Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Joseph! I love that even though we chat pretty much daily, neither of us knew we were putting together books that would eventually have an animal (or animal descriptor in your case) set in the title. Since this is for Orion readers, could you talk about the process of gathering/arranging poems with the word Amphibian in mind?

Joseph O. Legaspi: Yeah, how serendipitous! And truly, we didn’t even discuss titles and themes as we were putting together our manuscripts in the years of almost daily correspondence – not to mention in-person meet-ups and a Taylor Swift weekend in New Orleans! – but there’s something to be said about friendship-osmosis. As for putting Amphibian together, when I was initially rounding out the early poems, the imagery and idea of “amphibious living” came forth – how like amphibians, immigrants, and by extension queer people, are able to live, navigate, and even thrive in various terrains. Not double-lives, per say, but mutual-lives, or fluid-lives, at home on land and at sea. Amphibians are also the most vulnerable and critically endangered vertebrate class affected by changes in the environment. I’m mindful of that sensitivity, as well, and the group’s role as a sort of harbinger. That we need to do better and treat these species and communities with greater care, respect, and understanding.

How about you? When I read the first iteration of your manuscript I was aware of the preponderance of the nocturne. I actually remember, from years ago, when we were newly-friends, that you were the one who introduced the nocturne to me.

AN: Whoa! I didn’t know that. Gosh were we talking poems or was I just randomly talking about the night? Ha ha – I’m thinking it could very well have been both – I don’t recall! For me, I make no bones that Night Owl is me – or, well – at least the speaker of these poems is as close to me as possible. I’m a night owl, working at night, being able to think clearer, contemplate and “day” dream at night more than I ever can in the daytime when the emails and teaching and being a present mom and wife and daughter and friend all (happily) snag my time. There have been moments in my life when I actually feared the dark, but mostly, I’ve viewed the night like the ancient poets of Greece: as a place of transformation and astonishments. My dad played a big part in that – teaching me constellations and flowers that bloom at night. And I felt this way since college when I was just figuring out writing – night feels like a soft loosening of the world’s grip – a time when demands are quiet and my attention can deepen.

Amphibians, immigrants, and by extension queer people, are able to live, navigate, and even thrive in various terrains. Not double-lives, per say, but mutual-lives, or fluid-lives, at home on land and at sea.

JL: I love the night, as well. I used to consider myself a night owl, too, writing my poems in grad school in the thick of darkness and indigo. For most of my younger years, I was an insomniac. My first memory was the diaphanous, yellow-lit gossamer of my childhood mosquito netting, where we slept under in the tropics, in the Philippines. I’d stare at it waiting for sleep to pay a visit. Since I’ve been an urban dweller all my life – Manila, Los Angeles, New York City – my experience and relationship with the night are different. Bat-hunting instead of constellations; sirens that blare and dance music that bloomed like nocturnal flowers. Environs nonetheless, yes? As you have done with your nature writing – as in placing and centering the brown body IN nature – I see and aim for an expansive view of the environment.

Let’s talk about the structure of our books. Yours is divided in four sections, denoting time. Mine is sectioned off into five, characterized by varying landscapes. Can you walk us through with your thinking and strategy?

AN: I came to the sections a bit late after two or three drafts of the manuscript. When I teach the nocturne to my students, I remind them that – just as in life – the night’s hours all have very different tones and moods. For example – telling someone I love you (or breaking up with someone!) just hits different at say 5:30 in the evening in your living room as compared to 3:00 in the morning in a parking lot! And with all the devastating news about our environment and the rage and very real grief I have about Gaza, school shootings, ICE, a hundred other things – I wanted to be sure those moments of rage and grief have a place in the night as well. I tried to capture that with the sections of my book: crepuscule (one of my fave words in the world!), sunset, midnight, and the darkest hour is just before dawn.

JL: Aah, yes: as the saying goes, timing is everything. Although, of course, yours is dealt with poetically, more nuanced. Perhaps it is similar with my thinking, too, sectioning off Amphibian in terms of landscapes, exemplifying the versatility and survivalist instincts of immigrants, migrants, and queer people. Hence: Land, Shore, Water, Ether (one of my fave words, along with peanut – can’t say it without a smile or laughter, yes?) and Air. I mean, there’s poeticizing in Ether, of course. It’s where the more surreal poems float, which is life, no? How it is, or can be, surreal at times? I think the sections were thought out earlier on because I needed, for my own sanity, an organizing mechanism, although I initially stuck with the concrete – land, water, air – and the other two came later, with the straddling, unhoused poems pointing the way.

