The Aviary: I’ve noticed that you are pretty attached to your iPad. Do you read books on that? Or do you own a Kindle or “kindling” as I call them?
(Laughter). I don’t own a Kindle. I do have an iPad, and I do have a few books on there, but only because I travel so much. I do have an amazing book collection, in defense of the poet who has an iPad.
The Aviary: This summer you spent time in the Dabaab, a camp of almost 400,000 refugees, many of them Somalians exiled by war or famine, what has been quoted as “the most desperate place on earth.” Did you ever feel like, “What am doing here, teaching poetry?”
In fact, much of the opening sequence of my new poems from the Daabab Suite has to do with that very subjectivity of a) here are these people who are facing a kind of rupture of their lives that I’ll never have to face and yet here I am feeding off of their suffering to some extent. This notion of bearing witness is not as fluid as it may seem. I think one of the psychological transitions is moving beyond a sense of guilt and privilege and allowing oneself to simply be an artist, and maybe even owning it. Maybe that’s part of the strategy of what I’m writing, owning the fact that these complicated feelings are worthy of artistic expression, as much as the very hard act of either writing persona poems in their voice or imagining their lives and language that goes beyond the journalistic. That’s a very difficult project. But I think one of the phases is what you said, thinking “What am I doing here?” So I think once you move past that it then becomes an aesthetic project, one of closing the gap between those human beings and your own self.
The Aviary: You worked with the 10-line form in your last book, Holding Company. Are you still working with constraints in your writing?
I am actually. These poems about Dadaab are kind of building off of what I’ve learned about writing the urban renewal poems. Loose, slant, off-rhymes. Hexameter, 12 syllables, 6 beats per line, which is very French. But instead of the subject matter being myself, it is other people’s lives.
The Aviary: You taught a class on “Rap as Poetry” at University of Vermont, I’m interested to know what was on that reading/listening list.
Yale Anthology of Rap Lyrics.
Even though it is populist poetry, we all know that it has the same relationship to language and metaphor, cadence and rhythm that one would find in Yeats or Eliot; they could also find that in Jay-Z and Kurtis Blow.
The Aviary: What rappers did you listen to, for the class?
Jay-Z, Immortal Technique, Wu-Tang Clan. We looked at the lyrics of Salt n’ Pepa and talked about construction of gender and modernist attitudes towards sexuality. The Rap as text, I started to think about its use in the classroom after I heard a wonderful lecture by the critic Christopher Ricks about Bob Dylan’s ballads as poetry. Then I started to think about De La Soul’s ballads. Slick Rick and many other Hip Hop artists started to use the ballad form to tell stories, often tragic stories about the neigbourhood.
The Aviary: In 2007, you wrote in an stunning article for APR that “many white poets do not have black friends.” Do you still believe that?
I guess some part of me was was still aiming at a sense of provocation (laughter). But yeah, I still believe that cross cultural conversations are a rarity.
The Aviary: What are you reading right now? On your iPad?
Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. And my friend Touré wrote a book about race in America (Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?). Evangeline by Longfellow, which is amazing.
The Aviary: And actual books?
The Muse as Music, by Meta DuEwa Jones, an Anthology of Russian Poetry that my friend Vera Pavlova recommended. I think it’s essential for Americans to have a strong sense of know what’s going on globally in poetry. And I think she is a wonderful representative of the continuation of great Russian poetry.
The Aviary: What natural talent would you like to be gifted with?
Ooooh. The jauntiness…(laughter)..the jauntiness…
The Aviary: Yes?
…of an actor. I wish my poetry could take on voices, historical voices of say someone like Napoleon. I could be like the black Napoleon of the 21st century! I would love to be a minister in the Great Awakening, a preacher. But I’m not an actor. I think every poet has to have some ability to be performative and to step out of ourselves. I think we need that when we write. Part of the joy of writing is being mired in that ecstatic moment of creation. Also it feels like we are inhabiting some other part of ourselves. Some part of us is already engaged in that act of inhabiting another self. But I wish I could do it with greater voracity.
The Aviary: If you could chose one place to live forever, where would it be?
Near water.
As much as I love the Northeast…I was born in Philly and live in Vermont. But if I could be on the beach where it was warm most of the time, it would feed my soul.
The Aviary: What’s your current state of mind?
Bliss. No, almost. Almost bliss.
MAJOR JACKSON is the author of three collections of poetry: Holding Company (2010, Norton); Hoops (2006, Norton); and Leaving Saturn (2002, University of Georgia Press). He has published poems and essays in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and in Best American Poetry (2004, 2011). He is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress.
Jackson has served as a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Antioch University, a creative arts fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence at Baruch College. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Xavier University of Louisiana and the University of Massachusetts - Lowell as the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence. He is a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars. Major Jackson lives in South Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.
