CT: When did you start writing poetry?

LAB: When I was seventeen. In 1967, my freshman year in college

CT: Do you remember your first poem?

LAB: Actually, my very first poem when I was in junior high school, I always used to like to run for offices, and I ran for president at John Burrows Jr. High School. I had to give a speech in the auditorium in front of the student body, and all I remember is my speech was a poem that I wrote about a visitor from mars that comes to earth. All I remember is one phrase that went something like “ where have you gone in your travels and why should Laurel have your gavel?”That’s all I remember, but it rhymed! I didn’t know better then. My first real poem happened when I was a freshman in college. It was 1967 and I was filled with teenage angst – 17 years old, in college, and the summer of love.

I come from a very conservative family, even though home is in the same city, living away from my parents for the first time hit me hard. I started writing these depressing poems - I hate myself poems. I was in my French class and I had a huge crush on my professor. I had written this poem and it was sitting on my desk in the classroom and my French teacher – he was a British man and looked very much like William S Buckley, very suave. I had quite the crush on him. He was walking around and he picks it up - as he’s walking around class - and says “ Oh, Miss, Bogen, I see you have a poem here.” He looked at it and says “ not bad!”

“Not bad” was all I needed. I started writing more after that hoping that he would say “ not bad” again, but he never looked at any of them after that.

CT: You weren’t embarrassed?

LAB: I was, until he said “ not bad” and then I felt confident he’d say something else, again, to me. There was a contest in the English department that was funded by the Academy of American Poets. I just happened to enter, and I won first place and beat out the graduate and undergraduate students and so that’s how I really got started. I thought, “oh this is something cool I could do!” and back in those days, one could actually consider having a profession of being a poet. Not like now, where you have to have another job.

CT: What were you like in your adolescence?

LAB: I was very shy and I didn’t talk much. I came from a family that was very overwhelming and could have been considered abusive, I guess. I can remember my mother crashing a plate against my sister’s face and… it just was not a very happy house. My dad was a PE teacher and my mother worked for my aunt. My aunt, and her daughter owned the land the Beverly Center sits on. My mother worked for her. I went to Malborough School for girls where I had the best education money could buy, but I was so lonely – there was no one to talk to. I started there in the tenth grade and the school started in the 7th grade, so most of the girls knew each other from cotillion- or their parents belonged to the same private clubs and country clubs and things. My dad was Jewish and we didn’t belong to anything like that. It was really rough. I actually had anorexia, in result of that.

CT: Is that what sent you to the hospital?

LAB: No, it wasn’t. When I think back on it, I had problems my whole life. When I was 21, after I graduated, I started hearing voices. One of them was Mr. Jasper, who was the devil. And he said if I killed myself before I reached the same age that Sylvia Plath was, when she died, he’d make me as famous – or more famous – than she was. So this was an interesting idea for me and I was always trying to kill myself for many years. I did terrible things to myself over the years: eat razorblades, hung myself… I was very unhappy and overwhelmed. I have a really good cocktail that keeps me level, and last time I was in the hospital was five years ago which is outstanding because I used to go into the hospital 6, 7, 8 times a year.

The poets of LA saved my life and that’s why I always try to go out of my way, any time I can try to help other poets I do. My life did not turn out like my mother would have liked.

CT: How did you survive all those attempts?

LAB: I don’t know. There must have been something in me that really did not want to die. I believed that somewhere, something was going to work out. And it did. And I’m glad it did. I can actually say that now at this advanced age, and I’m fairly happy.

Especially since that book came out! I never actually believed it was going to come out because it took them seven years to publish. I used to come out with a book every two years, and the publisher I had died a few years back. Younger than me and he died of a heart attack. Published my books between 1979-1989. It was a big shock. He was working and it happened in his truck.

CT: And now you’re now one of the most influential poets in Los Angeles

LAB: Well, that’s very kind of you to say

CT: How does it make you feel? Looking back at everything you’ve accomplished? Being a curator at LACMA, a teacher, the Poet Laureate of LA?

LAB: Well, it embarrasses me a little bit, and I keep thinking they’re talking about somebody else. I can’t believe they’re really talking about me. People keep trying to convince me that I’m a good person, but I feel I have to always convince myself that I am because I am filled with a lot of self-hatred. In fact, I’m working on a new poem. Would you like to see it?

