Leonard Gontarek, author of Ain't No Angel Gonna Greet Me

Interview by Autumn Konopka
IT’LL PROBABLY GET WORSE: A Conversation with Poet Leonard Gontarek, Author of Ain’t No Angel Gonna Greet Me (BlazeVOX [books])

For more than 20 years, I’ve known Leonard Gontarek as a staple of the Philadelphia poetry community. So, it comes as no surprise that his latest collection, Ain’t No Angel Gonna Greet Me (BlazeVOX) takes its name from a line in the Bruce Springsteen song, “Streets of Philadelphia.” Though the poems aren’t about the city in a direct or cliché way, it is the kind of work that truly exemplifies Philly’s literary spirit and unique personality—with visceral emotion, gritty detail, laugh-out-loud humor, and synaptic narratives that both challenge expectations while resonating with innate familiarity. In the words of Ada Limón, former US Poet Laureate, “these poems hiss and bloom at the same time.”

Ain’t No Angel Gonna Greet Me, Gontarek’s ninth book of poetry, was released this past June, and shortly after, I had the opportunity to talk with him about the process of putting the collection together, his nonlinear approach to narrative, and why poems are still so important.

Autumn Konopka: A lot of times I read as a writer, and that starts for me at the title level. Did you know what the title was going to be when you started working on the book? Or was that something that came later for you?

Leonard Gontarek: Book to book, somewhere usually mid-process, I come up with a title that I really love, and that kind of makes it all fall into place. The other thing is, I keep lists in my notebook of possible titles for poems and then possible titles for books—not as many as those.

With this particular book, I listened to a lot of music. Maybe two-thirds of the way through, I heard this song [“Streets of Philadelphia” by Bruce Springsteen], and I heard that line, and I said, I know where that line should go. I didn’t put a quote from the song because I also wanted it to sound familiar or sound to people like some idea that’s been pitched to them: “ain’t no angel gonna greet me.” It’s an incredible version of, maybe, serenity but also loneliness. This song is more hopeful, and so are the poems in the end—even though they’re stark and they’re straightforward in their emotion.

Autumn: Considering the title’s Philadelphia connection, are the poems in this book about Philadelphia in some way?

Leonard: I do think of myself as a poet, and I think of myself as a poet from Philadelphia. And I try to, I don’t see how I can avoid—or why would I avoid?—bringing Philadelphia into the poems.

Autumn: Another question that I had was about how a book comes together. Do you start out with a project—I’m going to write a collection about X. Or, you mentioned writing titles down—I have these titles; I want to explore them. Or do you just look around periodically, gather up the poems you’ve got, and try to make sense of them?

Leonard: Traditionally, the books do work from a point when I have new poems that I started after I published a book. I just see how that’s going. I don’t put a deadline on it.

A couple of my books had more intentional structures. One (Take Your Hand Out Of My Pocket, Shiva) focused on shorter poems, and another (He Looked Beyond My Faults and Saw My Needs) was very specifically made into five or six chapbooks collected within one larger book. With this book, there are really three sections. There’s the “Carry Me Home” section, which is a very different voice. I’ve been working on [that part] for a really long time—I mean 20 years. It was a tough subject, and I would keep coming back to it. Initially when I finished it, I wanted to publish it as its own book, and that didn’t happen.

The middle part are the poems I’ve been writing since the last book, which was published about five years ago. I worked with fourteen lines. I worked with a kind of “American sonnet.” Just the basics of it—certainly the turn, the number of lines. And there were many of them; it was a big edit. That [section] is about 100-plus pages. The first section is almost 100 pages. They’re shorter poems, but that doesn’t matter. The book is a certain length.

The first [section] is very personal. Let me use this word carefully because obviously that’s what poems are. But I moved out to the greater world in the second part. And I saw now that I could present, if I could get a publisher to go for it, both books simultaneously and that the first book wouldn’t be solo. It would be the beginning of the book, and there would be a shift. That’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to present what we do [as] a self, and then the second part was more of the self within the bigger world.

And then I had been interviewed by Jan Starkey for maybe twenty hours over a period of months. She’s [been] in my workshops. She knew a lot of what I was doing, and she wanted to talk about that. So I had these two parts. I’m up to about 200 pages, and I’m thinking, Do I want to put in an interview that’s about 25 to 30 pages? But I thought, it’s that opportunity, like at the end of a live reading, where people get to talk to the poet. So, that’s the three parts. There are three different looks. The poet is saying three completely different things and three completely different voices.

