It is Fourth of July weekend, and until a few days earlier, we had forgotten that for coastal towns this is prime time for tourism. Despite the busy sidewalks and trouble finding parking, things in Port Townsend, Washington, feel as slow as muggy summer heat, though it should be kept in mind that the hub of the small harbor town only consists of a few blocks of small shops, most of which seem to sell antiques, and a handful of local cafes and restaurants. Also, the high is 64 degrees, and the humidity is nearly non-existent. It is a much-needed break from the busy days and atypically warm temperatures we left eight hours away in eastern Washington. We make plans to run away and relocate here. 

About ten minutes from this hub, in a wooded residential area, we drive up a gravel road to a house with a red tin roof. Standing in the driveway is a long-haired and smiling Gary Lemons. As we walk into the backyard, Gary explains the clear-cutting done to expand his property’s usable area. The space is large with what appears to be a garden and two studios: one for Gary and one for his wife, the sculptor Nöle Giulini. 

We slip off our shoes as we step inside Gary’s studio. Its wooden exterior creates a cozy, cabin-like feel. The room holds a shelf, a couch, two desks (one scroll top, the other appearing to be the main workspace), as well as a wall of musical instruments and equipment. There is also an ergonomic exercise ball chair. Gary sits there. We take the couch.

Once seated, we begin to relax and sip the coffee Gary has made. The three of us chat before the formal interview takes place, and conversation is easy. Gary is personable and cheery, wanting to know nearly as much about us and our writing as we want to know about him and the multiple collections he has published. It is clear from this brief exchange that not only is Gary Lemons a poet, but that he is also a champion for the arts and for those that create art, as well. 

Mary Leauna Christensen

How does place, be that a post-apocalyptic world, 1969 Mexico, the South, or even right here in Port Townsend, Washington, impact your writing?

Gary Lemons

Place is where we live. It’s a foundation for movement. It’s ground. Consequently, it’s sacred and needs to be treated that way. So regardless of which side of the border you’re on, or which country you’re in, or which flag you operate under, or how old you are, or how young you are, which sex you are, all of those things are places that we occupy. And it’s our job to both protect them and to understand them and to use them, I think, as a source, as a writer, filtered through our training for the work that we do. In other words, Dia de los Muertos, for instance, is a book I wrote remembering my experiences in Mexico, particularly. I couldn’t have written that book about Canada. I had to be in that place. A lot of my work is like that. It comes out of a place. And like I said, place doesn’t mean a country is involved. It could be an emotional place or an intellectual place or a spiritual place.

Cassandra J. Bruner

While we're talking about how occupying these places is the role of the writer, I’m remembering the preface for Dia de los Muertos, where you wrote about how part of your experience is coming to this understanding that there are no borders between things, be they temporal or physical. What do you think the social or, if we’re going to put the dirty word on it, the political role of the writer might be, if you think there is one?

Lemons

They say all politics is local, and all of my work is, sort of accidentally, political. Okay, politics to me is about control, and writing is about giving up control. So there’s a natural tension between them, in my perspective. And that’s where the art is! Living in the place that you’re in, with the discomfort that comes from being there. Because the joys and the comfort are easily integrated, the discomfort, the reprehensible actions we see in the political arena, are difficult to integrate. It’s easy to become strident about it, and then your writing gets   mono-maniacal. You get so focused on rising up against something that you forget that there is also a celebration. So the idea that there are essentially no borders between things is a step in that direction, and maybe even for me personally, beyond it. Because I am a yogi, and as a yogi, we practice the concept of oneness between all things, not just all humans, but all things, all animals, plants, and creatures—it’s the idea that everything is a window through which infinity is looking. I’m the current local view of infinity looking at you, and you're infinity looking back at me. We’re all the same source manifesting in dual form. So if you think about it that way, then borders are arbitrary. There’s really no big picture distinction. Of course, they’re local differences. But if I look at you and I see the truth in you, see that you are the same as me expressed differently, then that border dissolves. If I hold onto the fact that you’re different than I am—you’re a different nationality, a different gender, a different age—if I hold onto those apparent local differences, then I draw that border even deeper. I don’t want to do that. It’s a non-existent border in my mind.

Bruner

In the Snake sequence and Dia De Los Muertos, a lot of your poetry is also driven by persona and voice. First off, what draws you to persona poetry, and similarly what sort of boons and drawbacks do you find in that form?

