Ask The Author: Joanna Pearson

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Joanna Pearson’s “Origins of Winter” appears in the July issue.  Here, we ask her some forward questions.

1. Why are poets so fascinated by the seasons?
 
Possible obsession with any of the following: Pathetic fallacy? Greco-Roman mythology? Cycles in nature? Stanzaic repetition with variation? The pleasingly convenient way one seasonal cycle acts as metaphorical stand-in for a human life cycle? Verse and chorus? Autumn leaf poems? Bud and blossom poems? Robert Frost poems? Summer jumping-off-docks-into-lakes poems? Nature-doesn’t-care-so-forget-your-pathetic-fallacy poems?

I don’t know.
 
2. What are your limbs made of?

Very forward question. I don’t think we know each other well enough yet.  

3. What periodic element do you wish you smelled like?

Uranium

 4. What would you dance to at a honky tonk bar?

I think the key is not to mess with whatever’s already playing on the jukebox. So that’s what I’d dance to.

5. How do tangled sheets weep?

Why? Are they weeping in my poem or something?? Weeping sheets?? I hope not! Okay, good–I had to go back and check, and now I can say definitively there are NO tangled sheets weeping in this poem.   There are people who have wept in some tangled sheets, but that’s as far as it goes.

A Hades-figure can erupt from the earth and steal someone and the dead can do dance recitals in the underworld, but I’m firmly opposed to any bed linens weeping because that just sounds terrible.  And so I guess my answer to your question is: they don’t.

6. Why do we quiver so much?

Because we’re made of meat and nerves??  Actually, I don’t know that we quiver all that much.  That’s why I believe in a quiver rationing system: 0-1 quivers per poem, 1 quiver per short story, 1-2 quivers per novella, 3 quivers per novel, 50+ quivers per romance novel.  As for why we shiver so much, well… Sometimes I do get greedy with shivers.