauty, all context, all meaning, all metaphor.  What we want to believe, the "maybe," is what matters.  Not what "is."  Because there is no is. 

All of which I believe I have said in the poems, what you have said in your interpretation, and what I have said in trying answer.  None of which means the same exact thing to each of you reading this.  Does it mean nothing then?  No, it means everything. Thus "maybe" is the universe.   

Student: In "The Theft of the Firstborn", is there a reason why you picked a planet in M31 versus say M87? Was it your intention to imply that Superman couldn't escape hisdestiny because he would end up back where he started from? 

Given the physical properties of light coming towards us or going away from us, if one wanted to truly escape, one would want to orange-red planet instead of a violet-blue one. 

For the rest of the class, astronomy is one of my interest and I've spent many a night looking at the Messier Objects. M31 is Messier Object 31 of 110 or so celestial objects cataloged by French Astronomer Charles Messier during the 1750's to the 1780's. M31 is commonly called the Andromeda galaxy, which is the Milky Way's closest  neighbor. Unlike most of the other galaxies which are traveling away from the Milky Way (red shifted),  M31 is coming towards us (blue shifted), which means it's on a collision course with the Milky Way in an estimated 3-5 billion years.  

Dietrich: Actually, this goes back to Ellen's question.  No, I did not know any of this wonderfully pregnant information about M31.  Your Dr. Shumaker is the real brain, not I. I do study a little bit of everything--astronomy, physics, archeology, paleontology, cognitive theory, etc.--but only enough to be dangerous.  And the fact that M31 is blue-shifted was not part of my admittedly spotty personal data base till now.   

That does not mean, however, that that information—the fact that to "escape" there would effectively mean "no escape"--is impertinent or a "wrong" interpretation.  It is in fact a perfect example of what can happen when language is loosed into the world.  I wrote M31 because I knew the name (and because it rhymed with "son").  I wrote "violet-blue" because I remembered for a brief instant my color wheel and the sound was right for thatmoment in the poem (and because it suggested the possibility of life).  

Franklin, you, knowing something about this stuff for real, bring a new data set to the reading of these particular words and find an interesting reading that fits the theme and in fact enlarges on it.  Does the fact that I didn't intend for this reading to be there make it any less "there"?  No.  I cannot control what any of you find in the poems, nor would I want to.   

The fact that you DO find wonderful connections (intended or no) in the poems is all that matters.  Now, should someone suggest the Clark Kent sonnets are about armadillos crossing the road...well, that might be odd and affected and eccentric, but not wrong.  Such a reading may even be uninteresting or self-absorbed; it might be what we would call "stretching," but a reading like yours, Franklin, is not.  What you bring to the poem makes the poem bigger, more resonant, smarter.  And that makes you an ideal reader.  

Neither I nor Jor-El nor Superman can always expect the ideal reader.  More often than not we have to live with Lex Luthor.  And even the, sometimes Luthor's more right than we are ourselves.  Sometimes, oftentimes, the reader knows more than the writer. 

Student: Out of your poems, I particularly enjoyed “The Mysteries of Azazel”.  The question of what if we could know is intriguing.  Would we want to know?  And, if we did know, would it mean the destruction of life, as we know it?  This is a dilemma we’ll never face. 

My question comes, not from your poems, but instead from your intro to The Jor-El Tapes:. As stated, the Jor-El Tapes comes from the “Transcripts of Binary Transmissions Recorded by the Very Large Array (Socorro, NM) - Originating in the Vicinity of Supernova 1993J.” 

Was your use of this particular event in history intended for any particular purpose? The Supernova 1993J was discovered March 28, 1993.  It has been estimated to have occurred 3.6 mpc away from Earth.  As far as astrological distances go, an mpc=megaparsec.  A single parsec is equivalent to 3.26 light years; a mega parsec is 1 million parsecs, or 3.26 million light years.  Therefore, Supernova 1993J is located approximately 11.7 million light years from Earth. 