Bring home Night Owl and Amphibian today!

AN: Oh I adore that – that even the poems that didn’t have a place initially very much had their own place in the ‘ether’. . .  also, I feel like people of color don’t get asked about craft very often and that’s the part I’m most excited to read about in author interviews. I played around with how the poem looks in this book, shaping poems into a bird, cat, the sun, even the famous Delicate Arch from Arches National Park in Utah. I guess I have a love/hate relationship to traditional stanzas. Perhaps in the next book I will be madly in love with little tight boxes again, ha ha. Can you tell me what is different or new for you formally in Amphibian? And maybe what did you discover about trying something new in this collection?

JL: Oh, I was overjoyed by your visual, shapeshifting poems when I read them. I was like: how much time and execution did each one take?! Bravo! As for me, alas, alack, I’m more about the tight boxes in this book in that I think it contains more boxy prose poems than my previous collections, including zuihitsus. Maybe this is me going against the tyranny or limitations of the line as well? That lineation, at times, won’t do or is not enough in my grasping. In chasing what I’m trying to discover? What I’m trying to contain? Then there’s also the tension of putting something (a people, an identity, a personhood) in a box. Moreover, there’s a greater width of gradation in terms of “truth” with the prose poem, its hybridity with fictive and nonfictive elements, which serves a sheepish autobiographical poet well, I think.

AN: Since you mentioned it, I noticed we both have zuihitsu in our collections, and we’ve both appeared in the Asian American Writers’ Workshop special collection of the form. Can you talk about the appeal (and frustrations, if any) of specifically the zuihitsu and how it builds upon or unlocks a record of sorts? In other words, why is it an especially appealing form for you these days?

JL: I do like the zuihitsu and its brushstrokes appeal. The stream-of-consciousness solipsistic yet naturalistic journaling aspects of it, which I find not only freeing but truthful – or getting closer to the truth anyway. When writing it, I discover that it’s a good gauge of my mental and emotional state, that seemingly disparate images or anecdotes or moments actually cohere in some way, spiderweb-like, or as a suspension bridge. It’s somewhat a map of the psyche at a given time in a certain space, liminal or otherwise. With the current state of the world, each of us are pulled in myriad directions, bombarded with stimuli, shaken, displaced, uncertain, tentative, distracted, and burdened by anxieties, hardships, and grief. Seeking our tiny salvations, and ephemeral yet necessary joys. The zuihitsu allows all of those to enter, with no judgement.

There have been moments in my life when I actually feared the dark, but mostly, I’ve viewed the night like the ancient poets of Greece: as a place of transformation and astonishments.

AN: Yes! You captured what I have not been able to quite articulate – zuihitsu IS kind of a map of the psyche – in the drafting stage, the ‘running of the brush’ might seem disparate but if you look closer – the spiderwebs of connection are there/have been there all along.

JL: We’re birthing an owlet and a tadpole respectively, aren’t we? Soon: full-fledged (night) owl and frog (or salamander or newt). I myself have not written a new poem in months in anticipation of Amphibian. I believe I’ll soon move forth once it’s released in the terrestrial and aquatic world. It’s been my way, I suppose, with every book. I need to give the bright new child all my attention, and then once I see it mobile and chewing, then, with sickle and lamp, I forge a path. I think I have an idea where I’m going ….

Where are you now, with the shiny-eyed collection just out in the world? How do you anticipate life and creativity post-Night Owl?

AN: You know I have to remind you that the amphibian might also end up being an axolotl – don’t forget that sneaky smile! Right now I’m in the final stages of MFA decisions for our incoming grad class and gearing up to finish guiding such a smart and fun crew of undergrads in food writing and poetry workshops. And with April being National Poetry Month – well that is kind of its own lollapalooza for poets even without new books appearing. The paperback of my food essay collection, Bite By Bite (Ecco, 2024) also publishes this month and I’ve got some writing projects I’m finishing up, geared toward kids actually, and one for the National Audubon Society. But most importantly – my eldest comes home from college for spring break soon, so I have plans to make all his favorite dishes (and perhaps I can convince him to help get our garden beds ready here in Mississippi)! After writing about the night for about a decade, I realize my days are pretty full and fragrant. And this night owl really wouldn’t want anything else.