Lemons

If you’re referring to—and I think you are—to the fact that Snake speaks in all kinds of dialects, speaks as a man and a woman, it’s again going back to this idea that if you want to call ultimate or infinite consciousness God, if you want to use that word—and I’m uncomfortable with it because people attach a different religion to it—if you’re just talking about infinite universal consciousness, it has no gender. We apply gender to it. Like people talk of goddesses or gods. And sure, in a local sense, just like my dog is a dog or my tree is a tree, there are definitions. But in the bigger awareness those definitions disappear, so I wanted Snake to speak from that place. I wanted Snake to use that voice, not the voice of somebody individuated into a form, but the voice of formlessness, which would then allow Snake to speak as a man or woman, or a child, or a tree, or a god, or as any of these apparently distinct forms that we insist exist. Does that make sense?

The coolest thing that happened to me with Snake is that Snake evolved without my influence. Snake just came into being at a poem in Bristol Bay and then took over my life—and still has—for about seven years. Snake is a quartet. The third book comes out next year and the fourth book a couple of years later, and the quartet will be done. But Snake started out speaking mostly in a male voice. That again was channeled almost. I was just letting the character say what it wanted to say. Then all of a sudden, as Snake got more real to me, she began to speak like a woman. And I thought, “Wow, this is amazing!” I had never written as a woman, but I realized to do that, I then had to be aware that the voice was coming from me, that it was not some external voice being given to me, but that this was something in me that had been long oppressed, or cycled, or silenced. That was so cool! It was like an inner revolution to write the work. 

Christensen

There are some stylistic differences between Snake and Second Wind, the second book in the quartet. You move away from this post-apocalyptic world. The poems tend to be shorter and appear to be written less in Snake’s specific  dialects. What compelled this difference between the first and second book?

Lemons

I started to write the second book as if I had some ability to impose myself on the book. So I tried to write it in the same manner that I wrote the first book. But the second book didn’t want to be written that way, and it became apparent to me through meditation and the process I use to get in touch with the poetry that’s there. The process began to reveal to me that “Okay, this was not just one book, but four books.” The first book was post-apocalyptic with sort of Armageddon things happening, and it was driven by the headlines we see all the time. The planet is in peril, and people are refusing to see that it's our fault. It’s not raccoons that are doing it. It’s humanity. So the first book very strongly wanted to reinforce that opening in the quartet. In Second Wind, I was led to write about how everything we do ripples out from us, whether it’s an imaginary event, whether it’s mythologies we create, or lies we tell, or secrets we share. Whatever we do is real in the big awareness. There’s nowhere for it to go. It’s all happening. So I wanted historical events that are sort of dismissed as no longer relevant. I wanted the sort of damages that we do to each other verbally to have a place in the second book. The second book is about that; it is recognizing that everything we do has a voice and that everything that has a voice is real. It’s not like “Oh, we don’t have to do that, even though they said this was going to happen. It’s just their opinion.” The opinion is real. Somewhere in space it coalesces into form. This is an infinite reality we live in. And within infinity nothing is impossible, everything can occur and will likely occur. That means all of the fables that are entertaining are actually real. They have substance somewhere. We have a tendency to believe that the things that ripple out from us will not come into being, but they do. It makes it very important to pay attention not just to what we make but to what we say, because when we say it we make it. So there’s much more dialect. There’s much more of the apocalyptic theme because it’s starting to bring together these fragments from the first two books.     

Bruner

Since you mentioned that, with the first book, headlines fed into the post-apocalyptic landscape that was central to Snake, do you think that the return to that scene is in part due to what is occurring politically right now?

Lemons

Absolutely. Frighteningly so, it’s almost as if someone put it into hyper-drive. It’s happening right in front of us. If I were your age—I’m assuming you all are in your twenties—I’d be scared to death. Because there’s not a lot of room for error. When I was younger, everything was more accessible and available. If I quit a job, the next day I could find another job and it would pay the same or better. I never had to worry about that. I got an education and could do what I wanted. I went to Alaska to fish, but I could have gone into teaching. But now it’s narrow, and I would be very scared to look too far astray from a path that would benefit me and my family. So yes, it’s happening right now. It’s happening at an accelerated rate. 

