I don’t remember how Alex Lemon and I got to be friends–I think we were email introduced at some point–but I met him only having like one reason to love the man (his writing, which at that point exclusively took the form of poetry–I remember stuff from the excellent TLR), but now there exist all sorts of other great reasons. For instance: Lemon wrote Happy, which you should check out and read at your earliest convenience, plus he’s got now 3 books of poetry, each of which is spectacular in its own ways (I’ll argue for Fancy Beasts, but whatever, taste), plus there’s his enthusiasm for baseball (see below), to say absolutely nothing of tattoos or Texas. None of which, I assume, you need to know: if you’re a reader, you likely already know AL’s stuff. If not: Google’s everywhere, and Powell’s’s just a click away. Interview: over email due to distance and child-raising.
What’s the first sexy or suckering phrase (of poetry) you read which made you point at the page (or whatever) and deep breathe-in and go, shit, that’s what I want to do. And, if you can: what was it about that line?
Jeso! This is totally digging through the dumpster of my mind. It was probably something from Poulin’s Contemporary American Poetry anthology–as this is the first chunk of poems I really read as an undergrad at Macalester College (Go Mac!).
I can’t remember one exact phrase because I was drooling over so many poems in that book–reading James Wright, Komunyakaa, Berryman–it was an earlier edition, before CD Wright was added to it, but I’m sure I would have fallen in love with her work, too. In graduate school, when my hands really started getting mucked with poetry’s dirt and blood and shit, two books made me hard-swallow, or fizz with some sort of unnamable joy: Komunyakka’s Talking Dirty to the Gods and Tony Hoagland’s Donkey Gospel. Hoagland led to the entire Graywolf catalog and one of my favorite books of all time: Nick Flynn’s Some Ether. Komunyakaa’s poems rocked me–their torque and sound and swagger. I LOVE that book, especially “Ode to the Maggot.” Donkey Gospel stopped me: the poems felt contemporary, you could see thinking move through poems, and many of them were funny or sad or had an edge to them, some combined all three. Those mixtures felt potent and addictive.
What’s the difference in rocketfuel-feel, as it’s in you, between what leads to memoir and poetry.
Poetry rocket-fuel: think of strapping yourself to a SCUD missile and shooting yourself to your best friend’s house where survival is totally a crapshoot. Everyone might be toast, but maybe, after a couple of hours of salve, you’ll both be playing wiffle ball.
Memoir rocket fuel: think the long haul, you’re on a ship headed for Mars. When you get there, you’ll turn the rocket around and head back home. But on the way back you have to watch your entire out-going trip, analyzing what might be changed, made better, etc. As soon as you get back home, they hand you a glass of water, and a handful of that old-school Gatorade gum (do they still make that?) before strapping you back into the rocket that launches off to Mars using the new strategy and framework that you came up with on your return trip.
Can you talk about poetry and baseball? I’d actually love to make this just a brief interview thing about poetry and baseball. For instance (if the following sound jocular, they are, but I mean them with seriousness)–
I could talk about poetry and baseball forever. I’m working on an essay about it right now–I don’t know how to contain myself on those topics, though–I feel like we might go on forever.
–What position is poetry on a baseball team?
Poetry can be any position–I think poetry is actually the game. The entirety of the sport. If one had to pick an actual position, or a field-based entity, I’d say poetry is the umpire. If I had to pick a position, I think poetry is the closer–there’s a similar volatility there (but that might be the poems I like). This is an awesomely ass-kicker of a question.
–Are the Yankees ever poetry?
Nope. They are too cool for poetry. They join I HATE READING clubs on Facebook.
Can they be?
Sure. Cut half of the yearly salary, then play the next decade using only prospects from their own farm system and/or players that have cleared waivers.
Or, maybe better, can perpetual winners ever be poetry?
This is tough one, and I think it’s really rare, but yes. I guess my philosophy is that anything has the potential to be poetry. But back to this one–I think a perpetual winner that cannot feel or fully realize the winning has the potential to be poetry. I think what I’m leaning toward are fissures–there’s potential for poetry in anything with fissures. Example: a new pitcher blazes into the league and he’s almost unhittable, doesn’t walk anyone, rarely loses, etc. He goes 24-2 his rookie year, wins the Cy Young, the rookie of the year and he carries his team through the playoffs and they become world champs too–there are manifold ways that he can be poetry. For example: 1. He has 3 or fewer fingers on his pitching hand, 2. He plays for the team that he hated when he was a little boy–a team that was his favorite team’s arch rival–the enemy is him, 3. He wears women’s lace panties when he pitches, 4. Axe-murdered his brother’s pet hamster when he was little, then wrapped the individual fuzzy pieces into tortillas and served it to the brother on the brother’s birthday. The list is endless, but these are four representative examples. For example: for 3, much like some folks carry a rabbit’s foot for good luck, this pitcher could carry a small vibrator, or he might carry the actual severed and smelly foot of a beast. Or a raccoon penis, that would work, too–I think they are long sharp bones though, so you’d have to be careful. For 1, let’s say this pitcher doesn’t have a nose, or maybe part of his jaw is missing from cancer caused by chewing tobacco. For 4, one can insert any family member/any pet.