CT: Yes please!

LAB: Rings of the Unemployed

For us, the lottery is the lifeboat to cling to like Tallulah Bankhead

We plug the holes in the craft with our disability checks and social security

Betting on the swell of next week’s jackpot

All play and no work is not as amusing as one would think

Oh when that clink-clink of ice in a glass spoke volumes

And I didn’t have to

Before the disappearances of debutant balls and cotillions

When Title 9 suddenly made women relevant

The tea rooms are mostly shuttered

No time for finger sandwiches and earl grey

Milk please!

With Starbucks on the corner

You can be caffeinated at will

Despite our flexible schedules

No need to clock in, or rise early

We unemployed avoid sleep.

Do we deserve it? We ask ourselves

What have we done all day?

What invention have we engendered?

What machination of redemption?

CT: It’s heartbreaking. It exploits the darker side of life and how gray things have gotten since life just doesn’t seem to have that magic it did in your youth.

LAB: Exactly. Everything is so expensive here now. I can hardly afford to live here in LA

After a certain age, it’s hard to get work. I have a lot of friends who have reached their 50s that couldn’t get a job if they wanted to. Even if they get an interview, the interviewer is the same age as their kids or grandkids. They wont hire them. It’s very sad. I can get down sometimes… Now I need to come up with an ending, that’s one of the reasons why it’s not finished. There’s a stanza in there I have yet to write.

CT: How does it usually come to you?

LAB: I have to process. One of the things I tell people about their pieces is to read them aloud. Something about that helps me go forward, you know? It’s the way I write - I’ll look at something and I’ll look at it quickly. As I’m reading, my brain will go to the next leap. I’ll see where that goes, and the next picture I see is usually where it needs to be.

Sometimes I think of poetry like little movies in my head. I was born here in LA, grew up going to the movies a lot. So, movies have always been a big part of my life. In fact, I even worked at the William Morris agency at one time.

CT: Do you think that darkness aids your writing?

LAB: The older you are, the more you have to pull from. There was a writer named Tillie Olson and she wrote a book called Silences. I suffered, over the years, through a great many writer’s blocks. And what has kept me alive is that particular book in which she said, “you know? The thing about silences is that we should honor them. There’s a time to write, and there’s a time to live, so you’d have something to write about.”

I think about it like that. I think, “well, I’m having some life experiences now, and then I’ll have something to write about when my writing comes back to me.”

CT: Can you tell me about some of your darkest moments?

LAB: That’s too dark. I can’t even tell you much about it. I can tell you about when my life changed. I was in Camarillo state hospital. Before I got there, I was in county. It was horrible and I can remember a woman who was in a wheelchair because she tried to burn herself up the night before. There were people screaming all night, and I couldn’t sleep. I had shock treatments at another hospital earlier, and because I didn’t get better, they shipped me off and sent me there. What was Camarillo State Hospital is California State University Channel Islands.

It’s the same buildings and everything! They just turned it from a hospital into a college. Anyway, I decided the way I’ve been able to get better, my whole life, is to trick myself into doing nice things for myself. Or trick myself to get better. So I said to myself, “What is the one thing you’d rather be than a crazy person in a state hospital?”

And I said, “Well, I would like to be a famous, Los Angeles poet! That’s one thing I’d like to be”

So, in order to get myself something to work with, I needed to put as much energy into being an LA poet as I have been a mental patient - and whichever side wins, so be it. They were about to lock me up for good. I don’t remember how long it had been, but I remember the psychiatrist saying: you can recommit yourself, or we’ll do it for you. I had remembered that even people in prison are allowed one phone call. I asked, they said ok, and I called the Dean of women at USC.

When I was an undergraduate, I was an outstanding senior, was in honors programs, and had gone as an exchange student in Cambridge. The Dean’s name was Joan Schaffer, and she had a thing called Joan’s girls. Those are the girls who were at the top of the Dean’s list. I called her and said, “I’m at Camarillo State Hospital and they don’t believe anything I say about myself. So, I don’t exactly know what happened. I heard she called, and a few other people, and they convinced them to give me a chance to come back. I called a friend of mine, and she came and got me.

CT: What did the treatments feel like, if you don’t mind me asking?