Christensen

Before the interview we were talking about our Native background, and I believe I read somewhere that you lived for a while on an Assiniboine reservation in Montana—

Lemons

I did, in Poplar, Montana, for almost five years.

Christensen

In Snake, I couldn’t help but make connections to Native lore, and you have one poem where Snake goes behind Earth’s back to create mankind. That reminded me of the coyote trickster figure, which is pretty well known. Do you think Native lore or any other lore inspires your work? And if so, how?

Lemons

Yeah, definitely. The time I spent on the Assiniboine reservation was formative for me. It was where I actually started to locate my own voice and my own identity, if you will, outside of the mainstream person I had been born into. All of the different stories, ceremonies, and practices, and all of the things that came with being invited into that life, formed Snake. Snake is a trickster, no question. What I came up with—and I don’t know if this is true—but what I’m currently suspicious of is that all of these lores across cultures, indigenous cultures particularly, share a common route. For instance, in yoga, there’s a lot of talk about Shiva the Destroyer and Ganesea the Lord of Obstacles. They’re very similar to the Assiniboine figures that inhabit their stories. So as I was saying, there is something common to all of us that we invent or discover, archetypes that keep us sane and explain the unexplainable, the mysteries we’ve been dunked into. So indigenous people created their own from the world around them. Snake finds that more important in terms of poetry. It may be less important in terms of building a car, but to create a poem, there are elements of the world: fire, water, etc. 

Christensen

Do you think you’re using parts of the oral tradition in your writing?

Lemons

Yeah, absolutely. Two things about that. One, I think Snake in the Christian religion is really misunderstood. Snake was a really generous entity to feed these naked humans. Instead, he was accused of tempting them and leading them astray when all Snake was trying to do was give them something to eat.  [laughs] Misunderstanding is at the root of all the disdain and unlike for Snake, I think. But as far as the oral tradition goes, poetry emanates from it. That is really important to me, how a poem sounds when it’s read. I’m editing Spell right now, which is my new book, and it’s at 130 pages, but I make sure every time I edit it that I read it out loud. I can’t just edit it by looking at the page. There’s a music to the speech. What makes poetry so spectacular is that it is music put to words. Not lyrics to music, but music itself bubbling up into language. I love the oral tradition, and I wish I was one of these poets that can read their work without looking at a paper. I watch some of these poets, particularly Slam poets, and they can just stand up there and read mentally or expository. I’m stunned by that; it’s amazing and beautiful. I wish I could do that.

Bruner

There’s this false dichotomy between poetry on the page and poetry in the air. This can be seen as conflict between poets from academia and Slam poets. What are your thoughts on that divide?

Lemons

That’s a cool question and insight. My background is academic. I went to Bread Loaf two years, when I was 18 and 19. I was fortunate enough, and I do say fortunate enough, to work with some of the really major teachers of my generation. I worked with Diane Wakoski, Marvin Bell, Norman Dubie, John Berryman, Richard Hugo, William Stafford, William Meredith, and kind of by proxy Kenneth Rexroth and Denise Levertov. They were living and available. It was just a huge gift to me. And then I went to Iowa where I worked with Donald Justice and Marvin and Norman again. It really deepened my               relationship with poetry academically. I loved writing sonnets. I loved writing sestinas. I really loved the form itself. It’s ancient and honored in academia. Then when I got out of Iowa, I went to Alaska, and then the world I had spent most of my life in disappeared. I was all of a sudden in the wilderness. And that had its own teachers and its own structures and forms that are totally different from academia. I like those even more. So I started listening to the sound of the waves hitting the beach or the wind through larch, all these different things that were unavailable to me before. So I think it’s all important. It’s no longer possible for me to associate myself with the school of poetry because I feel like it’s infinitely and constantly changing. My teachers are everywhere, and I’m in learner’s mode, in beginner’s mind, all the time. But I do think the academic world has a huge value. I go to AWP and one of the side effects of it that maybe isn’t so cool is that it’s become—and I’m not sure about this—a funnel for publishing. You go to AWP and you see 3,000 booths, and very few of them are alternative presses. Most of them are university or college presses, and they’re funneling their graduate students right into the few available publishers because their teachers have published at those houses and are respected, rightfully so, by those houses. It’s like alt-music. You just don’t have a lot of room in the mainstream for those people doing something different. And so academia has become almost an incubator for itself. I’m not judging that; I’m just saying that it’s really important that the voices outside of it get heard and that they have a destination, as well. If I had a lot of money, I’d hope that I could offer a press for that type of writing. I think it’s really important.   

