William Thompson is Poetry Editor of Alabama Literary Review.
1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?
Kay Ryan, Concisionist.
2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?
The Dynasts, by Thomas Hardy. (That would force it into print so I could finally get a copy.)
3. What other poetry-related blog or website should I check out?
Contemporary Poetry Review (but you already knew about that one).
4. Who is the most exciting young/new poet I’ve never heard of, but whose work I ought to find and read?
Armine Iknadossian
5. What’s the funniest poem you’ve read lately? What was the last poem that made you cry?
Funniest (excerpt from Auden):
Lifted off the potty
Infants from their mothers
Hear their first impartial
Words of worldly praise.
Hence to start the morning
With a satisfactory
Dump is a good omen
All our adult days.
Made me cry:
Something by Ashbery in The New Yorker. (Not tears of joy.)
6.
William or Dorothy?
Dorothy (Parker).
Robert or Elizabeth Barrett?
Robert.
Moore or Bishop?
Moore, far and away.
Dunbar or Cullen?
Cullen.
“Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully” or “No ideas but in things”?
"Things"? Isn't it "thongs"?
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas or Tender Buttons?
Toklas, Tender Buttons being unreadable.
7. Robert Lowell wrote a poem called “Falling Asleep Over the Aeneid.” What supposedly immortal poem puts you to sleep?
"In a Station of the Metro"
8. Even for poetry books, the contract has a provision for movie rights. What poetry book should they make into a movie? Who should direct it, and why? Who should star in it?
The Alphabet, by Ron Silliman. Directed by James Camaron. Starring Kevin Costner.
9. What lines from a poem you first read years ago still haunt you now?
And by Christ's blood are men made free
Though in close shrouds their bodies lie
Though earth has rolled beneath her weight
The bones that cannot bear the light
10. What poem do you love, love, love, but don’t understand?
"Bantams in Pine Woods"
11. If the official organ of the AWP were not the Chronicle but were the Enquirer, what would some of the headlines be?
Daniel Tobin Love Child of James Merrill and Marilyn Hacker!
12. If you were making a scandal rag for poetry in the grocery store checkout stands, what fictitious poetry love triangle would you make up to outsell that tired Hollywood story of Angelina and Brad and Jen?
Jorie Graham, Jorie Graham, and Jorie Graham.
13. This is the Best American Poetry blog. What’s the best non-American poetry you’ve read lately?
Rilke, "Going Blind."
14. We read poems in journals and books, we hear them in readings and on audio files. Sometimes we get them in unusual ways: on buses or in subway cars. How would you like to encounter your next poem?
On musket wadding.
15. What poem would you like to hear the main character bust out singing in a Bollywood film? What would be the name of the movie? What would be the scene in which it was sung?
Character: The Young Man Carbuncular.
Movie: Pop Goes the Weasel.
Scene: At the Dermatologist's.
16. Do you have a (clean) joke involving poetry you’d like to share?
Rosie fingered Dawn.
17. Tell the truth: is it a poetry book you keep in the john, or some other genre (john-re)?
The New Criterion.
18. Can you name every teacher you had in elementary school? Did any of them make you memorize a poem? What poem(s)?
Yes.
Annabelle Lee.
19. If you got to choose the next U.S. Poet Laureate, who (excluding of course the obvious candidates, you and me) would it be?
David Antin, for he could filibuster.
Of former U.S. Poet Laureates, who did such a great job that he/she should get a second term?
It's a job?
Next election cycle, what poet should run for President? Why her or him?
William Logan. He's a nice man.
20. Insert your own question here.
Why is there something rather than nothing?