As we learn, Jor-El has been monitoring Earth through a very sophisticated telescope/device, knowing events throughout history including more recent ones, such as Flight 19.  It seems that, unless Jor-El had technology far beyond our mere comprehension, the area around Supernova 1993J would be too far to effectively view Earth or send transmission back to us.  If he did have vast superior technology, it seems unlikely that we’d be able to receive his transmissions with our less advanced technology and equipment. 

Dietrich: Okay, you caught me.   

I will answer two ways, neither one probably very satisfying. 

First, I'm a poet, not a fiction writer.  Fiction bears a more burdensome responsibility of verisimilitude; in other words, in fiction, if you drop a hammer, it should fall.  It should conform to rules of gravity.  It may fall more slowly on a different world, but it will still fall.  Fiction readers SHOULD expect this kind of attention to the "rules."  Thus, in the film "Outland" (an old Sean Connery SF film), when the doctor draws blood from the top of the leg of a many-days-old corpse, and when the blood comes out liquid....  Well, even common sense should tell us that by this point the blood would be both congealed and resting in the bottom of the body.  Both points are ignored by the writer and both points serve to further frustrate our tendency to want to suspend disbelief, particularly about a film taking place on Io, in space, in the future. 

I don't know that poems--being more about philosophy and language, less about plot and character--need to conform to the same expectations.  Nor most "literary" fiction.  Do we really expect Gregor Samsa (the clerk turned giant pill-bug in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis") to follow the rules of the real world?  If he were truly a giant bug, the size we are given in the story, he would collapse in upon himself via the inverse square law.   

Now, though this is a problem for, say, "Tarantula" or "The Deadly Mantis" or even "Eight-Legged Freaks," it is a problem for these stories because ALL they have going for them is story.  They are not about something else, at least not in the way that Kafka's tale is.  Kafka's tale is not about the realistic portrayal of a giant bug.  He is about the business of telling us our lives are like the life of a bug.  The metaphor is important; the "laws" of nature aren't. 

So, my first answer is I plead the defense of poetry.  Ha, so there. 

Now, for the second answer...  Your question (and you are indeed the first to ask it, though I've long been waiting) is exactly why I put in the line "why not mind mites or temporal restrictions."  I knew that the question would be asked, eventually, and I attempted to put a band-aid on it.   

Evidently, Jor-El has knowledge we do not.  He either has technology or he has understanding that surpasses what we understand of the speed of light.  He may be using some form of "spooky action at a distance" to communicate, he may have harnessed Burroughs' 9th Ray, he may be sending the message via tachion particles...Idon't know.  But he evidently believes the temporal restrictions WE understand to exist don't.   

Yes, this is a little like the logic of, say, Star Trek V, but then...I'm a poet.  I WANTED to be a science fiction writer, once, but found myself slumming.  

Shumaker: Actually, I never saw much of a paradox here. I assumed baby Clark was sent to earth in a faster than light (FTL) ship, and that the Jor-El transmissions, sent at the speed of light, were only reaching earth at the same time as the light from the supernova, 30+ years after Clark arrived. There are several ways to explain Jor-El's knowledge of earth; in addition to the ones Bryan suggested, the Kryptonians (Kryptovars?) could have sent a FLT probe to study earth, which then relayed or returned with recorded TV transmissions, etc. to Krypton. Since Jor-El would know that we have no FTL technology, he would send his messages to us in a slower media we could receive, i.e. radio waves.

However, since Brian Breck pointed out that 1993J is over 11 million light years from earth, the implication is that Clark would have been traveling only slightly faster than the speed of light, just enough to cover the 11 million light years in only thirty years less than the radio transmission--still, Clark would have been in space for over 11 million years!  However, we don't have to assume (based on information in the poems) that Jor-El sent both Clark AND the transmissions just before Krypton's destruction; perhaps he sent Clark ahead, FLT, then (30+ years later) sent the transmissions, which (like Clark) covered the distance in very little time, but through some advanced technology, perhaps by a Krypton probe still near earth, converted the FLT signals to standard radio waves so we could receive them. OK, this is the most convoluted sentence I have ever written, but the idea of it is that Jor-El's messages can be explained without too much twisting of physical laws. 