(photo credit: Erin Patrice O'Brien)
(Laughter). I don’t own a Kindle. I do have an iPad, and I do have a few books on there, but only because I travel so much. I do have an amazing book collection, in defense of the poet who has an iPad.
The Aviary: This summer you spent time in the Dabaab, a camp of almost 400,000 refugees, many of them Somalians exiled by war or famine, what has been quoted as “the most desperate place on earth.” Did you ever feel like, “What am doing here, teaching poetry?”
In fact, much of the opening sequence of my new poems from the Daabab Suite has to do with that very subjectivity of a) here are these people who are facing a kind of rupture of their lives that I’ll never have to face and yet here I am feeding off of their suffering to some extent. This notion of bearing witness is not as fluid as it may seem. I think one of the psychological transitions is moving beyond a sense of guilt and privilege and allowing oneself to simply be an artist, and maybe even owning it. Maybe that’s part of the strategy of what I’m writing, owning the fact that these complicated feelings are worthy of artistic expression, as much as the very hard act of either writing persona poems in their voice or imagining their lives and language that goes beyond the journalistic. That’s a very difficult project. But I think one of the phases is what you said, thinking “What am I doing here?” So I think once you move past that it then becomes an aesthetic project, one of closing the gap between those human beings and your own self.
The Aviary: You worked with the 10-line form in your last book, Holding Company. Are you still working with constraints in your writing?
I am actually. These poems about Dadaab are kind of building off of what I’ve learned about writing the urban renewal poems. Loose, slant, off-rhymes. Hexameter, 12 syllables, 6 beats per line, which is very French. But instead of the subject matter being myself, it is other people’s lives.
The Aviary: You taught a class on “Rap as Poetry” at University of Vermont, I’m interested to know what was on that reading/listening list.
Yale Anthology of Rap Lyrics.
Even though it is populist poetry, we all know that it has the same relationship to language and metaphor, cadence and rhythm that one would find in Yeats or Eliot; they could also find that in Jay-Z and Kurtis Blow.
The Aviary: What rappers did you listen to, for the class?
Jay-Z, Immortal Technique, Wu-Tang Clan. We looked at the lyrics of Salt n’ Pepa and talked about construction of gender and modernist attitudes towards sexuality. The Rap as text, I started to think about its use in the classroom after I heard a wonderful lecture by the critic Christopher Ricks about Bob Dylan’s ballads as poetry. Then I started to think about De La Soul’s ballads. Slick Rick and many other Hip Hop artists started to use the ballad form to tell stories, often tragic stories about the neigbourhood.
The Aviary: In 2007, you wrote in an stunning article for APR that “many white poets do not have black friends.” Do you still believe that?
I guess some part of me was was still aiming at a sense of provocation (laughter). But yeah, I still believe that cross cultural conversations are a rarity.
The Aviary: What are you reading right now? On your iPad?
Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. And my friend Touré wrote a book about race in America (Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?). Evangeline by Longfellow, which is amazing.
The Aviary: And actual books?
The Muse as Music, by Meta DuEwa Jones, an Anthology of Russian Poetry that my friend Vera Pavlova recommended. I think it’s essential for Americans to have a strong sense of know what’s going on globally in poetry. And I think she is a wonderful representative of the continuation of great Russian poetry.
The Aviary: What natural talent would you like to be gifted with?
Ooooh. The jauntiness…(laughter)..the jauntiness…
The Aviary: Yes?
…of an actor. I wish my poetry could take on voices, historical voices of say someone like Napoleon. I could be like the black Napoleon of the 21st century! I would love to be a minister in the Great Awakening, a preacher. But I’m not an actor. I think every poet has to have some ability to be performative and to step out of ourselves. I think we need that when we write. Part of the joy of writing is being mired in that ecstatic moment of creation. Also it feels like we are inhabiting some other part of ourselves. Some part of us is already engaged in that act of inhabiting another self. But I wish I could do it with greater voracity.
The Aviary: If you could chose one place to live forever, where would it be?
Near water.
As much as I love the Northeast…I was born in Philly and live in Vermont. But if I could be on the beach where it was warm most of the time, it would feed my soul.
The Aviary: What’s your current state of mind?
Bliss. No, almost. Almost bliss.
MAJOR JACKSON is the author of three collections of poetry: Holding Company (2010, Norton); Hoops (2006, Norton); and Leaving Saturn (2002, University of Georgia Press). He has published poems and essays in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and in Best American Poetry (2004, 2011). He is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress.
Jackson has served as a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Antioch University, a creative arts fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence at Baruch College. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Xavier University of Louisiana and the University of Massachusetts - Lowell as the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence. He is a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars. Major Jackson lives in South Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.
(photo credit: Erin Patrice O'Brien)