Autumn: These poems are incredibly lyric, but they also seem to carry a strong narrative. One of the things I love about lyric poetry is that blur: you’re telling a story, but “plot” isn’t the point. It’s about the emotional movement, and that’s what I’m getting from this book. Am I just projecting that? As a reader, I’m having all the feelings, and I’m not even necessarily sure what I’m having them about. I think I know the story, but the exact details don’t matter to me because I still get it. I’m curious how you balance that line?

Leonard: First of all, I want to say your read has been a good read. It’s not projecting. You hit on it: I’m working at telling events and trying to give the emotional impact, as you said, but not connecting the dots. And if I am, I’m connecting them with pencil, so the reader can also adjust it.

And so, how do I approach thinking in terms of lyric narrative or thinking in terms of what can be in it?

Autumn: Yeah, where do you find that line between saying and not saying or revealing and not revealing?

I’m thinking about the poem in the second section, “Poem Ending With Nelly Sachs.” The last line, which comes from Nelly Sachs, is “My metaphors are my wounds.” That feels like a thesis for this collection, in a way. I thought it was so interesting because some of the metaphors feel very accessible. For instance, I think one of my favorite metaphors in the whole book was “Necco Wafers were created to make / bad poetry feel good about itself” [from “You Had Me At ‘Fuck You Looking At’”]. As a poet, that just made me laugh out loud. It feels like, I get that, I see what that’s saying. Then, on the facing page, “Jesus, Take The Wheel,” ends with the lines: “We just want April / to be honest with us again.” That, to me, feels more interpretive.

So there’s this balance between metaphors that are more straightforward, or images that are more straightforward, and language that is a little bit more of that pencil line. And I guess I’m wondering about the intentionality around that narrative blur.

Leonard: I’m trying to be authentic and faithful to the order of things. We don’t wake up and have an idea, then go through a day, and the day, in a logical way, builds towards that moment right before we fall asleep when we have illumination—the ending. But that’s mostly the way narratives are built: the ending is the ending. Yet that is not really faithful to the way things are. I mean, you might have your illumination at noon, and you might not even be noticing it. So there’s something to that sense that I apply to my narrative—that there are no rules. The narrative is as it appears and as it so happens. And I know, maybe, it’s not what people normally look for in poems.

Let me add one more thing: narrative is very important to me. Narrative, I think, is everything. If you’re telling kids a story, they have certain rules about why they’ll buy your narrative—and so do we as poets. There are certain things that make us believe it or trust it. What I’m saying is, I think I’m calling for readers to get used to this kind of poem. But I believe that it’s part of everyone’s natural experience.

Autumn: The book and these poems include a fair number of references to music and pop culture. One of my favorite, laugh-out-loud lines comes at the end of “A Hard Yes and Illegible Landscape”:

In the weeds, too, play God.
In the woods, play God.
Wear a t-shirt that says:
Michael Shannon Seems Nice.

How important do you think it is that the reader understands the references?

Leonard: To me, that’s part of our narrative. Everybody has maybe a version of it, and it may not immediately connect with that one. But it all can be worked in. There are so many ways to tell a story, but the essential thing is the story.  

A lot of times poets will say, “I don’t think people know what I’m talking about.” I say, “Well, if that’s what you want, you’re in big trouble.” I mean, you think they’re gonna know what you’re talking about? Like, A to B, to C? So maybe that’s the thing about the pencil versus pen. We’re still always finding out stuff—I’m finding new things in the poems, too.  

Autumn: The thing that I’m hearing—it’s almost acrobatic, what you’re doing in terms of putting things out there with this level of trust in the reader. I think there’s a bravery to it—and maybe a lack of ego…. You’re talking about teaching the reader to read this kind of poem. But also, there’s respect for the reader in that space where you say, “This is a natural way that we experience things. And if you give yourself over to it, you will understand. I’m not going to force feed you the meaning or the narrative.”

The reverse side of that is also where the respect comes in—none of the work feels intentionally obtuse. Even if I don’t understand everything, I don’t really feel like I’m missing anything or that I’m not smart enough. I can just trust myself to read your poems and be with them.

Leonard: The idea of respect for the reader—I think you’re right on there. You know, it’s an incredible contract. We want people to sit down with our work, and that’s a really intimate thing, if you think about it. Also there should be an egolessness about the poetry.