Dietrich: What he said. See, Curtis is the smart one.

Student: This writing comes across to me as extremely sarcastic.  Was your intent to poke fun at wedding festivities?  “I hear his other wants me to make an honest man of him.”  I am confused by this line, isn’t Superman the most honest being around? 

Dietrich: Kristi, good question.  I think WE think of Superman as honest, but HE doesn't.  Remember, he lives a lie (Clark Kent) every day.  He breaks laws to preserve them.  He is, in many ways, exactly what Luthor paints him to be:  a despot in a red cape.  But in some ways he IS Clark.  And that human part despises the "God" part, the part that is eternal and all-powerful--he's even pushed the planet around a few times....  Literally.  Pushed.  The.  Planet.   

So when he's planning on marriage, to a human, what does this mean?  Remember, the poem you are referencing is spoken by Lois Lane.  She, too, is suspicious of this man for whom she's fallen.  And, yes, she's being sarcastic I think.  But that's her power.  She's a reporter, someone whose job it is to be objective.  Well, here is "God."  She's effectively marrying "God."  What, she asks herself, am I going to do?  How does one marry another who is eternal, all-powerful, super? 

She has to be sarcastic, I think, to keep things in perspective, to keep her humanity.  It's really the same thing Clark does himself when thinking about BEING himself.  The most human thing we can do sometimes (maybe ever) is to laugh at ourselves, at others.  Sarcasm is Lois' super power; it's how she copes, how she makes the superhuman human sized.  Does it really work though? 

This, I don't know.  When WE face the superhuman, the power of language, when we marry ourselves to signs (ideas, laws, politics, faiths, a big red "S") and adopt these ideas as our own, how do we keep control?  How do we make sure the idea doesn't take us over, turn us fanatic, despot, zealot, or simply blind?   

Well, Socrates told us we need to question.  He said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."  So we poke and prod and ask questions.  We have fun.  We MAKE fun.  This is why irony and satire, education and the scientific method, poetry and meditation are so very important.  If we don't question our laws, our Presidents, "our wars, Czars, rules," if we don't kid our fiancées and joke about even the most serious of things, well, we let the tyranny win, we let our signs control us, we give in to the despotism of design. 

As a native American flute maker once told me, "If you can't laugh at yourself you weren't raised right." 

Student: I understand that this piece is telling us that the inmates are the sane ones for not believing that Superman is a God that they should worship.  The reason that the plaque should be facing inward is that the world outside the asylum are the crazy ones for worshipping the deeds that Superman does.  The part I don't completely understand is what the inscription on the plaque truly says.   "What lack, the perimeter of our knowing, what taste, the purchase of that lapse, what guile, our denial of absence owing to minds that muster might from each perhaps." 

Dietrich: Ellen, I'll try: 

The perimeter (the scope) of what we know (our knowing) is full of absences (lack).  In order to exist, we purchase (by living) life (a whole lot of not knowing) and imagine ourselves to have taste in the bargain (after all don't we show MORE taste by spending more on LESS; isn't that what disposable wealth is all about?  And just imagine all we don't know; it would dwarf us and the known universe, since the universe itself is the biggest part of that unknown).   

But then we deny, often, that we don't know; we pretend to have answers (thus guile).  The irony is that, as human beings who create something out of nothing, our greatest strength ("might") comes NOT from knowing but from imagining ("perhaps")...which means that might (perhaps) makes might (strength).   

Thus the key to the inscription turns on the pun. 

Shumaker: Isn't that technically a play on words? I think of puns as requiring words with slightly different spellings, for example the Arthur C. Clarke story that ends with a "star mangled spanner" punning "star spangled banner." 

Dietrich: Pun:  A play on words based on the similarity of sound between two words with different meanings. 

Ergo, "muster might from each perhaps" counts as a pun even though the similarity, in this case, is exactness. 

Now, define irony. 

Just kidding. 

