Interviews

The Lightning Room: Blog People

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Hello! Welcome back to Blog People, a venture here at the Lightning Room in which interview editors Simon and DeWitt interview their fellow denizens of The Blog. In our second installment, Simon interviews Dan Pinkerton, author of the column “Marvelous Medicine.”

1. You write the monthly column “Marvelous Medicine” (often subtitled “Books for Precocious Kids and Kid-Hearted Grown-ups”) for PANK –could you tell us a little about it, and perhaps its beginnings?

Sheila was familiar with my writing, so when she took over as editor of the PANK blog she asked if I’d like to contribute something on a regular basis.  I was enthusiastic about doing a themed column, but neither Sheila nor I were too keen on the first couple ideas I proposed.  Then I had one of those eureka moments as I was reading to my kids.  They are six and eight, so they’re starting to read some of the books I remember enjoying as a child, so I envisioned writing a monthly piece on children’s books that might hold some appeal for literary-minded adults.  I presented the idea to Sheila and she approved (perhaps because she also has young kids at home?).

I’ve started by discussing some writers who will likely be familiar to PANK fans – Donald Barthelme, George Saunders, Matthea Harvey – but I’m hoping to branch out and explore “lost” (out of print) books and underappreciated authors. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Kimberly Bruss

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Welcome to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work.

February interviews by DeWitt Brinson.

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Lovely heron hue, Kimberly Bruss’ two poems in our May issue. Now watch. She is reborn! A rum drunk man right before your eyes!

1) I think, natural and familial poems are the most ancient because they’re about all that actually exists, because natural is love and family extends it. How do you feel?

I am never consciously trying to write into a tradition; family and nature are what I love and what I know. They are complicated and beautiful things and, at the end of it all, I’m searching for beauty. Though I do believe that nature must be the original source of pleasure and inspiration. Most people, when asked their favorite place, choose a natural scene, not a busy intersection or the top of a skyscraper. I think nature appeals to us because it reminds of what we can not create. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Chloe Benjamin

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Things To Do: Dress up your pet porcupine, read Chloe Benjamin’s “In Which We Pay Tribute to Swallowtails” in our May issue, enjoy the gentle stimulation of our interview.

Interview by DeWitt Brinson

1. What is the connection between strangers and dreams?

All dreams are strangers, and all strangers are dreams? I recently dreamed that I had a pet porcupine named Sweetie. She liked to eat yogurt, and I dressed her in a fur coat so I could pet her without getting pricked. When we hung out in my bedroom, she said, “Favorite room!” When I woke up the next day, I missed her.

2. Do you feel you have to fight for what you achieve or do you let life come to you?

I try to do a little of both.

3. What do people most commonly ask you when you tell them you’re a writer? How do you answer?

I always expect that people will give me the hairy eyeball or ask what I plan to do with an MFA, but I’ve been delighted to find that they’re generally excited and supportive. They tend to ask what my novel is about, so I’ve had to spruce up my elevator pitch.

4. What do you look forward to in the morning?

Coffee.

5. How and where do you write?

I used to only be able to write alone at home, but then I discovered ear plugs, and now I like the passive stimulation and gentle peer pressure of a coffee shop.

The Lightning Room with James Tadd Adcox

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Five of James Tadd Adcox’s “Scientific Method” poems appeared in our June issue. Below, he and Simon talk about empiricism and constraint.

1. Your “Scientific Method” poems have appeared in a bunch of different places – what was the inspiration for this collection, and how big is it? I love that they all have the same title.

The inspiration was a constraint—specifically, I wanted to send some poems to Safety Pin Review, but didn’t have anything that fit the size requirement (small). And I like series of poems that have the same title. I like how the title shapes whatever follows it, and how so many things can be shaped in different ways by the same title. I think I have somewhere around 40 or 50 of these at the moment, but I’ve culled them down to a chapbook of around 30.

