The Lisa Jarnot Unterview *IN PROGRESS*

Q: Which of the animals you have written about in poems would you most like to hang out with? Like hang out in their cage at the zoo with? Maybe free from the zoo?

A: I have a rule that I never write about an animal unless I've already hung out with it. It helps that I spent a lot of time in various parts of Africa when I was a kid. My parents were ANC sympathizers, so we were always taking these shipments of weird things like kitchen utensils and shower curtains into South Africa. I only found out recently about the ANC connection and about the real nature of the stuff we were carrying. But the point is that I've pretty much been hanging out with tapirs since before I could talk. And by the way, zoos are a bad scene for tapirs. Tapirs simply aren't zoo-loving creatures.

Q: Do you like animals better than poems? Better than people?

A: in order of importance:

1. animals that would be willing to eat dick cheney
2. poems by frank o'hara
3. people who want to give me money

Q: Wouldn't it be cool if there were zoos filled only with poets?

Actually there was a failed experiment at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. The Poets' Pen was alongside the Eskimo Village (where there were 9 eskimo families with their dogs and a bear). Most people remember that Rilke was briefly on display here (children were allowed admission to touch Rilke's hair for a nickel). But few people know that this is where Pablo Neruda and Louis Zukofsky were born-- two of the first poets to be born in captivity in the twentieth century.

Q: How often do you google yourself?

A: Really it depends on the weather. I like to get the googling in before breakfast or just before dinner. I think it's best done on an empty stomach. I'm going to wait until the new new google/cancer studies come out before I make any long term decisions about including it in my routine.


Q: What do cats teach us about poetry?

A: When I was a kid I had a cat named Stubby (he lost his tail in a farming accident). He was a wiz with anapests and dactyls and had, in the years before the accident, completed a translation of Vergil's Aeneid into Bhutanese. Stubby taught me a lot about poetry. I don't know about other cats and their teachings, but I assume that there are more like Stubby out there.

Q: I don't think I've ever read a poem about a cookie. Why is that?

A: You're just not looking in the right places. There are plenty of poems about cookies. Here's one of my favorites--

The Cookie-eater
by Edward Johnson (19th C.)

Oh! Cookies for me! Bright cookies for me!
And cake for the tremulous debauchee!
They sweeten the brow, they sweeten the brain,
They maketh the faint one strong again;
They come o'er the sense like a breeze from the sea
Oh! Cookies, sweet cookies for me!

When Evening has quitteth her sheltering yew,
Drowsily flying and weaving anew
Her dusky meshes o'er land and sea--
How gently, O sleep! fall thy poppies on me;
For I eat cookies, sweet, pure, and bright,
And my dreams are of heaven the livelong night;
So hurrah! for thee, Cookies! hurrah! hurrah!
Thou art silver and gold, thou art riband and star!
Hurrah! for sweet Cookies! hurrah! hurrah!

Q: If you had to paint all of the objects on earth one color, what color would that be? I don't know who could make you make such a choice or why you might be the one deciding, but what if the choice was yours?

A: Taupe.

Q: And if you could remove three poets from the canon?

A: Sylvia Plath, e.e. cummings, Philip Levine.

Q: And if you could shoot 3 poets out of a cannon?

A: Bill Luoma (in paisley), Stephen Rodefer (drunk), and Michael Palmer (just for fun).


Q: All men? No women would get to take that ride?


A: I was going to include Anne Waldman, but she did the cannon thing at Lollapalooza in '91.