Writers Interviewed. The Tallahatchee Button Fetish.

Interviews with two writers, I’ve mentioned recently here – Dorianne Laux and Charles Baxter – are available at Eastern Washington’s literary mag, Willow Springs:

http://willowsprings.ewu.edu/interviews.php

Other Banjo-respected writers interviewed there are Rick Bass, Aimee Bender, Stuart Dybek, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Gerald Stern. Each of them has wowed me at least a couple of times, though for truth in advertising, I should mention that I haven’t yet read these interviews.

Speaking of celebrities (outside the poetry world, where appearance should be irrelevant), why have male celebs developed the custom of buttoning their jackets when they stand, unbuttoning when they sit?

I caught a moment of the nuclear arms summit on TV this morning, and as President Obama rose for a moment of silence honoring Poland’s tragedy, he buttoned his jacket. So did his female counterpart from Argentina.

How many times have I puzzled over this as I watched Letterman or Leno and their guests?

What is so outrageous about an unbuttoned jacket on a standing man or a buttoned jacket on a sitting man? (Well, the latter might be an issue of tightness and popped buttons, an epic embarrassment, to be sure). Aren’t there enough dumb behaviors out there without this button fetish?

I’ve lost plenty of sleep over this, and my patience is wearing thin. Everything has a reason. A universe without reasons is a piss-poor universe, and I want some answers. I don’t want obscene wealth, just some minor league info—nothing that would shock or depress me, please, just some crumbs on quirky subjects like this. If you have nothing to offer, why are you using my oxygen?

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Dorianne Laux's "Democracy": Urban Tubes of Humans

Democracy by Dorianne Laux : The
Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.










Panoramic works like Dorianne Laux’s “Democracy” always raise at least one question for me: does each item in the rather long series of items (including characters) carry its weight? Is each image, action, and detail necessary? What would happen to the poem’s meaning, texture, rhythm(s) if this or that item were deleted?

In terms of theme, I think too of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and in turn, contemporary writer Charles Baxter’s magnificent “A Late Sunday Afternoon by the Huron” in his collection of stories, Through the Safety Net (mid-1980s).

Also, as is the case with many contemporary poems, long or short, a question here is why Laux breaks lines and stanzas where she does?

Am I the only one who hears “Democracy” as a companion poem to Sharon Olds’ “On the Subway” (March 4, March 9 here at Banjo)? There are important differences, but aren’t the similarities striking—the centrality of a vehicle of public transportation, of course, but also more?

Given the title, the reference to Republicans, and the poem’s overall content, is there any way to avoid calling this a political poem, whatever it might be in addition to that?

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