Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

Do you, like me, seek out interviews of your favorite authors? I cannot get enough of them. They are a genre unto themselves. The Paris Review is the gold bullion of the form. I think I’ve read nearly all their interviews of poets. As a practitioner, I want to know from the inside how great poems get written. Plus, it is there I hear a passion for writing that makes me feel… normal. It is there, too, that I receive suggestions to read long forgotten writers. I also mine interviews for quotes or rare facts about poets that I bring into the classroom and conversations.

That’s me as a reader. But as a writer, interviews feel like a hazard of the profession. I find myself repeating the same stories or responses. I must have told a thousand times the tale of that time that I watched The Godfather in a limousine with poet Sonia Sanchez enroute to Bard College, where she read, and then afterward we dined at the home of great Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe.

Interviews are also hazardous because it quickly becomes very clear when the interviewer has not read a single book or even poem of mine. I get asked the most basic of questions — it gives me Groundhog Day feels. But I am always grateful. The opportunity to explain the inspiration behind my poems, which can be obscure or difficult, is rare.

Today’s poem is the kind of interview that I long to give, one full of non sequiturs and expansive evasions.

Oh, y’know, just your standard Q&A
by Alex Z. Salinas

1) Do I exact revenge on blank spaces with machinegun words?

               You do not often take the high road with your art.

2) Do I connect the happenings of my inner circle with cosmic memory?

               You burn inside and spew with intellectual impatience.

3) Do I love every book I buy?

               You pray to treat all your children the same.

4) Does my olive skin belie what’s frozen in photographs?

               You read faces as patchy sentences on serrated pages.

5) Do I run in ovals only to return to every place I know?

               I’m afraid so, my son, I’m afraid so.

6) Do I fear the underlying principles of the biological imperative?

               You heard today a kindergartener felt neither like a boy or girl but a rose.

7) Does the aftertaste of shopping malls plague me with buyer’s remorse?

               You are accustomed to writing other peoples’ stories in your voice.

8) Does calling someone racist assuage our fear of the unknown?
	
               You figured out how to turn “off” daylight saving time on your G-Shock watch.

9) Do I think I can hit the center of my truth with an abundance of years?

               You dreamt the silver cross you purchased in Hawaii was back around your neck.

10) Does authentic beauty elude the tendrils of linguistics?

               You want to answer yes but that might be a lie.

11) Do I still believe in my childhood hero?
		
               You’ll go your remaining days trying to define the meaning of “honor.”

“Oh, y’know, just your standard Q&A” by Alex Z. Salinas. Used by permission of the poet.