Autumn: You mentioned earlier having a notebook where you write titles down. One of the things that I enjoy so much about these poems is that in some places—some of the ideas, some of the feelings—there’s a heaviness there, and at the same time, some of your titles are just fantastic. I laugh out loud in the best way. “You Had Me At ‘Fuck You Looking At’”—that right there. I started the poem laughing, but it ends up being a pretty sad piece. Again, I think it’s respect for the reader: you’re throwing some heavy stuff at us, but also there are these moments of levity—because as humans we need that.

The book has that kind of movement, and I guess it comes back to what you’re saying about how you think about the narrative not being that typical line. Even emotions are that way, right? Sometimes you laugh when you’re sad or when you’re pissed off, or sometimes you cry when you’re happy. They’re cliches, but those inconsistencies—the need for switching things up—are real. And the book is full of that. It’s just a pleasure to read it…. It’s really so well put together.

Leonard: Thanks so much. Maybe it has to do with respect… but also somebody saying “the fuck you looking at”—maybe on their planet that’s the way they say hello. And you write off too much if you just don’t interact—you take that for an accepted value or lack of respect when it’s just the way people talk. I try to put that in the poems. That’s my language. I can make you laugh, but I’ve got some pretty solid, sad poems, and I recognize that there are solid, sad things out there. I guess a lot of it has to do with the illumination.  

One thing I wanted to say about writing a book of poems—and certainly my books—is that we’re writing about our world and sometimes the not very good state of our world. So what do you do? You publish a book for readers of poetry. What’s important to me is that we can still do this, and we should do it with a bounce in our step even though there are plenty of reasons not to—like poetry doesn’t seem that important and all this. But it is–it is. Maybe it’s a little bit the humor, but I think it’s the spiritual and the meeting it head-on.

I want there to be pleasure in the reading, but the truth is, if you’re having a conversation with somebody about things being bad, there are options you have. Sometimes people say, “Well, you know, it was really bad in the ’50s.” But that’s not the answer; the answer, really, that poets have to give sometimes is: it’ll probably get worse. And I appreciate that. I appreciate when poets give me the straight dope. They’re not figuring out a way that this’ll get me to a place that I want to be. Just tell it to me, and I’ll sort it out.

Autumn: I think there is a certain pleasure in the validation of not being alone in the pain or the horror or the terrible outlook of things. There is something really validating about someone giving you the straight talk, especially if other people are trying to tell you it’s not that bad or it’s been worse, and you’re thinking, “No, but it’s really bad.” I think there’s just something really nice about being able to sit with the poet and their pain or anger and feel like you’re together with them.

Leonard: When I was younger, I didn’t feel like I could handle when people had really horrible things going on. I didn’t know what to say. And a professional said to me, “You know, Leonard, that’s because there’s nothing you can say. All you can do is sit next to the person and put your arm around them.” And I often think about that as poems. Maybe that’s all the poems do; they sit next to the people, and they feel less lonely. We’re incredibly fortunate as poets to be able to do that for ourselves, and then somehow—we don’t sell like some things—but people still come to the poem. They choose that as, maybe, a way to be less alone.  

Ain’t No Angel Gonna Greet Me by Leonard Gontarek, published in Spring 2025, is available from BlazeVOX [books].

Leonard Gontarek is the author of eight books of poems, including The Long Way Home; Take Your Hand Out of My Pocket, Shiva; and The Paris Poems of Jim Morrison. His poems have appeared in Field, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, Fence, Poetry Northwest, American Poetry Review, Joyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry, and The Best American Poetry (edited by Paul Muldoon). He coordinates Peace/Works, Poetry In Common, Philly Poetry Day, hosts The Green Line Reading & Interview Series, and was Poetry Consultant for Whitman at 200: Art and Democracy. He conducts the poetry workshop: Making Poems That Last. Gontarek has received Poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Mudfish Poetry Prize, the Philadelphia Writers Conference Community Service Award, and was a Literary Death Match Champion. His poem “37 Photos From The Bridge,” selected by Alice Quinn, was a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges MotionPoems project and the basis for the award-winning film sponsored by the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis.

Autumn Konopka is the Senior Editor for Book Reviews and Author Interviews at Cleaver Magazine. She is a former poet laureate of Montgomery County, PA (2016) and author of the award-winning novel Pheidippides Didn’t Die (2023) and the poetry chapbook, a chain of paperdolls (2014). A runner, mental health advocate, and trauma-informed teaching artist, Autumn lives outside of Philadelphia and finds joy in coffee, rainbows, reggaetón, and (of course) books.