The Edmund Berrigan Unterview: *In Progress*

Q: I was surprised to find out you were born in Argentina.

A: I was as well, when I finally had some cognitive ability! But, Ted was doing the poet-in-residence thing at Universidad de Buenos Aires as part of an exchange in their Internacionales department. It only lasted a few months and we were back in Chicago. I remember a dream I had when I was maybe 5-ish involving Anselm & I with a jar of jelly beans, and snakes slithering around on the floor, but I don't think it's based on any actualy memories, except perhaps some discussion of jelly beans.

Q: Do you ever find your Argentinian past *creeping* in on you?

A: You mean like now? Well, let's just say 1974 was a bad time to be anywhere. Even the musicians who played on Blood on the Tracks got shafted in the end. Just ask Kevin Odegaard. I've also been having these dreams where my torso subsists separately from my body and phones me up to mock me about it. Can we talk about something else?

Q: I was watching "Don't Look Back" again the otherday and was thinking how Donovan must have been a big influence on you and your work.

A: When you listen to Atlantis, I mean, really... Great, great alliteration, lyrical structure, plus that kind of rockabilly style
(though acoustic) in open-D tuning (capoed to put it in E) that drives all the ideas in the lyric. There's that one line about the president being naked that seems to be relevant every other year, even if in a creepy pedaphile kind of way. I'm also very fond of Sunshine Superman, & Catch the Wind really captures that childish pain often revered in contemporary adult memoirs
and catholic-based murder mysteries. I actually once tried to get Donovans autograph at the Convention Center in Vegas, but he just kind of grunted at me before his bodyguard asked me to step aside. I still like his music, anyway, even if he won't give a drunk a little time. But in Don't Look Back, he really shouldn't have broken "that fucking glass," someone could've been hurt. Someone other than Bob Dylan.

Q: If you had the chance would you rather become a hobbit or a
switch-hitting 2nd baseman?

A:Tough call. Would I rather be a fat, drunken, high, impish country hobbit with dirty hairy feet, a haggish wife and 4 kids who simaltaneously existed as children in Gondor? Or would I rather be a closeted young courageous but useless hobbit haunted by visions of a giant flaming vagina that speaks sanskrit as I clutch at the again vagina shaped wound that will never
heal before I go off with some pointy hatted pedophile to the land of undead? Or I would I rather be a dumb jock doped out on steroids with an enlarged head, no scrotum, & a bunch of repressed billionaire republicans constantly slapping me on the ass as we listen to God Bless America day in and day out before our daily sports therapy sessions? Let me get back to you on
that one.

Q: Would you do a writer-in-residence gig in Atlantis
if King Namor invited you?

A: Is it King now? It hoght he was a *prince*. I guess he got a raise. 
Okay, first of all, are my students going to be squid and crustaceans?
I
don't know that I can teach aquatic life, though I suppose the whole
telepathy thing might work it out. Or am I thinking of Aquaman? Most of
all,
I need to know if Namor is gonna be walking around in that green
underwear
thingy all the time, because that just makes me uncomfortable.  & how
can I
teach poetry if I'm staring at those wings on his ankle all the time?
Of
course, the seascape would be dazzling, but the whole breathing
underwater
kind of thing is awkward for me, and I'm not sure people (or fish) will
hear
me well if I have a giant bowl around my head. Then again, a job's a
job. I
guess I could write on the blackboard with squid ink. But I wonder what
they
have down their in the way of narcotics.  & would I have to eat krill?
I
never liked seafood much anyway, but I feel like that would be a big
no-no
down there.