Student: In the Sonnets by Clark Kent when you finished the last line of a poem did you already have an idea about what the next poem was going to be or did you look at the last line later and then compose the next poem?  Were the poems actually written in that order originally? 

Dietrich: I've written fifteen or more crowns and I've written each straight through.  If I can't move on from where I was, then I don't move on.  Crowns, to me, need to be organic that way.  Thus two problems:  One, the individual sonnets don't stand alone very well.  Two, if I get stuck, like I did with some Orson Welles sonnets many moons ago, then I have to wait to get unstuck before any of the other ideas get finished.  The ideas of course are mostly already there (...mostly...), but in the case of Orson, I had to wait nearly a year to get past the block.  I wrote other poems, but not those.  Currently, I'm stuck on a sequence about my sisters.  This set is a crown of crowns (or 49 sonnets) and have to wait for the logjam to unlog. 

Shumaker: OK, this may have nothing to do with Bryan's poems, but has anyone noticed how, ever since President Bush started using the word "evildoers," that comic book villain names are being used to describe our enemies? For example, on the Iraqi most wanted list, we have Chemical Ali, Lady Anthrax, and Dr. Germ. These sound like they belong in a mid-seventies DC comic. Should we start calling Sadaam General Doom? 

Dietrich: I have to believe someone in the Dark Pantheon of Elder Gods has a sense of humor.  Maybe Poindexter, head of the Eyes.   

Student: In The Else I comprehend that it is a piece about people trying to grow and become the most that they can be.  It discusses our attempts to be more as one with God.  How we have grown and searched for the ultimate knowledge.  How we believe that our knowledge is superior, but we are still searching for someone or something to bring us more, to teach us what we still haven't learned.  They have seen and studied us and tried to make a connection to us.  We no longer want to hear the message they are trying to send.  We believe that if they can make the connection they are not the superior beings we are looking for.  If they can be destroyed then their knowledge is not enough for us.  We require more.  We are not looking to see what our future will be, we are looking for the knowledge to control what we have no right trying to control.  We want to become our own Gods. 

Dietrich: Wonderful.  Yes, particularly to the first part.  I don't know that I wanted to suggest that we want to become Gods...rather, we already are, in our own way.  By filling in the gap of unknowing with any system, any faith, any myth, we create meaning and order our lives and our impressions of the universe.  Whether "true" or not, each story, each "else," does a unit of work in the world.  Myths, symbols, paradigms make things happen; they make people DO stuff, and thus other stuff happens.  If I believe in little pink men from the cupboard who hoard paperclips and nose hairs, that belief will make me do something in this world and what I do affects others.  What they do effects still others.  Thus, whether I believe in God or Allah or Zarathustra or George Bush or Michael Moore or Superman or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, my beliefs ("real" or "historical" or "literal" or not) are an "else," an absence that creates presence.  A nothing that, by making something, is no longer nothing.  So...I guess maybe I am saying we want to be gods.  Well, that, or we already are.  Or we already are because we could never be.  The fact that we cannot be gods, yet are--the fact that we create something from nothing- is the very paradox that makes our making of meaning godlike.  So, really, it's not a choice.  What makes us human--being symbol-makers—makes us gods.   

Shumaker: Bryan, I assume you're familiar with Shaw's "On the Need for a Superman" on the back end of _Man and Superman_? The title may be a bit different--the Modern Need, or something. Anyway, I was going to show that to the class tomorrow night and see how it relates to the poems. I know you quote M&S at one point; did you have this particular section as a source? 

Dietrich: Honestly, I think I grabbed my copy of Man and Superman and just flipped back through it till I found an appropriate quote.  It's been a long time since I've read Shaw, though I had been reading him a bit before I started work on the book.  I don't really remember, but the quote seemed all too appropriate for the relationship between Lois and the S Man. 