Christensen

You’ve just talked about how you like sonnets and older forms. In Snake you’ve created this epic lyric, and it has been compared to Milton’s Paradise Lost. Did you look there for inspiration or at any other examples of epic poetry?

Lemons

Milton is a good comparison. Norman Dubie said there were similarities to Berryman’s Dream Songs, which I also think is true. I audited a two-week workshop with Berryman when he had just written the Dream Songs. I was stunned by the freedom he offered in an academic setting. He wrote in dialect. He had Mr. Bones. He had Death speaking in different dialects. He spoke to himself in the poems and in a Southern dialect. Snake speaks like this, too. So Barryman’s Dream Songs were really important to me. Certainly, Milton too, and the rhythms of some of Shakespeare’s plays, particularly Hamlet and Othello. I consider those plays epic poems because they tell an epic narrative. The Bible, itself, is an epic poem, which is sort of a strange take on it. [laughs] Perhaps, not my complete cup of tea, but I think it’s an amazing literary effort, if you will, especially the Old Testament, which is horrible in a number of ways, but is also, in terms of literature, fascinating. 

Bruner

In Snake and Second Wind, you have a series of poems coming from the voice and perspective of a chorus, like in ancient Grecian theatre. Why did you choose to incorporate a chorus into the quartet, and do you see that sort of ancient form of storytelling impacting your writing in other ways?

Lemons

For Snake particularly, I didn’t have a lot to say about that. [laughs] Snake did that. Seriously, it was like, “Where is this chorus coming from? I’ve never written like this. It’s like a play, and I don’t like plays.” Snake insisted on having some kind of explicative voice other than his or her own to, I guess, allow me to step in and summarize some of her nonsense [laughs] and then to work off of that. So the chorus just developed. In terms of other books, like Weight of Light or Dia de los Muertos, which don’t have choruses, but there’s still all of a sudden a place in my writing where there’s a perspective like a facet on a jewel that wasn’t there before that I can go back to before finishing a poem and go, “Oh, what would the chorus say?” This sounds really coocoo. [laughs] Guilty. I think everyone has that to a degree. You’re doing something and there’s something interrupting that. Sometimes you wish it would shut up and other times you’re like, “Wow, thank you.” But it’s there.

Bruner

I think we also see this multiplicity of voices in Weight of Light, in how broad its range of allusions are. You reference Greek mythology as well as Ann Boleyn and Auden in these poems. You take on all of these voices from across history, and unlike Snake, this is a timeless space. How do you think this more globalized range of reference shapes your poetry, and what did you do to expand your sense of scope?

Lemons

I guess the second Snake book, Second Wind, freed me to explore the importance of the historical events that have been forgotten because they were real in their time and are consequently real now. As everyone has said, history is always repeating itself, and there are lessons embedded in the past that will feed the future. It’s not just learning to be a better human being or learning to be a better society; it’s also about learning to be a more visionary entity in human form. This goes back to being borderless. If we just say we were born and we die and we have so much time to become who we are, then we are locked into the significance of current events or the now moment. That’s important, I’m not diminishing it. But without that border around us, then all of this is not only our responsibility, and not only our pleasure, and our legacy, but it’s our teacher. So Weight of Light is expanding on that. I will write this way forever. I’m no longer interested in being a mirror simply reflecting the moment that is happening to us. 

Bruner

You also mentioned bringing both of those trajectories back into play with the third Snake book, Hunger Sutras. Can you explain your process and how it was writing that book?

Lemons

It’s like an inhalation and exhalation. It’s four books. The initial Snake is an inhalation. We’re very active and energized. It’s our first breath. The second book is an exhalation. It’s the last breath we’ll have in form. It’s passive in a way. It is no less important; it’s the other part of the cycle detoxifying the body. Hunger Sutras is a new inhalation. The energy or intensity of the first book is rejuvenated in the third book, and even more so because Hunger Sutras is intense. A friend of mine, John Hughey, a brilliant poet, read it and said, “This book terrifies me. This is the scariest book I have ever read.” Hunger Sutras does talk about current events. I don’t name Trump by name, but the “orange haired puppet in the front row” may be mistaken for the president. Original Grace, which is the forth book, is an exhalation again. It’s appropriate because the quartet dies on that book. I struggled a long time with coming up with a conclusion. I thought Original Grace had to be a conclusion, but there won’t be any grand conclusion. Hollywood won’t step in and save everybody. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it won’t necessarily be a happy ending. Snake will let me know at some point. [laughs]

Christensen

Snake does also make an appearance in Dia de los Muertos. Do you think Snake will make an appearance in future books? 

