Oliver de la Paz

You can find him in two different e-places today: Line Break and the Hayden's Ferry Review blog:

When I write, I listen to music. This is, from what I understand, a not-so-common practice. I’ve always been able to write to some kind of music, whether it’s in the background, or whether I’m consciously putting a set of headphones on my head and cranking the juice on the stereo.

From what I understand, a lot of people hear the music competing with their own poetic composition. I treat the music, in some way, as a guiding principle for the syntax of my poems. Mind you, I do go back later to my poems and “repair” them, but for the initial generative moments, I listen to music with my headphones on. I’d otherwise be distracted into doing some other task . . . like vacuuming. Believe me, it’s true. I’d clean my whole damn house just to keep away from the writing desk. I suppose the practice of listening to music at the writing desk was employed specifically because I needed a distraction that would keep me with my head down typing away. When, exactly, I started listening to music while writing poems I don’t know.