2. These poems seem effortlessly, perfectly concise to me – what’s your editing process like? Are the original drafts longer, and you cut away? Or are they painstakingly pieced together from the beginning, very carefully and deliberately? Continue reading →

The Lightning Room: Blog People

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Hello! Welcome to Blog People, a new venture here at the Lightning Room in which interview editors Simon and DeWitt interview their fellow denizens of The Blog. For our first installment, Simon talks with Sherrie Flick, author of the monthly column “Eat Drink Book.”

1. Can you talk a little bit about your column, “Eat Drink Book”? By my understanding, it seems to be a mixture of food and drink in literature, and literature in food and drink – what inspired it?

I have ongoing obsessions with both food and writing so it seemed natural to combine them when Sheila Squillante invited me to write for PANK. In my column I look at food/drink in literature on a variety of levels. Recreating food from some books and eating it and reporting in on the results/revelations, looking closely at food within the text, and sometimes including recipes. I want to discover and explore the ways food and literature intersect.

2. Did you have a particular journey-through-food-to-literature or journey-through-literature-to-food? Or have the two always gone hand in hand?

The two have pretty much gone hand in hand for me, although I’ve come to connect them more directly in recent years. I was an English Lit major with a creative writing focus as an undergrad at the University of New Hampshire, and I also worked my way through school at a wonderful bakery in the nearby town of Portsmouth. I continued to work as a professional baker (and write) after I graduated and moved to San Francisco. My creative process is tied to baking in so many ways. (Here’s an essay I wrote about that for Necessary Fiction.)

3. The community of PANK is such a widespread one. Where are you located – beyond the internet – and what do you do there outside of PANK?

I live in Pittsburgh. I’m a fiction and non-fiction writer, and I teach adjunct in Chatham University’s MFA and Food Studies programs. I work freelance as a writer and copy editor for (mainly) arts organizations, and I write a regular garden-to-table food column for Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine. I occasionally curate literary programs around town (previously, I was Artistic Director for the Gist Street Reading Series for 10 years). I cook and bake and garden, and I also play the ukulele.

4. How did you come to know PANK, and to be involved with it?

I’ve known and admired PANK through social media connections for some time and got to know PANK a bit more through Sheila Squillante.

5. What book – not a cookbook, that’s the easy way out – makes you hungriest when you read it? This doesn’t necessarily have to be about food; we’re talking appetites in general.

Wow. That’s a hard one. A book that was important to me in understanding how fiction and food can connect in amazing ways is Jim Crace’s The Devil’s Larder. It’s a book of fantastical flash fiction all focused on food – but in doing so it’s also focused on family and love and hate and lust too. So I’d credit The Devil’s Larder with whetting my appetite in many ways.

6. Of all the books you’ve read, what is one impossible food or drink that you’re dying to try? (This can either be ‘impossible’ as in ‘utterly fantastical’ or ‘impossibly impractical or difficult to prepare.’)

I would love to sit at John Singer’s table in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. He would silently serve me wine and gin and oranges that he’d pulled from his closet, and I would tell him my deepest secrets.

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Sherrie Flick is author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness and the flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting. She lives in Pittsburgh.

Simon Jacobs curates the Safety Pin Review, a wearable medium for work of fewer than 30 words. He may be found at simonajacobs.blogspot.com.

The Past Feeds on Itself: An Interview with J. Bradley

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by Simon Jacobs

J. Bradley is not an unfamiliar face at PANK – the longtime interviews editor before DeWitt and I came aboard, he made a point of interviewing every single writer and artist who appeared in the magazine’s pages – as an editor, writer, and performer, J. Bradley has been, consistently, an indefatigable, tireless, and rampantly productive member of the literary community. His latest book is an illustrated collection of poetry called The Bones of Us, and will be out in March from YesYes Books. J. was generous enough to reply to my prodding questions about the ghosts of his past, and provide us with a few vivid samples from The Bones of Us.

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Your most recent project, The Bones of Us, is what you’ve called a “graphic poetry collection,” with your words illustrated by Adam Scott Mazer. What was the genesis of this project – how did your work and Adam’s begin speaking to each other?

