In November of last year, I was interviewed by Marina Yoffe, founder and director of Jackson Heights Poetry Festival, an organization whose advisory board I sit on, and I never got around to posting a link to the excerpts from the interview that JHPF put up on its website. There were, I think, better moments from the interview that they could have used, but I like this nonetheless. Anyway, better late than never. So here ’tis:
Here is the text of the two poems I read. (If I had a transcript of the interview itself, I would post that too, but I don’t.)
Melissa’s Story
The doctor gave instructions like a spy:
Be there, seven pm, on the dot.
If you’re not, I’m gone. Don’t even think about
another appointment. Got it? That day,
of course, there was traffic, and the money
had to be in small, old bills. You will get
in my car as if we were lovers. At the spot,
you’ll step out first. Walk when and where I say.
Make a mistake and I leave. Understood?
I did. Somehow it went without a snag,
and there I was, legs open on a bed,
with a man crouched between them like a dog.
He reached into me and scraped away the life
I’d almost made, not yet mine to give.
///
The Silence Of Men
A man I’ve never dreamed before walks
into my apartment and sits in the green
chair where I do my writing. He carries
in his left hand a large erect penis
which he places silently on the floor.
The phallus begins to waltz to music
I cannot hear, its scrotum a skirt;
its testicles, legs cut off at the knees.
I want to know why this disfigured
manhood has been brought to me. I look up,
but my guest is gone. His organ, deflating
in short spasms like an old man coughing,
spreads itself in a pool of shallow blood.
The silence between us is the silence of men.
///
If you want to know more about my work, my website is www.richardjnewman.com; and if you’d like to buy my book, you can find it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but I would ask that you either buy it directly from the distributor, UPNE, which directly helps my publisher, CavanKerry Press, which is a fine small press that can use the help, or find an independent bookstore on IndieBound and buy it from them.
Great interview. I could especially relate to the moments when you realized you wanted to write – realizations like that are memorable, aren’t they?
Julie:
It’s true. They are. I remember the first time I ever said the words “I am a poet” to myself. Actually, I wrote them in a journal I was keeping when I was 21 or 22. It was one of the scariest moments in my life, partly because I was very aware that no one I really cared about would care about it, but also and mostly because I was very aware of the audacity of declaring the intention of making my words one day mean enough that they should command people’s attention, especially here in the States where the attitude towards poetry is largely one not even of disdain, but of indifference. I felt very alone at that moment, and very alive and such a chutzpadik for committing myself to language and all that stood for, for committing myself to anything that had to do with saying/telling truth, especially truth-to-power (June Jordan was my first poetry teacher and having been through her class I could not imagine not writing a politically engaged poetry of some sort), that I was afraid.
Thanks for sharing the interview. I enjoyed seeing you speak and it was great to see you reading your poetry, which I also enjoyed, in all it’s seriousness and precision. Also, thanks for plugging your publisher and independent bookstores.