Student: In this piece are you referring to the fact that humans believe in things that we don't necessarily understand?  Because of our beliefs we can do things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do.  Our beliefs enable us to find greater joys.  If someone believes that life is mapped out for them by a greater being, a God, they are more likely to enjoy life and notice the simple pleasures that await them.  Believing that there is a heaven to go to after earth people are more able to deal with life's hardships.       What I am not sure of is the last few sentences. "A message.  Perhaps this.  I can only imagine." Are you stating that the message will strengthen our beliefs or destroy them? 

Dietrich: Yes. 

Okay, though, seriously...  Ellen, you really seem to have some fabulous insights into the poems.  I am humbled to be able to talk to you and your classmates, all of whom are real readers.  All of you seem to care so much about poetry, my poetry, and, to tell you the truth, I am both surprised and delighted.   

The answer to your final question cannot really be anything but "yes."  A message that came from "elsewhere" which purported to answer all our questions would do both:  It would strengthen our beliefs;  It would destroy our beliefs.  Don't you think?   

I mean, if some alien mind actually pointed out the burial place of Christ and we went and dug up a body with a spear scrape on the ribs and thorn scratches on the skull and nail holes in the wrists and a winding cloth marked INRI and a faded purple robe and perhaps a scroll pocket packed with a final gospel....  What WOULD happen?  Is faith about proof?  Can it be? 

Student: This piece seems to be about how much Superman has thought about leaving his responsibilities and being just a normal man.  He has thought about all the ways that an indestructible man could be destroyed.  He also realizes that it would do no good.  The world would not let him die.  We would resurrect him like the Egyptian Pharaohs.  We would dig him out of his tomb so he could live again.   The line I would like clarification on is "No, nothing I can do, then, will relinquish me my cup."  What is this line trying to say.  

Dietrich: Okay, this is spooky.  I've just been moving down the line of questions, answering them one by one.  Ellen, you seem to be anticipating my answers with your own questions.  This particular question seems to answer your question about "JHVH" and that one seemed to answer the question about "The Else."  Cool. 

The bit about relinquishing the cup comes from Christ's soul-battle in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he asked god to allow "this cup" to pass from him.  He doesn't want to die, to suffer for us.  But he finally gives in to his destiny.  He realizes (at least as I read the myth) that his suffering is essential to become a template for how WE should act.  Not that we should all climb up on a cross and drink vinegar, but that we should live our lives as sacrifice, as conduits between the temporal (the earth) and the eternal (the sky).   

On our own "crosses," we should mediate between our own desires (the earth/the temporal) and others' needs (lasting effects/the sky).  Superman/Clark knows he needs to give up a human life to help save humanity, but he is reluctant, as we all are when faced with what it means to take responsibility for being good.  His final choice, to BE good, to take a leap of faith and act AS THOUGH he were a god/Christ/Zarathustra is an act of filling in the "else," the absence, with action that would otherwise be nothingness.  And the choice to do so is also based on a "belief" that doing good is good.   

All acts, all attributing of meaning to those acts, are acts of faith and power, human power.  In doing so we fill in the spaces between Y and H and V and H.  We complete the Tetragrammaton.  We make four consonants God:  Yahweh.  Or Jehovah.  By choosing in the garden (either garden) we choose to be the god that kicks us out. 

Student: I believe that this one is about us not being able to hide from what we are.  WE can try to run, hide, or blend in with everyone else but we are all striving for one goal.  Without all the trappings of life around us we are all just trying to survive.  Everything that we do is our attempt to survive.   

Dietrich: Or at least this is what Clark believes when he is at a low point in his own belief in himself, in his alter ego, in us.  These low tides, these times when he would rather be dead than have power, any power...these times are when he escapes to The Fortress of Solitude, a windy, ice-bound, frozen tundra of a clubhouse in the Arctic.  Here, he can be alone in the blankness of the snow, the blankness of Mt. Blanc, the blankness of the white whale.  Here, he can wipe the slate, BE a beast, no thought, no symbol, and be free...even from himself. 