KMA Sullivan actually came up with the idea of turning my manuscript into a graphic poetry collection when she accepted it in late 2011. There were other books ahead of mine, which allowed us time to really make sure we found the right artist to illustrate the poems. In February of this year, KMA found Adam through Dolan Morgan, who stated interest in the project. From the moment we received the first samples in April, KMA and I knew we found the perfect artist for The Bones of Us. Adam constantly amazes me with each new illustration. His artistic vision complements and enhances the experience of processing the poems in ways I never thought possible.

Can you share an example of how Adam’s artistic vision has complemented yours? Have there been any cases where what he’s drawn up for your poem was wildly different from what you were imagining?

It’s hard for me to imagine what a poem might look like if it was illustrated. When I’m writing a poem, I’m more focused on the sound and the images created, so when I see Adam’s interpretation of my poems, I love that I usually don’t have a set expectation in mind of what any of the poems should or should not look like in a graphic medium. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room with Dolan Morgan

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Welcome to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work. Dolan Morgan’s story “Euclid’s Postulates” appeared in our April issue. Simon and Dolan talked about looking forwards, backwards, and down paths of no return. Dolan’s first book, That’s When the Knives Come Down, is forthcoming from Aforementioned Productions in August 2014.

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1. “Euclid’s Postulates” is about, among many other things, the tenuous tracks of our lives compared against mathematical principles, and probably inevitability. Bearing this in mind, can you respond to this hypnotizing gif?

Yes, please, let’s talk about this hypnotizing gif. Now, for those who haven’t clicked through, I’ll save you the trouble: the gif includes a rotating green cube. Innocent enough. Familiar shape, calming tone, gentle rhythm. Great. But soon we see a new shape, interrupting our tranquility. A blue pentagon obscures part of the cube, immutable and irrevocable. Why? We can’t say. Then another, and another: blue pentagons definitively overtaking the cube like so many feral umbrellas – jesus, when will it stop? – until the cube itself is entirely subsumed, devoured and disappeared, such that we see clearly now, with a terrifying certainty, that a dodecahedron can be – and in fact has been, right here and now, you can’t deny it, it’s really happening – formed around this simple cube, and that it in fact was always there, waiting to be realized and made manifest. And of course, there is the inverse realization too: that beneath every dodecahedron has always been lurking this cube, mocking in its simplicity. The past is undone in an instant, one life swapped for another. David Foster Wallace has written of this particular kind of horror, wherein a person realizes that what scares us is not only here, but that it has been here all along, that even when we felt calm, safe, and secure, we had no grounds to feel this way. Take for example my sister’s one-time fiancé, Doug, who struggled to find employment. Fortunately, he landed a seasonal job working at a Christmas tree farm owned by a family friend, Eric. Every morning, Doug and Eric would head out in a truck through the trees, getting things ready for the holidays. Now, Eric noticed something peculiar each time they embarked, something that just couldn’t be ignored or denied, try as he might. So, one morning in the truck, Eric said, “Doug, I know you’re pooping.” Turns out, every time they got going, Doug would defecate in his pants, right there with Eric next to him, in the truck. Eric had hoped it wasn’t true, but day in and day out, the facts presented themselves, the irrefutable pentagons slowly formed on the situation, and Eric had to accept and confront it: “I know you’re pooping,” he said. Doug denied it. “No, I know you’re pooping. You’re doing it right now.” Doug again denied it, mid-movement. Eric gave him an ultimatum. “If you don’t admit what’s happening, I’ll have to fire you. You don’t even necessarily have to stop, you just have to admit it. Meet me halfway.” Doug did not. And I can only imagine Doug’s mortification – all that time he thought to himself that he was getting away with it. That no one knew he was pooping. He had a job. He had freedom. The brisk, early mornings. A hard day’s work. But he was wrong, and was forced to understand he’d always been wrong. These are the facts. Or take Gene Hackman: in Coppola’s The Conversation, he plays a surveillance expert who faces a moral quandary after discovering that the people he’s surveilling are targeted for murder – by none other than his own paying client. The people he spies on are concerned, sure, but ultimately unaware of the imminent danger, and it would be a breach of professional integrity for Hackman’s character to confirm their suspicions. Still, his silence makes him complicit. He jeopardizes his otherwise renowned career by finally attempting to intervene. Yet, at the crucial moment, he learns quite viscerally that he misinterpreted the conversation: the people he spied on were not concerned about being murdered, but in fact were plotting a murder. Mr. Hackman’s character must accept not only the horror of this current moment and the finality it entails, but must also contend with each prior moment he misconstrued. He too is being surveilled, has been all along. Everything has been reversed. His life is in shambles. It was never a cube, but always a dodecahedron. One thing becomes another, and in fact was never anything else in the first place. I know you’re pooping. At any moment, a single fact or series of facts, can present itself, such that whole swaths of our lives are swept away, people/places/things, to be replaced by something alien, something new. What we took comfort in up to now was never us at all, and this new alien thing, this unfamiliar thing: that has always been us. There’s no denying it. That’s why I am scared of this gif and will never look at it again. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room with Jasmine Sawers

