Poet William F. DeVault — Photo by Vic Burkhammer

William F. DeVault was born in Greenville, SC, on August 16, 1955. He spent a lot of his young life in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he graduated from Morgantown High School and attended WVU.

Yahoo named DeVault “the Romantic Poet of the Internet” in 1996. The bio goes on and on. He said he works as a consultant and lives in the D.C. area.

He has several books out, and he has written thousands of poems. I met him at last weekend’s state Poetry Out Loud finals at the Cultural Center in Charleston, W.Va., where he was one of the three judges.

I caught up with him via the e-mail link at his Web site, the City of Legends.

Four days later, on Saturday, March 22, 2008, we talked via Skype and touched on additional points of interest. A slightly condensed version of that interview follows, as an audio supplement to the earlier e-mail interview.

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March 22, 2008, interview with DeVault:
38:18 minutes

DeVault recites two poems:
2:44 minutes

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March 18, 2008, e-mail interview with Devault:

Vic Burkhammer: I’ve often heard you called ‘The Romantic Poet of the Internet’…. You’ve written a lot of poetry and prose. Do you consider yourself more a poet or a novelist/short story writer?

William F. DeVault: Definitely a poet. I can write prose, I even have a few (unfinished novels) I am working on, but poetry is a natural thing to me, even an automatic thing, like breathing or blinking my eyes.

V.B.: What is your current project? Maybe you have more than one thing going at a time. What are you working on right now? Multiple projects?

WFD: I have a new book coming out next week, “As such…” — a collection of love poems from my courtship of my fiance, Candy Tothill. I am also working on two novels, a screenplay and a children’s book series. I have a problem keeping the focus too narrow.

V.B.: Tell us about your writing process. What is your writing routine? How do you determine what form a poem will take?

WFD: Now that’s a good question. Usually the poems emerge from the preconscious with their form already decided, but I sometimes choose to make them more structured, bending them like hot metal on an anvil. If you see a sonnet or a villanelle that is usually something I took a conscious hand in shaping. Otherwise I write spasmodically, with several fragments or poems emerging a day… not that I write them all down.

V.B.: What of your poems is your favorite? What are your favorites of others’ work? Any influences?

WFD: My favorite poems. That’s always a problem for me, as it is like a parent declaring which of their children is their favorite. I am terribly fond of my villanelles and of my more recent love poems, which seem to fuse the romantic and the metaphysical. “TRIUMPH” will always hold a place in my heart, as will “bare feet on a wooden floor.”

As for other poets…I am a very big fan of Byron and Shelley (I was disappointed when none of their works were used by contestants at “Poetry Out Loud”) and Tagore floors me every time I read his works.

I have tried to avoid influences and to avoid avoiding influences, although from time to time I indulge homage works like “I rained poetry,” which I wrote in honor of Donald Hall.

V.B.: You’ve been writing a long time. How did you get interested in poetry?

WFD: It got interested in me. In third grade I wrote my first poem and the teacher was so impressed she had it put to music and we had to perform it later that year at a parent’s assembly. I always preferred doing things I do well (which is why I don’t play tennis).

V.B.: Tell us about the genesis of a couple of your poems.

WFD: “In the arms of the dragon” came to me while driving home in Los Angeles. I had no scrap paper or pen with me, and had left my pocket recorder at the office, so I started chanting the poem to remember it, until I could get home and write it down.

“peppadew girl” is from the new collection and was inspired by Candy telling me about her favorite pizza toppings. It seems there is a spicy sweet pepper indigenous to South Africa called the peppadew. It is very bright red and it seemed a good metaphor for her. The poem wrote itself in about ten minutes.

V.B.: Do you read your poems aloud when you write? How do you pick out the music to accompany the poems?

WFD: I only use my own compositions to put to my poetry when I record or broadcast, and I usually just immerse myself in the work until I hear a melody or frame of music that seems appropriate.

V.B.: Any advice for young writers?

WFD: Write. Write. Write. Throw away the bad, build on the good. Write.

V.B.: You were one of the judges of the recent state Poetry Out Loud competition at Charleston, W.Va. How do you listen to poems? What do you listen for?

WFD: I wanted the performer to sell the poem to me, to make me believe they believed it, that they could have written it. I listen for a confidence of thought.

V.B.: Can you recommend any West Virginia poets we might not have heard of?

WFD: Dan McTaggart, who I collaborated with on “Psalms of the Monster River Cult” is incredible. He writes with an authentic blue-collar voice.

VB: Thank you.

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