One of the things I love about your poetry is that you take what could probably be called the crappy ordinary by a lot of people (going to Arby’s, defrosting chicken, working at Footlocker) and in your poetry turn these situations and moments into extraordinary moments. What do you think it is about these places and moments that make your imagination work? Who—other than yourself—is especially good at writing poetry and prose about these places?
I worked for Target for about six years of my life. One year I was in charge of the electronics department during the holiday season. I remember I had to install one of those song sampler machines that play 30 second clips of Christmas CD’s. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the same sample of Barry Manilow – Because It’s Christmas, but it’s embedded in my head with the same vigor as my SSN.
When I first moved to Bloomington, IN and didn’t know anyone, I would go walk around Target because it was safe and familiar. It was my home away from home. I would get nostalgic and think about making bales in the stockroom, or eating Hot Pockets in the breakroom while watching Maury. Those are things I remember. The things that have stayed with me. The things that have taken away years of my life.
This is all to say memory is an important factor for fashioning this quotidian life into something more. Perhaps, just as important are the items contained within those memories. I find I have to ask myself, “Okay, what is the emotional truth of eating a Hot Pocket? What about a Lean Pocket? What about a generic brand Hot Pocket?”
Expanded further, it becomes a case study on value. Yes, American Gothic is beautiful and amazing, but so is a Wendy’s 4 for $4. So is Beauty and the Beast. So is Beauty and the Briefcase. No, I’ve got that wrong. Beauty and the Briefcase is not a good movie. I’ve found there are a lot of things to be wrong about. I’ve found imagination to be a place of half-rights.
To answer the last part of your question, maybe these people don’t necessarily write about the same places, but here are some writers whose work I admire: Mark Leidner, Jenny Zhang, Amelia Gray, Marcus Wicker, Diane Seuss, Scott McClanahan, Patricia Lockwood, and Sherman Alexie. Also, Shea Serrano. His twitter is amazing.
The other thing I admire about you as a person and a poet is that you see the value in being funny. I know you’ve heard it before, but I feel like there’s just a certain type of writer who is always like THIS IS ART AND ART CANNOT BE FUNNY. What’s your favorite joke in general? What’s your favorite joke in poetry and/or prose?
Thank you. I think there’s this notion that if you’re being funny you aren’t taking the work seriously. That if you’re being funny, you’re being insincere. There is no insincerity when I talk about my dead dog and wondering where she is now—even if I have to use frozen chicken as the vehicle to get me to there.
I had a professor who told me my poems are just fluff and masks, and that I’m not doing the ‘real’ work. In order to write real poems I had to cut all humor out. I thought that was a funny joke. They weren’t joking. I think as an exercise that can be useful, but as a rule I find that reductive.
Outside of poetry and prose, I think there’s a lot of great writing happening as well. Some of my favorite writers/comedians right now are: Ali Wong, Aziz Ansari, Nathan Fielder, Eric André, Megan Amram, and Chelsea Peretti.
But I think most of the transcendentalists are hilarious as well. I often wonder if Walden is actually satire. As much as I want to laugh at many of these writers, I fear that in some ways my work actually shares ties with it, and isn’t that ironic…don’t you think?
I think you could take lines from Whitman’s Song of Myself, juxtapose them with lyrics from any Ludacris song, and the end product would be just as profound:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
And when I move, you move (Just like that)
When I move, you move (Just like that)
When I move, you move (Just like that)
Hell yeah, hey DJ brin’ that back
Or better yet, let’s take Ludacris lyrics as a response to Whitman:
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you!
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you!
Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you!
Hands I have taken, face I have kiss’d, mortal I have ever touch’d, it shall be you.
(Yeek-Yeek Woop-Woop) Why you all in my ear?
Talkin’ a whole bunch a shit that I ain’t tryin to hear.
Get Back! Motherfucker You don’t know me like that.
Get back! Motherfucker You don’t know me like that!
Am I allowed to mention Whitman and Ludacris in the same sentence? Can I read Proust while eating a cheesy gordita crunch? If I played Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude at a piano recital in high school does that mean I can’t shop at Hot Topic? I don’t know. You tell me how I’m supposed to take these canonical lit seminars, live on a grad student stipend, and not feel like my life is a joke.
Maybe that’s my favorite joke.
In 200 words or less, write a very short story about your reading life.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (oh god, really?), it was the age of pretty okay television, it was the age of foolishness… it was almost the last season of Game of Thrones, it was a season of backaches and a lifetime of ibuprofen, it was time to retire MTV Spring Break.
If the boy had a good day, he bought a book and a pizza.
If the boy had a bad day, he bought a book and a pizza.
One day, Barnes & Noble sent a 40% off coupon to his inbox. Google told Amazon about what Barnes & Noble did. Amazon promptly sent a counter message to his inbox: Same Day Prime Delivery now available in your area.
The boy was conflicted. He knew people who did not like Barnes & Noble or Amazon. He knew he probably didn’t have money to spend on books but he wasn’t going to look at his bank account—there were more important matters at hand.
He tried to do the responsible thing. So he bought books from Barnes & Noble, and ordered books from Amazon.
The bookshelves were filled. The money was gone.
What’s the best short story available online that you’ve recently read? Why do you love it?
Recently? Can I give more than one?
“Salisbury Beach Pizza Time Machine” – Georgia Bellas
I love ‘lip-sync until you hear your father yelling.’ The lip-syncing, is such a small gesture that adds depth to the narrator without the word count—and I think that’s important for flash. There’s also an innocence here that is very nostalgic, and I love that too.
“Dream Boy 9F15” – Scott Fenton
I know Scott quite well, and though I’ve gotten to see a lot of his work, there’s a way in which he always surprises me. In this specific story I love the way in which he portrays intimate relationships with such an exact level of absurdity—it’s humor is calculated, but spot on, and he knows how to keep the reader interested.
“We’re Sorry We Failed To Deliver Nude Photos of Arthur Miller” – Rachel Ferrell
No explanation needed.
“For years, it’s been a well-kept secret among literary elite that Miller enjoyed most of his waking hours naked. We intend to bring you the very best of those hours, and so for a limited-time only we are offering a flipbook of select, nude photos of Arthur Miller along with the purchase of a one-year subscription to the magazine Publisher’s Weekly described as “one of the top ten journals dedicated to Arthur Miller in southeast Michigan.”
“Two Men Arrive In a Village” – Zadie Smith
I love the pull and momentum of this story. I love Zadie Smith’s sentences and the way they build upon each other. The small shifts and expansions. I could probably spend a lot of time talking about craft here, but I won’t. It’s just really well done. I’m a big fan of her work.
“But if we look at the largest possible picture, the longest view, we must admit that it is by foot that they have mostly come, and so in this sense, at least, our example is representative; in fact, it has the perfection of parable. Two men arrive in a village by foot, and always a village, never a town.”
A SmokeLong Summer 24!