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Welcome to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work.

December interviews come courtesy of the mind of DeWitt Brinson.

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Read Jasmine Sawers story How to Commit Suicide in our March issue, then join us as we enter adolescence and howl at elderly hamsters.

1. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done but are not ashamed to admit?

Entering adolescence.

2. How do you deal with your destructive emotions?

I allow them to consume me until I am a howling abyss.

3. What did you do the last time you knew a friend was in an abusive relationship?

Proper friendship is at least partially defined by not spreading the other party’s intimate business in public spaces.

4. Why does being human mean that we will hurt someone, that we will hurt ourselves? Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Tanya Olson

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Welcome to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work.

December interviews come courtesy of the mind of DeWitt Brinson.

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Tanya Olson’s Ain’t I Pretty Fought to get into our March Issue. Now read as Tanya beats the shit out of anyone who’d try to put Ali in a Greek box, people who can’t not buy tigers, and those who choose not to see. All this before being eaten alive by a snake-shark.

1. Your bio says you have a book coming out, but that was months ago and YesYes Books’ website says Boyishly is out. Wanna plug it?

Heck yeah! Boyishly is beautiful to look at, unsettling to read. It is an American book that asks why we see what we see, as well as what is the cost of not seeing, not being seen. I also like that it is a book that is stern but forgiving to its readers.

2. Muhammad Ali is like Plato in that he’s known as a philosopher, writer, and fighter. Do you think he should be studied in school the same way the dialogues are?

It would seem a shame to lock Ali up in academia, behind school walls. Ali needs to be free to move between worlds- schools are not good about granting the folks they focus on other understandings, so poor Ali would end up like Plato, a one trick pony (Greek, philosopher, allegory of the cave guy) instead of the beautiful complex dude he is. We need to keep the loud Ali who talked and talked alive beside the liquid Ali who hit and danced beside the Ali who is locked inside his own body, who serves as some sort of cultural touchstone. I love that all those Alis live simultaneously in the poem. Once Ali dies, I’m afraid he’ll become only the guy who used to lip with Cosell or some other similar reduction. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Jennifer Pilch

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Welcome to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work.

December interviews come courtesy of the mind of DeWitt Brinson.

Two poems by Jennifer Pilch appeared in our March Issue. Read them won’t you? Especially, if you work for or own a circus, because Jennifer will infiltrate you, release all of your animals, and drop a mighty sequoia on your ass.

 

1.  What is the connection between sex and the definition of words? Why has it always been that way?

Words are our bodies; definitions are directions how we would like it done.

2.  What questions do you try to answer with your poetry or with these poems specifically?

What collides visually, emotionally, and historically?  There is no other present. Continue reading →