Lemons

I don’t know, and it’s really dastardly of that reptile to jump into my book like that. [laughs] I had no idea that was going to happen. I’m sort of on guard, like “Whoa, stay away!” As a physical entity Snake is a slithering reptile that lives in this sort of underworld. It made sense in Dia de los Muertos that she would. She’s not in Weight of Light and so far not in Spell. Sometimes I do have to push back that almost overwhelming instinct to let her in, because that voice is the voice that changed my writing. Even if Snake doesn’t speak to me directly  as an entity, the effect of having a relationship with that voice has changed my writing and will in the future. I’m very grateful that Snake came into Dia de los Muertos because it makes perfect sense. 

Bruner

Since you work so often in long form poetry, how do you know or feel out when a poem reaches its landing point whether it’s neatly wrapped up or not? 

Lemons

I don’t have a preconception about that. I sometimes start out with a short poem, and it turns into a long, long poem. I think poetry is a magnificent gift to the person who writes because poems aren’t imposed on the page. They are a sort of nourishment, if you will, coming from a linguistic collective. There’s no telling where it will go. I know when I’m done, but I don’t know before I’m done when I’ll end. So I’ll let the poem do that. With “Dia de los Muertos” I wrote that poem first. I think that was about 45 pages or so, and it was specifically about my ramblings around Guadalajara and other cities in Mexico during a specific time in my life, especially during the Day of the Dead celebrations. I didn’t intend to write that poem, but I had a dream about it one night and got up in the middle of the night and wrote 40 pages. It kind of spilled out, and then I started working with it and it turned into 60 pages. Then when I edited it, it came back down to around 45 pages. With that poem I knew I was done because there’s a cycle, a circle. It ends and begins with the turtles. “Borderline” came out of the swamp, out of the mist. And so did “Mazunte.” By reliving those times, more and more started feeding into it. It’s actually one poem, and I know it’s divided into three, but I look at it as a single poem, which is even scarier because it’s a hundred pages long. [laughs]

Bruner

Absolutely. I think reading it all as one poem makes sense because the same figures emerge throughout.

Lemons

And going back to lore, it leans heavily on yoga mythologies around birth and death, the wheel of karma, samsara, and how we get off that wheel, and how at any given time those that are off the wheel are in our presence, but not visible. In Dia de los Muertos, that’s the whole idea. The dead are right here. If I understand correctly, they are saying there’s only a couple of days a year where this happens. The Buddhist perspective is that the dead are never gone. 

Bruner

In Dia de los Muertos the character El Chingado read to me like a masculinized version of the Azteca figure La Chingada. Assuming you have familiarity with that figure, where did this revamped version spring from and how did this persona enter the poem, especially since it dissolves the borderline between genders?

Lemons

In fact, a friend of mine who is translating this into Spanish is having a heck of a time with the pronouns. As you know, in Spanish the pronouns are more fixed than ours. He calls me and is all, “What are you talking about? I can’t translate this. It’s untranslatable.” [laughs] He’s done “Borderline” and is now working on “Mazunte,” so it is coming into some form. So yes, there is Chingada, Chingado, and the Thingada. All these are aspects of mostly male, but sometimes female, weaknesses in terms of being human. We prey on each other, and we prey on ourselves. Sometimes against our will even, we cause injury. These aspects of ourselves are represented across both genders in those characters and in the voice of those characters. That didn’t answer your question, did it?

Bruner

Brief aside on the record for most folks who might not know the mythology surrounding La Chingada: she was a Mexica woman who was sold into slavery by her family and worked as a translator and guide for Cortez during the conquest of the Azteca empire. So I think what you’re saying about the human weaknesses of people is in there. A lot of the time, especially in Mexica mythology, she is framed as the figure who leads to downfall.

Lemons

Much like a traitor.

Bruner

Exactly. Maybe Eve is a good point of comparison. During your time in Mexico, was La Chingada a figure you came across?

