When Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books) was published this
April, poet Karen Craigo sent me some questions to answer and suggested I could
substitute my own questions. That photo was taken by Michael Broder, founder of Indolent Press at the book party at Zinc Bar, in Greenwich Village.
What did you want to be when you grew up, and why?
I was an enfant terrible of an existentialist who
excelled at being what I was – young. I knew I’d been born and knew I would die but having no sense of becoming an adult I suffered no imagined
adult iteration of myself. At age seven I fetishized lipstick smears on coffee
cups, and couldn’t wait to make this art myself. I was an eight-year-old Annie
Oakley. A nine-year-old lawyer in black heels which clicked on the courtroom
floor. A friend of most characters in most novels.
What is one poem you particularly enjoyed writing?
“White Tunnel and the
Night Return” burst from emotion recollected in an emotional state (as opposed
to Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in tranquillity [sic]”). On the way home from
a difficult situation late at night, I ran into a keep-your-head-down ruckus on
the subway. Jittery and jittery I was compelled to jot down a version of the
first stanza, “I was vessel, dumb animal receptor. /
DNA snaked me into life, / three insurrectionist rivers carried me. / Antiquity
was my patron saint.” Even the refrain. “Jesus, dance with me. / Mary, in your
arms.” came to me on the train. I love, if I may be allowed to love something I
wrote, the poem’s feel, which I liken to the Muslim call to prayer which puts
voice to church bells. Jesus isn’t Jesus and Mary isn’t Mary, although they
both are who they are, as well as mystics and comfort.
Describe your worst poetic habit.
Poetic habits? Hmmm.
Isn’t a “poetic habit” twisting my locks whilst doing a plie? Wistfully gazing
at lambs leaping in a meadow? Weaving bright ribbons of grosgrain and silk to
wear in May? I’m being silly and annoyingly so. Of course you mean the bad
habits of a poet. While I will often write out the first draft of a poem – on
paper – in longhand, subsequent drafts are on the computer. My bad habit here
is that I don’t save draft and so have any partial history of a poem to refresh
my thinking and creativity.
It’s time someone put out an anthology of poems about ___.
The sun. Hardware stores
on Saturday mornings. Root vegetables. Elephants. Torture. An anthology of
poems about grunge. Metal. Nightmares. Elves. What the world really needs is an
anthology of poems about cats. Also, someone should invent YouTube. And load it
with cats. And cute babies. And sex. Lots of sex.
It’s your poetic obituary! Finish it up, but not with your
bio—finish it with an essential statement about your poetry.
My corpse is betrothed to
Science. Will Science pay for a headstone? Thanks for asking, because if
Science doesn’t pay for a headstone, please alert someone I want one. “Sarah Sarai,
Loving Poet” will do. May groundskeepers, passersby, and friends leave irises, fuchsia,
bougainvillea, narcissus, roses, night-blooming jasmine at my feet. Or head.
__
To purchase Geographies of Soul and Taffeta click.
Indolent Books is an indie press. Its founder and everything-er is Michael H. Broder, poet.
