Nin Andrews Interviews Nicole Santalucia and Asks Her the Kinds of Questions Nin Can Never Answer
Why are you a poet?
NS: Who is a poet? Well, why are you a poet? Look, my defense mechanisms are surfacing by trying to answer such a complicated, yet simple question with questions. No, really, I think . . .
I might have turned into a poet the day I pulled my neighbors' pants down and ran home crying to my mom. I saw all the answers and all the questions that I ever wanted to ask that day, when I was 8 years old, standing in the backyard on David Drive in Johnson City, NY. We were both 8, well, she might have been 9, and I was angry with my neighbor, Stacey G., for not giving me attention, for not watching me while I rode her bike all by myself. So, I think, that I might have been made into a poet that very day, that hot summer day in July, as I stood next to a lonely girl with her pants around her ankles. I mean, I think I caused her some embarrassment, or maybe even emotional trauma, but all I was trying to do was get some attention without knowing the difference between negative and positive attention. Maybe I am a poet because I am sorry and don't feel that sorry is ever good enough. Maybe, I write poems as a way to make amends to the world and to Stacey G. That's how poets are made, right? They turn into themselves and look out at the world at the same time; they communicate everything they know. I might even be a poet because I don't know how not to be a poet.
Or, what if I'm not a poet at all and I'm something else, something that has nothing to do with wanting to be anything other than myself. I don't want to be a bitch about being a poet, but the poet part of me and the bitch part of me sometimes find a way to sing along together, or they don't. Either way there is poetry involved.
Do you have a working title for your first book? Your true loves? Your life?
NS: Bitches Falling From The Sky. That is my answer for all three questions.
Do you have a lucky number?
NS: Two, and everything that makes the number two. That could be you plus me equals two. One poem plus one poem equals two. Three poems minus one poem equals two. Morning plus night equals one morning and one night and that is two of something.
Do you see ghosts?
NS: I see shadows almost every day. Is that the same thing?
In his famous poem, “The Archaic Torse of Apollo,” Rilke said you must change your life. Please make a list of how you plan to do this.
NS: I plan to change everything I cannot see nor touch by closing my eyes really tight and turning to stone. I also plan to list everything I will not buy at the grocery store: cereal, donuts, chips, soda, candy, frozen sausage, pre-cooked bacon in a package, bags of sauerkraut, and much more. I will never purchase these items, ever. I will smile at a stranger and pretend he is someone else, someone who I always wanted to get to know but never had the chance to meet. I will smile at this stranger and know that I have made the choice to keep my comments to myself.
If you could choose between dinner with Mahatma Ghandi, Bob Dylan, and Walt Whitman, who would you pick? And where would you dine?
NS: I think all three of these men have already had a dirty water dog, you know, the hot dogs from the pushcarts on the streets of New York City. So, I might have to pass on this question. Wait, I guess if I really had to choose it would be Walt. We'd go to one of my favorite restaurants in the west village, Moustache, because at night the street lamp flickers in the window and we wouldn't have to talk, we'd just sit together and be homos.
Were you a teacher's pet? A goody two shoes? Or a bad egg?
NS: I was a lucky son of a bitch.
Is God a bitch?
NS: Well, my god is a bitch. I don't know about yours, but mine, yes, definitely a bitch. If my god was not a bitch I wouldn't ever be able to fall in love with bitches.
Do you eat grits?
NS: I'm an Italian.