Lemons

I’m aware of what you are saying, and I’ve always thought of La Chingada as a traitor. Also, when I was in Mexico, that was a curse word. 

Bruner

It means “the fucked one(s).”

Lemons

Exactly. [laughs] The mythical source of it kind of disappeared, and it became a swear. I was trying to re-characterize that into the poem to be more than just a curse. I wanted it to have a presence. I wanted that presence to reflect on an almost innocent weakness—it’s not innocent. That’s not quite the word, but it’s not diabolical, either. The weakness is that we’re never able to rise up to our highest standards. There’s always something that makes us compromise or makes us give up something of importance that we never thought we’d give up. But here we are giving it up for “this.” Getting to “this” might be getting recognition, being honored in a certain way, or being paid more. I think La Chingada translating for Cortez is an example of someone getting caught up in giving up their sense of honor in order to gain something. Most of us do this at one time or another. Our being aware of it is the important thing; being unaware can really cause some damage. 

Christensen

Talking about myth making, in the first Snake book, there are several points of origin or geneses, like Earth acting upon Snake or man creating Snake, but other times Snake seems to be this figure that was always there. Is there a reason for the multiple geneses, and if you had to pick one to be the most true, which would that be?

Lemons

You caught that. [laughs] That was an inconsistency that bothered me after the book was published. The intent was that Earth, as a creative conscious being, chose to rid itself of the infection called humanity because the damages we have collectively done to her over eons. When she was destroying everything, she got to this one man, but in the destruction of that individual, the woman came out of the man and everything started to come out. All of that dreamed itself into a place where Earth couldn’t find it. Snake came out of humanity. It wasn’t created by Earth. Snake was always there, but because the “dreaming way,” which comes right out of Assiniboine culture, this rolled up, nearly dead entity escaped. When it escaped, Earth kept trying to find it because Snake couldn’t stay forever in a dream. It had to come back. It was accountable in both worlds. Whenever Snake came back, Earth would sense that her body was once again violated by this presence and go after it. This went on and on for eons. All of the things that had been killed by Earth coalesced inside of Snake. It became the container for the collective. That’s what Second Wind is about. Not just the collective of the things killed and the Earth’s rage, but all of things that rippled out of the stories, the myths, the lies, the truths, the gods and goddesses, the local perspectives that were part of life forever were collected inside of Snake. In Second Wind that is what’s coming out. Not the physical forms themselves, but all the ripples that come off our physical presence. Like we’re rippling into each others’ fields right now. It’s not something most of us are aware of, but it’s happening. Each of us are powerful forces that are sharing a space and affecting each other on some level. So Snake discovered by becoming Snake that Snake was there already, but she didn’t know it because she had been trapped in local finite experiences. It took near death for Snake to be freed. 

Bruner

We talked earlier about how Snake comes to you as a voice and has become a part of your being. As poets writing these personas and getting caught up in making these mythologies, it’s almost like it’s wrapped up in making up the myth of ourselves. Could you talk a bit about myth making as it applies to you as a person creating these new mythologies?

Lemons

I’d go as far as saying that each of us is a mythical creature in our own story. I mean that in the big mythos way, and not in the sense of “I went out last night and did something really embarrassing and no one is going to forget it, now I’m a myth.” I don’t mean it quite like that. But this struggle to be conscious and the struggle to acquire integrity, to be present in the world for each other and for ourselves, is mythical.  It’s the root of all myths. We’re each creating that in our lives. I didn’t know that until I started writing. Maybe I had a cognitive understanding of it before, but I didn’t feel it in my body until I wrote books. Then I realized that it wasn’t just about me, but all of us are brave and powerful entities doing our best, some exceeding more than others. That’s why it becomes important that we do what we can for each other. I think the best we can do is recognize the true thing about each other, which is that we’re not just little worthless finite stains on a napkin. We’re infinite beings occupying a form. When we see that, then it’s very hard to fight with each other or hurt each other. It’s like we’re hurting ourselves because there’s no separation. That to me is all part of the myth of growing and evolving. You can say, “What about this evil person?” I would say, the true thing about this person is that they are like we are. They are consciousness expressed in form. But they don’t know that; that’s why they act in accordance with what they know. This is all complicated, but I really think there’s something happening in poetry that helps the world move from its violence, from its need to cause injury. 

