Q. Hal, I have been watching you perform and read your poems for about six or seven years now, and during that time I think you've continued writing in pretty much the same style. How would you define your style of writing?

A. I'd call it deadpan-obsessive style. I just keep writing about the same things; mothers, therapists. Once I find something, I just stay way with it.

Q. Why do you choose to write in a deadpan-obsessive style?

A. Because I pretend I'm a little kid again. I'm back in the therapist's office. I'm getting yelled at, criticized. I'm just trying to show people that sometimes life is bad, but so what? We all have to deal with it.

Q. All your poems are short and to the point. How do you get to that point where you write those few little lines of dialog which define that particular poem?

A. I just call it lack of emotional stamina. I just write a few things and then I get tired. I've always been like that. I'm just not that articulate. I want to say what I want to say; make my point, then I'm done. Also my mother would yell at me that way too. She just got straight to the point.

Q. Is writing all these things like therapy for you?

A. Yeah, it helps me figure out my life. I can't lie when I write, and I think definitely when I write I can only think as fast as my hand moves across the page, so it makes me slow down my thoughts. Otherwise, my thoughts are like this blasting radio that's skipping all over the stations.

Q. And has your life changed in the process of writing these two books?

A. Well, I'm able to travel a lot more, meet a lot of different people--read all over the United States and different countries. In October I'm going to go to Norway. So it's been a lot of fun to do that. Just get my work out there and just realize that everyone has problems with mothers.

Q. And how did your family feel about your writing?

A. Well they liked my work a lot. They think I'm making them famous. They're really pleased with the writing.

Q. Now, you were telling me that you're pretty popular in Norway. And, in fact, you've sold more copies of this most recent book "My Therapist Said" in Norway than in America. Is that true?

A. Yeah. I can't quite figure it out. I think it must be they have a lot of mother problems in Norway. They're making animated cartoons for my poems for Norwegian TV and for European TV.

Q. And how does that feel to be thinking about seeing these things in a visual form and to have other people developing and working with something that you've originated?

A. I like that. I like other people doing all the work. All I have to do is just write it. I don't have to be busy making puppets, animation, and drawings. I can't do that myself, so I like them to do it.

Q. Do you think there is some way in which they would have to do it to remain faithful to your work, or do you feel pretty open to different interpretations?

A. I feel open to different interpretations. As a writer, you just write the stuff, and you have to give up control and just trust people to understand the essence of it. And so far it has been working really well.

Q. What's you're background in literature? How did you come to writing in the first place?

A. I was a major in English at New York University. I studied with Ralph Ellison. I just didn't want to be a scholar. I was checking the doctoral programs and just got a job as an assistant teacher in Bedford-Stuyvesant. I like working with kids and got a degree in special education, and I've been working for the board of education teaching special education for 17 years.

Q. And is that something you intend to continue doing no matter which way your career goes?

A. Yeah. I plan to just keep teaching. I like kids a lot. I don't have any kids of my own, and it saves me from getting into bad relationships to try to have a kid. So I enjoy working with kids. And sometimes I'm shocked I get paid to work with kids.

Q. Do you think any of them will ever write a book called "My Teacher Said"?

A. Maybe. I teach them to learn how to write mother-said poems because their mothers call me up on the phone and say the kids confess to them that they exaggerated to make the poem better. But I believe the kids. I think the mothers are crazy, so I want to make it very well-known that I am pro-mother.

Q. You're pro-mother?

A. Yeah, I think mothers need to say these things, that kids do crazy things. Like, "look both ways when you cross the street." All these things my mother yelled at me about. She's right.

Q. Uh-huh. Who are your literary influences?

A. I like Kafka a lot. He had trouble with his parents. He wrote letters to his father. Never showed it to his father. I never showed my poems to my mother. I like Sharon Oats a lot. She writes about abuse. I like Rick Moody. I read a lot of novels, Beckett. I go to a lot of art museums. I like jazz, blues. I'm influenced by a lot of things.

Q. Is it important to you to stand up and read your work in public, or is it enough to have your book circulating around?