Student: We have discussed all other areas, I thought we should spend at least a little time on The Secret Diaries of Lois Lane.  I am impressed that you, a man, would be able to write the secret ideas of all women.  We all say that we are looking for a perfect man.  A man who can do no wrong.  But would any of us actually want to live with one.  I don't think so.  We want a man with flaws.  Everyone has some.  Does anyone actually want to live with someone who we think is so much better than we believe ourselves to be?  The only problem I have with the Lois Lane section is the fact that Superman never grows old.  Forgive me if I'm wrong but didn't Superman arrive on Earth as a child?  I have never seen or heard that he landed as a fully grown man.  If he grew from a child into a man wouldn't he continue to grow older?  I mean does he really just stop ageing once he leaves puberty?  How can everyone throw away the growth of his first twenty years on Earth? 

Dietrich: Good point; I am just sort of following the lead of the comics themselves, and I suppose one could argue that Kryptonians are a bit like giant turtles (why not?), or honey mushrooms, in that they may reach a certain metabolic stabilization and not age past that point....  And I suppose if we look at ALL the characters over the past almost seventy years we would discover that NONE of them have grown old.  Ah, the oddities of serialized storytelling....   

But back to your real concerns:  Thank you for the compliment, but I would hope that any writer (at least the good ones) would be able to write in any voice, male, female, hermaphrodite, Caucasian, negroid, mongoloid, purple, paisley, alien, god, etc.  Is there such a thing as a male or female writer?  Does sex or ethnicity matter where the ink bleeds?  Is blood or cell content or genitalia pertinent to paper, pulp and the work of the mind? 

Perhaps not questions we can answer here, but I will say that a friend of mine, after reading the Lois Lane pieces, said, "I'm glad to find out that Lois is a slut."  Hmmmm.   

Shumaker: On the aging question: a distinction can be made between growth and aging. Growing from child to adulthood is a process directed by hormonal signals and activation of genes. Aging, on the other hand, is mostly caused by chromosomal damage: the degradation of the telemar caps at the ends of each DNA strand and accumulated errors in the gene copying process, caused by such things as cosmic rays and free radicals. One would assume that Superman, being invulnerable, would not suffer DNA damage over time. 

Dietrich: Curtis, you scare me.   

Dietrich: I have enjoyed this discussion very much.  And I have to say that the questions, comments, observations and critiques have been some of (if not THE) most intelligent and informed I've ever seen.  I am perfectly willing to keep this going for as long as you like, but it appears Ellen is one of the few still keeping the thread alive.   

Dietrich: Please, Ellen and Curtis, if you (or anyone else) are still interested in chatting, I am past the wedding now and things have calmed down considerably, so I will keep checking in for a week or two, or longer if anyone is willing.  Don't be afraid to continue with the discussion.  I rarely get the opportunity to correspond so in-depth about my work.   

Student: Is this one about the building of who we are?  All the small pieces of our lives being bonded together to create the final person?  If so, is it possible to complete the model?  Aren't we constantly adding new pieces to the model?  Camouflaging pieces that are lost or broken?  And trying to make the model look better? 

Dietrich: Absolutely, which is why the poem ends, "moving / still, projecting, onto your completion."  This line can be read numerous ways:  firstly, given the line break, it is ambiguous as to whether the speaker (us) is moving or still, growing or stopped, or if there is a difference; second, "projecting" may suggest movement toward completion, but it may also suggest the Freudian notion of imagining that such as thing as completion exists and "projecting" onto that idea.   

There may be (but probably isn't) any such thing as finishing the "model."  After all, as we put our models together, we put ourselves together, and as we do both, others model us, build themselves on our example, remake us in their minds and make more "US"es as well as more "THEM"s.  And then we look at them, remodel them in our own eyes, making a them based on us out of the them THEY based on us (which we may have based on them) and...well, you get the idea.  Models model more models. 

And the mannequin store never closes.   

P.S.  Did I mention I was finishing my Ph.D. when I was writing this poem?  I chose to write about building a model plane (the "plain"), but was actually thinking about finishing "myself" and school, and a future of thinking about such things. 

Student: I understand that Lex Luther is more impressed with Batman because he sees him as more real.  Batman does not pretend to be something he is not.  He hides in the dark, wears appropriate clothing and shows that he knows he breaks laws to capture criminals.  My question is which one do you personally feel is the better superhero. 