Or can sluggers? Is there a necessary sorrow missing from them?
Sluggers are super poetic. Think about Adam Dunn. Can hit the ball a mile, but strikes out so much someone from the team probably has to shower with him to make sure he doesn’t off himself. Or all the guys taking PEDs–I’m stretching it out here–but let’s say the use of PEDs comes out of a place of insecurity. That conflict I think has the potential to make poetry. Barry Bonds was arguably the best baseball player ever, made tons of money, broke records, hit moonshots that landed in a cove filled with people paddling boats, hoping to catch his moonshots, but, court documents show that he’s got a super-sized head and tiny testicles. Tell me that’s not poetic.
–What does yr favorite team and favorite poetry/poet share? A homestate? Color? Momentum?
I think top-top favorites are hard so I’m going to pick two that I really love: The Minnesota Twins, and James Wright. The first thing that binds them is place. Minneapolis/St. Paul, the home of the Twins was also the home of James Wright when he taught at Macalester College and also the University of Minnesota. His letters are housed at the U of MN–check them out. Wright’s poems about Minneapolis are amazing. There are also countless more-amorphous attributes shared by the Twins and Wright, but I’m just going to give you one example: sorrow, more specifically, the sadness of something very good.
Wright’s poems are amazing, some of the best. But the sadness that underpins them is so huge that the entire poem can be swallowed by this grief. The last line of “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” is so incredibly sad: “I have wasted my life.” It is one thing to think something like this, we all have (I have a face like a falafel, etc.) but the words reach a different universe of sadness when the page locks them down. That poem kicks me in the balls. The closing line of “A Blessing,” (Another Minnesota poem) also suckerpunches me: “Suddenly I realize / That if I stepped out of my body I would break / Into blossom.”
This kind of mythical gloom is Twinsian. The Twins are a very good baseball team. They’re greater than the sum of their parts (let’s start using some sports clich??s), they leave it all out there, they give a hundred and ten percent, they give it all they’ve got, etc. etc. and each year, they make a run for the division title. The good sorrow of Wright’s poems is found in the way they always lose–a devastating losing, a sad losing—during the playoffs, except 87 and 91, of course. Wrights poems are so very good, but they can be so sad. The same is true for the Twins–such a good team, always, at the end, awash in the sadness that comes with hope-crusing losing.
I also think the last line of “A Blessing” must sing fugue-like in Joe Mauer’s head.
–Why is there not more sport in poetry?
I wish I knew–I think it’s out there, but it must not be done well. In my teaching, I’ve found that many athletes are incredibly strong writers–they are so often deeply tuned into their bodies, the pleasures and pains of what happens within them—that, once they learn what writing is, they have an incredible amount of powerfully visceral material.
Maybe this is just me. The best interview I ever did was with Craig Finn, of the Hold Steady, and we talked the Twins for half hour instead of music. I feel like poetry could benefit from that–and anyone who’s been to AWP has to feel that poets could really benefit from that, too. Is this true?
I think everyone could benefit from sitting down and talking to one another, esp. when the words are energized by whatever happens when you learn new/unexpected/un-thought-about things about the person you’re talking to.
Does it seem real to you?
AWP? Poetry? I’m not sure what we’re talking about here–I’m still thinking about the sorrow of Kirby Puckett–the face of the Minnesota Twins.
Who are you reading at present?
The last few days I’ve been rereading the books I’m teaching this fall at TCU–so books for Intro to Creative Writing and the CNF II Workshop. But, when I’ve had time this summer, I’ve read a lot of fatherhood literature–memoirs, novels, self-help, psych, etc. There are a crazy amount of fatherhood books out there–how to bond with your baby, how to sleaze on women with a baby, everything. Yikes.
How’s being a dad? What parts align with expectations, or does the experience actually dismantle whole conceptions of things like “expectations”?
It’s the most mind-blowing, amazing, traumatic, and beautifully bewildering experience of my life. The F-bomb is a wondrous little-man, totally fun and surprising and the coolest person I know. We roll. We coo. We drool. I’m a father who likes to participate.
For a long time in my life, I’ve been good about not having expectations, so, as bull-shitty as it sounds, I didn’t have expectations coming into this. But I did prepare. I read books. I took the classes. I talked to people about their experiences. But, I’m pretty sure that anyone that has expectations pre-baby will watch the dark plumes of their magnificent burning after the baby arrives.