Alex Lemon’s poetry collections include Hallelujah Blackout (forthcoming from Milkweed Editions), Mosquito (Tin House Books 2006) and the chapbook At Last Unfolding Congo (horse less press 2007). His memoir is also forthcoming from Scribner. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including AGNI, BOMB, Denver Quarterly Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Open City, Pleiades and Tin House. His translations (with Wang Ping) of a number of contemporary Chinese poets have appeared in Tin House, Artful Dodge, New American Writing and other journals. Among his awards are a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He co-edits LUNA: A Journal of Poetry and Translation with Ray Gonzalez, and he teaches writing at Macalester College in Minnesota. And he’s a badass. You’d better believe that.
Zebulon Huset: Do you have a favorite two-word color?
Alex Lemon: Butter-blue.
ZH: Do you have any tricks that you use when a particular word in a poem just doesn’t feel right?
AL: I open a new document, type the word, and then stare at it. If nothing happens, I stop writing and read. I like dictionaries, especially The Historical Dictionary of American Slang.
ZH: If you were stranded on a desert island what three movies (or books or CDs) would you bring (with the island’s magical cd/dvd player in mind, I guess)?
AL: It really depends on who I wake up as in the morning, so day to day, this would change. Today, let’s say I’d bring Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree and this afternoon, I’d like to watch Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Tomorrow, Nina Simone, CD Wright and Herzog’s Wheel of Time. Oh yeah, and then the newest Brother Ali album, The Undisputed Truth would appear with John Hammond’s Wicked Grin and the largest dictionary in the universe.
ZH: If an actor was to play you in a movie, who would you want it to be?
AL: Jesse Sawyer asked me this question in an interview for The Mac Weekly and I think I answered Seal, but I’d like to revise my answer, and say a group-cast of Daniel Day Lewis, Forrest Whitaker and Ben Kingsley.
ZH: Do you have any tips for writers just beginning to submit their work for publication?
AL: Read the journals you want to submit to, and always think about your writing’s relationship to the many aesthetics that are out there. Don’t get demoralized if your work is rejected—there are so so many good writers and so few places to publish. Lots of good work doesn’t get accepted (for numerous reasons). It doesn’t always mean that your work is not good because an editor declines it. That idea of worth is a tricky thing for writers; but in a pure way, it would be ideal (and maybe impossible) to judge your writing by an internal barometer and not an editor’s thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
ZH: If you could only ever read the books of one author again, who would it be?
AL: Shakespeare or Funk & Wagnalls.
ZH: Do you have any guilty pleasure books/movies?
AL: I like Richard Price books a lot, but I’m not sure that counts. I watch a ton of baseball.
ZH: What was the last book (or poem) that you’ve absolutely loved?
AL: I loved the Matt Donovan poems in AGNI 67. Adam Clay’s new poems are knock-outs.
ZH: Have you found the process of writing a memoir very different from writing poetry and short fiction?
AL: Yes. It’s been very, very hard. Much more challenging than I had first thought. I had to really work at peeling the just-right amount lyrical veneer away from my early drafts of prose. My M.O. can be abstract and imagistic and lyrical and sometimes that sacrifices narrative and clarity. I’ve had to acknowledge my tendencies and learn how to work with and against them. I feel fortunate to have an amazing and helpful editor. But it’s been a harrowing and wonderful thing.
ZH: Do you have any advice for students applying to the writing MFA program at the University of Minnesota, or elsewhere?
AL: Before you apply to a MFA program make sure it’s what you really want to do. It’s a terrific thing if one takes advantage of it. Apply to the programs where you think you’ll be able to learn and read and write. There are so many variables to the MFA experience, all of which are clouded by expectations, and I was lucky. The U of MN was ideal for me.
ZH: Young-poets?
AL: I had the pleasure of reading at the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival this spring, and while I was there I got to listen, and then read a lot of student work. That place is packed with wonderful poets.