Dietrich: Batman.  He's human.  Much of what Luthor says ("Satanic" figure or not) is what I believe.  I have a problem, a big one, with the John Ashcrofts and Donald Rumsfelds and Ed Meeses and Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells and George Bushes of the world...those who are so sanctimonious that they believe themselves holy or righteous or perfect.  They fight "evildoers" by casting them in black and white.   

Evil does not come in black and white.  Evil is grey.  Evil may not even exist except insofar as an issue of perspective.  What is good for Superman, for example, is evil for Luthor.  Whose point of view do we privilege?  What about the two women in Florida who need abortions but cannot think for themselves?  Does Jeb Bush really know what's best for them?  Does the ACLU?  Batman believes himself broken, an outcast, a monster, nearly as dangerous as those who he fights.  This is healthy.  

Superman (at least as others have pictured him, others like Luthor) sees things without grey.  Of course he doesn't REALLY see things this way (not as I picture him), but Luthor, who believes Superman sees no grey, sees Superman in black and white....  Paradoxes within paradoxes.  Which is why we need/should be/already are Batman.  We need to be schizophrenic to survive in this Postmodern world.  

P.S.  Right now, I'm doing a book on Wonder Woman.  In a few more years, I imagine I will turn to Batman.  If I'm going to do this, I cannot resist the Trinity. 

Student: I realize that you want more in-depth questions, but why the jokes?  Is it just to show your humorous side and to break everything up?  I enjoy reading that makes me laugh!! 

I wondered the same thing at first.  What else do you do while in prison?  Do a little workout, fight off the pervs, write letters, tell a few jokes.   

Am I close? 

Joke #1  I imagine that, not knowing Clark Kent, one would have to wonder at some point how Superman got his stuff.  He couldn't be getting paid for his services unless it was a form of black mail.  So, what did he do, steal? 

Joke #2  I think Luther is asking "Are we making the right decision on who Superman really is or are we confused?" 

Joke #3  Is really not a joke at all.  He's summing up what we've taken for granted.  Is Superman really a super man or a curse? 

Dietrich: Yes.  Very nice.  And, yes, Superman is a kind of thief, if not a literal one, at least a thief of expectation.  He provides what we should earn of ourselves.  He exemplifies all we, ourselves, should already be able to do.  Of course, in creating him (as a construct, a comic) we ARE doing what he does, creating a fortress of solitude to escape to.  The comics, our myths, are our artic, our wasteland, the place we retreat to be reborn. 

All jokes are based on human suffering.  We find humor in other's pain, or in their implied stupidity.  We laugh, in other words, to keep from suffering ourselves. Luthor/Satan/Judas knows that the power of laughter is the power of subversion.  We can gain more strength from a good joke at someone else’s expense than we ever could from force of arms.  This is why the greatest comedians have always been political.  And it is why comedians are always more dangerous than armies.   

Luthor uses his jokes as entry way to the points he makes in the third section of the poem.  The more he can make us laugh, the better he can get at the serious stuff.  We are disarmed by laughter, by the comic.  The comic allows us to lower our guard.   

Which is why I use "comics" to attempt to get at God and/or Truth in the first place.    

Student: Methuselah:  A biblical patriarch said to have lived 969 years.  A reference to the everlasting Superman.  Is this merely Luther's wishes to live long enough himself to see society "come to their senses" and rebel against Superman or is there more to it than that? 

Dietrich: Yes, but it's also an attempt to put Superman into some sort of traditional framework (familiar myth pattern) that he's been left out of so long.  "Midrash" and "Methuselah" used to have a partner poem titled "Midas."  These three "M" poems placed Supes into both the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian paradigms by placing Luthor himself into the tradition (via overweening ego and megalomania).  Luthor sees himself as a Rabbi, as a Patriarch, as a gold-touched king.  But in the end, I cut the Midas poem because it was incomplete and not doing all I wanted it to do.  Plus, it muddied waters already overly muddied with a multitude of myths. 

