The Last Poet on Wall Street follows a gifted young poet who trades his idealistic dreams for the wealth and glamour of 1980s Wall Street, forcing him to confront the costs of ambition, status, love, and growing up. Where did the idea for this novel come from?

My own personal conflict between ambitions to be a writer and pursuing a career on Wall Street. 

What drew you to the contrast between the worlds of poetry and finance?

I have inhabited both worlds. My love of poetry developed in high school, where I won the Creative Writing Cup, and I later took poetry writing and literature classes at UVA. Coming from a family of businessmen, I was also drawn to finance, earning an MBA from Wharton. While at Wharton, I entered a poetry contest held by the Academy of American Poets, where James Dickey was a judge.

After Wharton, I landed a job on Wall Street while simultaneously enrolling in Columbia University’s MFA program in Creative Writing (Poetry). I was only there for a semester, but it was long enough to get me fired from my finance job—perhaps making me the last poet on Wall Street!

The conflict James experiences between poetry and money is something I lived. I still wonder if I was trying to have my cake and eat it too. Maybe I should have taken the plunge to be a writer right after college; that question haunts me to this day.

How did you balance James’s selfishness and flaws with his more perceptive and tender qualities?

The most memorable fiction characters require complexity. James’s mother had a profound influence on him, pushing his intellectual pursuits and instilling a sense of being special, which sometimes manifested as arrogance. However, her love also engendered his tender qualities, seen in his interactions with Lark’s AIDS-afflicted cousin and his love for Sarah, who understood his complex personality. The James who wrote her that poem is the one she loved.

Conversely, James’s mercenary side arose from witnessing his father’s failures as a farmer, leading to sports betting and later commodities trading. Success in New York brought out his worst traits—transforming him from a reserved, sensitive lover of high ideals into an arrogant, greedy, and overly ambitious person. That side of him had to be destroyed for him to become a better person. My hope is that readers relish his comeuppance while seeing enough good in him to hope for his redemption.

If you could ask readers one question after they finish The Last Poet on Wall Street, what would it be?

I would ask readers if they saw enough good in James by the end of the novel to say, “Amen.” If addressing the readers not as readers but as persons, I would ask if what they love is the same as what they desire. Imho, when those two things differ, then suffering results. Sooner or later, you learn who you are. The sooner you learn that, the less tragedy in your life. 

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