by Harvey Lillywhite
An Interview with the Chicago Poet, Richard Jones
What's your favorite thing to cook?
Actually, in the same way I sometimes prefer the travel book to the journey, I like reading cookbooks more than I like actually preparing a meal. Imagination allows me to go more fully outside myself-and certainly far beyond my culinary skills. I like to think of cooking a pre-Revolutionary meal in the basement of Monticello in 1760, or basking in the erudition of Prosper Montagne's kitchen in Paris. Recently I visited Julia Child's kitchen, reassembled tile by spoon at the Smithsonian, and dreamt of cooking Sole Bonne Femme-the good wife's special.
This is not to say I don't like to eat. I think the table is the most intimate place in the world, the center of the universe. What is more enjoyable, more sacred, than a candle-lit meal with family and friends? That is why the cook, according to the French, is a divine human being: "One considers him as a minister of heaven, because his kitchen is a temple, in which his ovens are the altar."
Any recipes?
I'm a free-verse cook. In other words, I may know the best traditional recipes, but will give myself permission to improvise and embellish, add or take away, according to what's on hand in the kitchen at the moment. A recipe might call for tomato but I'll use pineapple. There may be no mention of cilantro, but if it's growing in the garden, well then I'll throw in some cilantro. But in cooking, as in poetry, skill is everything, and the skill must be expert if one wants to delight a sensitive palate.
What's your favorite city in the world?
Rome.
In America?
I like those invisible towns on American backroads where, upon rounding a curve in the middle of nowhere, a small sign announces the name of the town and welcomes the traveler. Speed limit signs ask drivers to slow down and drive slowly through at 25 miles per hour. So you drive slow, you look around, but you can never seem to actually see any sort of town-there's no post office, no gas station, no people, maybe only a lonely house or two, maybe a stray dog.
How long does it take you to write a poem usually?
Spiritually? However long I've lived right up to the moment the poem is completed. These days a five line poem takes me 53 years to complete. Artistically? Three to five years, when I'm lucky.
Is there a favorite great poet you read who's relatively unknown that you'd like to recommend?
I recommend my sister's poems. Her name is Shelly Wagner, and her book is called The Andrew Poems. She wrote the book after the death of her son, who drowned when he was five years old in the river behind their house. It's one of the most powerful books you will ever read. And unlike most poets, who read at bookstores or universities or writer's conferences, my sister reads to funeral directors, girls scouts, psychologists, churches, doctors, and bereavement groups. Read the book: you will never be the same afterwards. It is what poetry is all about-those deepest truths of loss and love.
What's your favorite pastime?
Dreaming.
Do you enjoy teaching poetry writing? Why or why not?
To me, teaching poetry is really about teaching the art of reading. And teaching the art of reading is about the art of attentiveness. And attentiveness is about being awake to one's life. So yes, I like teaching poetry because although this kind of teaching is difficult, I see real transformations take place in students. As a teacher I am able to give back to students the lamp of consciousness, which has grown dull because of our culture's shallow and foolish antagonism to serious language, to poetry. Teaching poetry is about bringing the light-the fire-back to the human mind. Do I enjoy this? There is sadness over the state of affairs, but also joy in the recovery process.
What's your favorite drink?
I was asked this same question in my book 48 Questions. I answered "a martini." But I hope people will notice that the book was called 48 questions, not 48 answers. Because in my "answers," which were poems, I told all sorts of fibs. When asked, "What is your favorite color?" I said green; in fact, my favorite color is blue. But my wife's eyes are green-how could I pass up the opportunity to write her a love poem? By the same token, though I love a dry martini in a chilled glass, my favorite drink is water, in the true spirit of The Poet as described by Emerson, who said mere intoxication cannot mimic a poet's ecstatic visions, and that a true poet "drinks water from a wooden bowl." And really, is there anything better?
Can you describe the general evolution poems of yours usually go through from beginning to end?
It is primarily a reliance on the process of writing poetry as a refiner's fire, which burns away the dross of self, and leaves the pure gold.
Do you agree with Saussure's concept of language as being an ordered system of signs whose meanings are arrived at arbitrarily by a cultural convention, that there is no necessary reason why a pig should be called a pig since it doesn't look sound or smell any more like the sequence of sounds "p-I-g" than a banana looks, smells, tastes or feels like the sequence of sounds "banana," and that it is only because we in our language group agree that it is called a "pig" that that sequence of sounds refers to the animal in the real world? Or do you think there is some link between the sound of a word, its physical gesture, and its meaning?
I prefer to think of the amazing fun Adam, our first poet, surely must have had coming up with the name "pig"-and then "cow" and "horse" and "eagle" and "worm." Or I think of my children, who love books with words like "buzz," "plop," "zoom," who love songs with lyrics like "with on oink oink here and an oink oink there, here an oink there an oink-can you hear this, Saussure?- everywhere an oink oink!"
You've referred to yourself as "one of the last believers in words."
I believe the immortal task of the poet is to be The Namer of Things-animals, flowers, stars. I think language is the eternal monument to the power of our God-given imagination and creativity. Language allows us to do more than merely point at things; it allows us to communicate the life which exists below language, before language-our emotions, our longings, our spirits. And so we do speak, clearly and eloquently, in our poems and prayers and confessions and songs. We use our words perfectly and wonderfully. This is not cultural convention, but God's diverse creation expressing itself joyfully.
At what point in your composing process do you concentrate most on the collision of sounds in the words of your poems?
At every moment, every breath, every heartbeat.
Have you ever been in an Asian boat in Asian waters? How was it?
Yes, the Star Ferry in Hong Kong, crossing Victoria Harbor. It was not terribly different from riding the Staten Island Ferry. Both boats took me across the water from one shore to the other.
If you could give a little friendly advice to the world, what would it be?
Love your enemies and read my books.
(to read a review of Richard Jones' latest book of poems, APROPOS OF NOTHING, click here.)