Student: Don't we all live to be remembered?  It seems that all of us have a primary goal in life.  Those goals usually lead to us being remembered after we are gone.  It is hard to imagine how we would feel knowing that nothing would be left behind.  No children to pass on stories, no pictures to show our life, no great feats that are remembered or documented, not even a toothpick left behind.  It is a very numbing thought. 

Dietrich: I'd like to think that at least my words will be left behind, that something I said might still echo in someone's mind.  This is why Jor-El send his own words to the stars.  It is why we sent a golden record into the vast dark on the back of Voyager.  Whalesong, Chubby Checker, Beethoven, brainwaves, Maori war chants, a heart beat, poems....  These are our last hope, even when our own sun expands and swallows the world. 

Student: To be honest the first time though this poem I was not sure what to think.  I am a gal after a little romantic suggestion, but I didn’t expect it of Lois.  She strikes me more of the ambitious female type not a romantic.  I reread the diary His Maculate Erection and I found fear.  She is in love with the image of Superman, but is she women enough to hold up to his expectation?  I also did read into the ending the Immaculate Conception.  Just like Mary all over again. The same familiar tales retold, I am not sure that is a bad thing, perhaps it would bring hope in the world disruption. 

Dietrich: Again, as with Luthor, Lois knows that power comes from laughter.  And she tries to stay the trembling with humor.  She may not succeed, but at least in making light of the dangers and differences she/they face, she can stand more firmly in the shadow of what may come of their liaison.  And in so doing, she gives us our own hope of surviving the eternal.  What she invents (what she calls frightening) is no less myth than the myth she imagines being created by others, what myths we already live with (and often fear). 

Shumaker: Also, this poem gives another connection to Zarathustra, who was said to have inseminated a lake so that he will be resurrected a thousand years in the future when a pure virgin bathes in the lake. I think it's somewhere in Afghanistan, or northern Iran. 

Dietrich: Yes, there was a second part to this particular poem that I cut for the final book.  The second half directly addressed the Zarathustrian myth and drew parallels between Superman, Zoroaster and Christ.  Unfortunately, in the end, it seemed overkill.  Most people already know this myth, or, if they don't, they can find it readily, so the hints seemed enough.   

Student: Thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to answer our questions.  With classes to give, papers to write and a wedding to plan on top of it, it is amazing that you could find the time to talk to us.  It shows your dedication as a teacher and a writer to but aside some time to help students comprehend more of the literary world.  I hope you continue to strive for this balance so that other students can benefit the way we have.  Again, thank you very much for your time and understanding.  Congratulations on this new step in your life. 

Dietrich: You are quite welcome. 

It's been busy, but a lot of fun, and marrying Wonder Woman herself doesn't hurt.  My wife is a skydiver, scuba-diver, motorcyclist, scholar and former model.  I feel like Steve Trevor (the male counterpart to Lois Lane).  And, hey, a whole new book of poems is pretty neat too! 

Student: Would it be possible for us to get a copy of your books about Wonder Woman and Batman when they come out.  We live in a rural area and they might not be available in our local bookstores.  Also we don't have the title names and could not order them.  Having had the opportunity to talk to you I would be interested in reading more of your works.  Thanks 

Dietrich: Well, the next one out will probably be titled "Universal Monsters," a sequence of poems about marriage, divorce, love, loss and my parents. 

The next MAY be "Amazon Days," the wonder woman poems, then "The Assumption," a collection about truth, god, meaning and UFOs.  (Although nine of the Wonder Woman poems will be appearing in the very next issue of "The Missouri Review.") 

Other books in the works are "Gotham Wanes," Batman stuff, "Weird Tales," poems about my sisters and, again, various marriages, "Love Craft," poems about my family, and two children's books which I may never submit....   

Keep in mind that "Krypton Nights" is the first and it may take a LONG while for the others to see print.  "Universal Monsters" is a pretty sure bet, but the others will just have to cure a while in the barrel.   

I am delighted about your interest.