Just came across this interview / discussion with Rodney Jones over at Blackbird. I love it because it's Rodney. Talking. That's pretty much a guarantee for genius or madness or, most likely, both. You can listen to it via Real Audio or read the transcript. Here's an excerpt:
"Okay, how do you know a poem is good? Okay, here’s one of the things that would suggest to you that a poem is good. Let’s say you have a master poet in your mind, say the early works of Hitler that you really like and you think I want to be like Hitler. And you write a poem, and it seems to approach Hitler, and so you, that’s one of the things, it’s like if you’re playing music and you’re able to play a Jim Hall solo that sounds like Jim Hall. It seems very good to me that if I could do that, which I can’t. If you write maybe your own kind of poem, you will not have that marker because you do not know what you smell like."
In about three years, I'll figure that out. :)
About Me
- Paul
- Paul Guest is the author of four volumes of poetry and a memoir. His debut, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, was awarded the 2002 New Issues Poetry Prize. His second collection, Notes for My Body Double, was awarded the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His third collection, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, was published by Ecco Press/HarperCollins in 2008. His fourth collection, Because Everything Is Terrible, was published by Diode Editions. His poems have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, was published by Ecco in May 2010 and selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Whiting Writers' Award, Guest lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
6 comments:
Not sure what all I should take from this. Should we be smelling ourselves?
Do you smell yourself?
Hmmmmm....
Brilliant stuff. Promise I'll listen to the whole thing.
J
OMG. That's CLASSIC Rodney Jones. Brilliant! Madness! What's the difference?!
By the way, dunno if Adrian Matejka told you this, but for years I thought Rodney Jones was a six-foot-six black man . . . and then I met him. :D
Wait--Rodney isn't a six-foot-six black man?
Wait. . . hmmm. Maybe that's all changed since he quit smoking.
Sorry, guys, Rodney's smoking again.
But he does have laser vision now, due to off-season cataract surgery.
This Rodney Jones Q & A is wonderful and hilarious. My inspiration has shifted from wanting to write a poem to wanting to impersonate him perfectly. Love it.
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