DeWitt Brinson

The Lightning Room With Michelle Bailat-Jones

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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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Grab a couple of ridiculous flashlights and journey into the scars of the Earth and the cut of humanity with Michelle Bailat-Jones’ “Mining” from our infamous March issue; then seek the danger below, should you dare.

1. Did you start writing “Mining” with a rhythm in mind or did you begin with a story and find the rhythm after? or some other way?

“Mining” came about because I’ve been writing a novel about a woman who discovers a naturally-occurring nuclear reactor. There is a lot of science in that manuscript and I found myself getting really bogged down in re-reading all these old radiation protection handbooks and articles I’d translated for my day job. I really needed to get away from the facts of that story and all that radiation physics and find the music of the character somehow. So I wanted to write something that was very image and rhythm based-and also something that was baldly emotional. I wanted to focus on what these people were feeling more than what they were thinking. So yes, in that sense, Mining was about rhythm (and image) first and then I found its (tiny) story when that got moving along.

2. Have you ever been in a mine? I’ve been in caves but not mines, is there a difference in feeling between the man-carved and nature hollowed rock? Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Sara Backer

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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.

***

I direct you to Three Poems by Sara Backer in our March issue. Now join us, won’t you? As we discuss the new toll system for traveling to poets, Buddha bunnies, and the dark stairwell we drink from.

1. These poems made me hungry. How do you see the intersection of poetry and food?

Obviously, both are basic necessities. Beyond that, food is the vehicle of the most tangible imagery there is. Is that cheating? (p.s. I do make a fabulous devil’s food cake from scratch.)

2. After digesting Crocodiles in Real Life, what poem by Vallejo should be ingested?

To me, Vallejo is a city in California you drive through on I-80 and pay toll to cross the Carquinez Bridge from which you can see the lighted Domino sign fill up with neon sugar. (I’ll mail back my graduate degree tomorrow.) But since that’s your only question about Crocodiles in Real Life, I’ll ramble. The story line is totally factual; I experienced this in 1981with substantial apprehension and relief. I didn’t write about it until decades later when I perceived a political metaphor. I live in New Hampshire, a State that has been targeted by the Free Stater movement that is blatantly out to destroy our government in the vague name of “freedom” (i.e. freedom from democracy, freedom from social responsibility).  Most people regard the Free Staters as harmless whackos, but the movement is funded by billionaires. It’s naive and dangerous to think they are safely contained. Little bits of them add up to one big predator, a predator who has no qualms about eating us alive.  Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Christopher Perez

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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.

Read Christopher Perez’s Poems from “The Story of the Pocho” in our March issue, then read about why he empties drunk sound into a family of languages beverage to console the useless patrons of earth and Pepsi Cola.

1. What do you hear when you hear Spanish and English spoken together?

I hear aggressiveness among the languages, heterogeneity not only spurted from the voice but constructed as a self. Code-switching offers possibilities for thinking twice as fast or twice as slow or at least for presenting two selves, one doubled over the other. In my hometown and its surrounding area, which is the Rio Grande Valley, I hear both languages interchangeably and for me this develops my sense of placefulness even if ultimately I feel errant and more natural without everything heavy that pretends to house itself in the heart. I think Spanish is the most beautiful of the imposed languages and then English second. In Ramallah a Chilean-Palestinian friend and I code-switch between these languages and we are like secrets when walking down busy streets though we both ask ourselves why we can’t speak Arabic. People often think I’m Arab here because of the way I look. When I’m at a checkpoint and a soldier asks, I respond in English knowing I’m entering an international world that all but allows for errantry. How nice it would be to interject in Spanish and become amorphous and opaque or to even one day speak Arabic and fully assume the typified Other in this context. Continue reading →