An interview with Raul Ruiz, from The Write Stuff series over at SF Weekly:

Raul Ruiz is an MFA candidate at SFSU. His work was included in Shipping Manifesto: Fly the East L.A. Dirigible Transport Lines! by Sesshu Foster, Arturo Romo-Santillano, and others.

What are some of your favorite smells?

The smell of the daffodils in my heart, the nervous smell of blurbs on backs of books (oh funny avenues of commerce), the smell of early morning’s innocent light, celibate, emptied of stars, a spring of forgiveness, flowers all purple.

What are you working on right now?

A unifying theory of intersecting bus routes; a general equation for the mathematical catastrophe in the thousand page Haiku; a laughter cookbook (page 1: laughter enchiladas; page 23: laughter thousand island dressing).

What would you like to see happen in our lifetime?

Joy (the unutterably True kind, the kind that takes Hard Work and Effort and Self Control); Love (the unutterably True kind, the kind that takes Hard Work and Effort and Self Control); Better Poetry (the unutterably True kind, the kind that takes Hard Work and Effort and Self Control).

What kind of writing do you most admire?

I appreciate architects whose buildings are all windows; I like my poems loud and exhaustive, but my heart is likewise open to the gentle tremors of very quiet writing. In the end, I suppose, the heart always know if it is being kissed by a force electric with Love and Faith.

I admire writers whose poems are interminably linked with the (very difficult) art of living. Writers who live their poetics, who emit from their being the shhyrgshdgftya! of Poetry’s Electric Field.

A night on the town: what does that mean to you?

It means the sun’s gone down and the streetlights (and headlights of cars! And bike lights! Safety first, everyone!) have all been turned on; I’m out, walking about, probably caffeinated, looking to meet someone with eyes that laugh.

Here to read all The Write Stuff profiles; here to watch all the videos.