A. Well, it's my roots. That's how I started. I didn't go to writing workshops. I just went and did open readings. I went to one of your earlier reading series that you did. That was really helpful. And that's how I started, and it helped me because then I went home after the audience saw my head. I had to write poems--they're connected to the audience, so when I started writing, I envisioned a crowd of people. But a lot of writers they would write for someone sitting around in the room reading their work. I don't do that. I write for a crowd.

Q. So you're really going for the punch-line then?

A. Yeah. I just want to make this connection with people. I like making people laugh because my life's not that funny, so if I could make people laugh a little bit, that's a powerful thing to do and might help them with life.

Q. But I remember having a conversation with you a few years ago where you told me that you had never really intended a lot of these things to be funny. And, yet, they are funny to people and perhaps you didn't always expect to get the kind of response that you do get.

A. Well, I think I was very depressed the last part of my life, and so I wrote to make myself laugh. And now when I write a poem, and I giggle at my own poem, I know that I wrote a good poem. So I was shocked when people in the audience started laughing and once I made them laugh, I got immediate reinforcement. Because the worst thing in the world is to get up in front of a hundred people and just read and read and read and get no response. So I get people laughing, which is immediate reinforcement, so I enjoy that.

Q. And why do you think people laugh? What do you think is that button that pushes people and makes them laugh every time--each next thing about what your mother said or your therapist said? There's that immediate responsive laughter?

A. Well, I'm talking in front of myself as I watch me fall in a banana peel, and you don't want to laugh because you say, "Hey, what's the matter with this guy? Didn't he ever grow up"? But I'm grown up, and it's just fun making people laugh. And I'm also serious, and at the same time I'm funny. I make you laugh, and then I make you stop and think about what you're laughing about, which I think is real important to do because most comedy out there has victims. There's ethnic humor, women humor, attacking people, and I just poke fun at myself. And I think people identify with that. I'm just being vulnerable. I'm saying, "Hey, I'm messing up with relationships. I'm messing up in therapy. I'm messing up with my mother." And I think people identify with that and realize that they too mess up sometimes, but it's good to laugh at someone who is bragging about doing that.

Q. Where do you go from here, Hal? What's next?

A. I'm working on a book called "Hal Said", a memoir. It's in prose. I'm trying to make myself look bad, and I think I'm succeeding instead of glorifying myself. I'm showing that I'm a jerk at times. And so I'm working on that. I'm going to go to an art colony this summer. Hopefully, I can do most of it then. I do some sketches. I still remember how I drew when I was five. I used to draw a lot of turtles. I identify with turtles because they had a shell to hide in.

Q. And is it a stretch for you now? Is this a new discipline that you're exploring to be writing in more extended prose?

A. Yeah, it's slightly different, but I think it was the next step. I want to keep challenging myself. One day I just sat down and just started writing about my life. I want to explain the story behind some of the poems. And I started to think it was important that I switch to prose. I'm still writing poetry--I never stop writing poetry, but it's good to take a break and come out with a book that's slightly different. It changes the genre because the sketch is in prose. And I'm trying to make myself look bad.

Q. You told me that you're translated into Norwegian. Are there some other languages that you've been translated into?

A. Well, my book was brought into Israel, but two women who translated it quit in the middle. They said I used too many bad words. But they are having trouble translating it. Hopefully, some other countries will translate my book now that I'm going to be on European TV, the cartoons. It's really fun being accepted outside the culture. I met you in Scotland when you and I were reading poems together. It was really fun to have a Scottish audience appreciate our work. It's neat to when your work can be accepted by another culture.

Q. When it reaches beyond what we're all familiar with. Or the familiarity of our own little world I suppose to people who might not know what you're talking about when you refer to what was happening on the corner or something like that.

A. You hope with writing about your life you can connect with other people in different cultures and that's what I think you and I have been doing. So I felt really good about that. It's just a testament to my work. I feel really good that I'm popular in Norway.

Q. I want to thank you very much for spending some time with me, and I wish you luck. Our readers can look now for "My Therapist Said" and they should start looking for "Hal Said" sometime in the near future.

A. Oh, thanks a lot. It was great being interviewed by you. You have a good memory.