LAB: They put you to sleep so you don’t feel it. I’ve had it 4 different times in my life. They give me a series of 12, and it’s usually 3x a week for a month. They put you to sleep before they give it to you.

CT: And it’s effective? They still do it?

LAB: They do! And you know? It actually worked for me

CT: What do you consider to be the happiest moments of your life?

LAB: I’d say when this book came out. I was really happy because I had accomplished something good and I had something to show for my life. I have also been very lucky with my friends. You’d have to practically chop my arm off to stop being my friend. The woman I dedicated the book to her name is Victoria, we’ve been friends since I was one and she was zero. We grew up on the same block and we’re still friends 60-some years later. Since I never married, I never had any kids, and I decided to dedicate this book to her.

CT: What was it like being a literary curator?

LAB: I loved that job. I got to talk to all the people I really wanted to work with. I’m good at it, or I used to be. You’d be amazed though how many friends you gather having a job like that. Suddenly, you have more best friends than you know what to do with. Same thing working with an agency.

CT: And you’re still teaching now? UCLA?

LAB: Extension, yes! I also work for a program for senior citizens over the age of 45. Different type of program - I don’t grade anybody. Different demographic. I started it in 1990 and the woman that hired me retired two months ago. The whole program is in the air because they haven’t hired anyone to replace her. She is a wonderful visionary woman.

CT: What’s Nearly Fatal Woman?

LAB: We’re a poetry performance group. We’ve been together or 20 years – almost- and we’ve been around the country doing our show! We’ve been to NY, performed at Cornell University, performed at Knott college… we’ve done some really good shows. We’re a performance poetry troop, been together since the mid-1990s and each of us are performance-oriented poets. I have a background in theater, and after I got out of the hospital at Camarillo, there was once a really terrific theater company called The Company Theater, founded in 1967 by a bunch of USC alumni. And in 1968, I took a theater class and I never had experience like that.

They were so Avant-garde that I wanted to be like them so I called the company theater and offered to volunteer. We later lost our theater because of the riots. My former publisher and I then started a poetry theater as an adjunct to Company Theater to help them raise money and to start something else. We’d choose a theme and then put together poems that we liked, and got actors to act it out. That’s how I started with the performance aspect of my work. Susan, when she first came down from Fresno, she studied with Phillip Levine. She came to LA in the 80s. Linda had been a performance artist and poet and singer/songwriter. She was in one of Alice Cooper’s world tours as the nurse.

CT: How do you think you’ve evolved creatively?

LAB: My sense of humor has come out more. I’m a lot less, I wouldn’t say angry, but I was really scared. I could be scary. I used to go around beating my chest, and very dramatic stuff like that. I was ok with it because I wanted to scare the shit out of people.

CT: Just to provoke a reaction?

LAB: Yeah, oh yeah. You haven’t seen anything like me. I know how to put the fear of God in people, and I used to love to do that. I’m not trying to push people away like I used to.

CT: Any great loves?

LAB: Yes, and none of them worked out. Right now I’m focusing on my cat, Chumly. I like people a lot in general, but in specific, I’m not so great. I don’t like people to get too close to me because it never works out, and I’d rather not deal with that again. I’m not good with change, especially if it’s something I depend on. I keep myself close enough but not too close.

CT: Knowing what you know now what advice would you give aspiring poets?

LAB: I do not like the MFA idea. When I graduated in 1971 from USC, there were only six MFA programs. Six. That was it. One could actually be a poet without having to go to graduate school, but now you have to have a credential to even be considered a writer… and that is ridiculous. I got my masters 30 years after I got my BA. 30 years! What I don’t like about it is that it makes a lot of cookie cutter poets.. And you can tell when you’re reading these poets that they’re recent graduates of an MFA program or what not. I would encourage people to have a life for a while. If you want to go back to school, at least take a few years off. 10 years is best so you have life experiences to write about. Don’t be so eager to go into graduate school to become a poet.

CT: What advice would you give yourself?

LAB: Spend more time looking at my wall of achievements. I have a good friend, former student, because I have a tendency to get depressed… she did something. She took all my stuff I’ve done, and put them on the wall in my apartment. Whenever I get depressed, I look at my wall of achievement. Look at the stuff you’ve done! I have been having a difficult time with being as old as I am. I don’t know if I’m young at heart or just immature. I’m 66 years old and it blows my mind. I don’t know how I got here.