Bruner

Could you speak more on that last point?

Lemons

Like I mentioned earlier, poetry for me is about letting go of control. We tightly construct a world around ourselves; we harden it into something that is comfortable, or at least fits. Poetry deconstructs the container, at least the linguistic container. We’re constantly thinking in words to ourselves and how we think in words affects our actions. If we’re thinking in poems, it’s going to affect our actions, as well. You know poetry doesn’t mean we’re writing Hallmark greeting cards. It’s a way of looking at the world. It’s a way of seeing. We’re seeing the world differently when we write. At a point you don’t even need to write; you just see the world differently. Seeing, itself, is evolution. 

Christensen

Would you say other art inspires your work?

Lemons

Music for sure. Music is poetry without words. It’s very important to me, all genres. If I hear something real, if it’s country music, jazz, or classical, I’ll feel it and be drawn into it. It’ll move me. I love dance. Dance is a wonderful expression of the innermost poem that we are. But all of the arts, really. If I could paint, I would. My wife is a sculptor. She’s brilliant. I just have a great respect for all artists. 

Bruner

I think your appreciation for music really comes through in your writing. In Snake, I picked up on cadences that were like something out of a blues or folk song. Would you like to mention more of how music is integral to your poetry, if we haven’t covered it already? 

Lemons

The only thing I want to add is that poetry, because it’s oral, is musical. It’s almost a song, and because poetry was initially orated in order to remember it, cadences would be used. It was all tied to the music of speech. Consequently, you get scansion and the music of the metrical foot. The word metrical, itself, implies music. That’s very important to me. That’s the old academic inheritance I still honor. In Hunger Sutras there’s a thirty-page poem, the title poem, which is entirely in syllabic verse. Thirty pages of ten syllables per line, so it’s not a metrical scan; it’s a syllabic scan. That compressed the music. It felt like it was making me be more attentive to the music that’s already there in our speech. 

Christensen

Language and the ability to hold onto language is extremely important in Snake. What would you say the role or importance of language is, especially in today’s society? 

Lemons

It’s about staying connected and staying aware because we drift away from awareness. It’s a form of self-protection, to numb out because it’s too much to feel sometimes. Poetry is a little respite from that because it’s usually not didactic. It’s asking you to participate in the interpretation of the images. I’m reading Joanna Klink’s great book Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy. She is amazing. When I read work like this, I’m lifted in a way that I’m brought closer to everyone. That’s what I think poetry can do. It can also push us away. I know my work is difficult, and some people are pushed away by it, especially the first Snake book. With so much devastation happening, people, more so in my generation, were like, “Ehh, that’s uncomfortable.” I gave a reading at Cornelius Street Café in New York City in the Village. It was a dream of mine. Two friends who are in their twenties and in a band came to the reading. There were like a hundred people there. I was the third reader and read from Snake. The first two readers were accessible. When I finished reading, the place was silent. These two friends of mine in the back row, Abner and Harper, jumped up, yelled “Right on, dude!” and started clapping. Then people clapped. [laughs] Without them doing that, I don’t think there would have been any response. So, I know the work is difficult, but it’s not difficult with the intention to push people away. It’s supposed to shine a light on our complicity. Everything is about looking and seeing. If we refuse to, it’s going to keep happening. 

This is not meant to be promotional. I think it’s really to the credit of Red Hen that they recognized this work and published it. Kate Gale, particularly, published Bristol Bay. That’s more readable. I told her about Snake and she said, “Send it to me. I want to look.” I did, and she got right back to me the same day. From that moment on, she’s been open to what I’ve written, and most of it has found a place in Red Hen’s portfolio. I’m extremely grateful for that. I don’t think anyone else would have published that work. I’d like it said how brave I think that press is because it’s not just me; they are doing all kinds of very courageous work, all kinds of aspects of the culture that are not getting a voice any other way except through Red Hen. And I mean, at that level. There are smaller presses, but Red Hen is a major small press, and they are opening up their offerings to voices that would otherwise not be heard. 

Bruner

What impact has poetry and writing poetry had on your life?

Lemons

I grew up in the 50s. The 50s were superficially benign, but down deep it was a dangerous time. There were so many myths about men and women and races that were wrong, but had been polished enough to shine that people were attracted to them. You grow up as a child, and you hear this stuff. You don’t know your parents are acting out of ignorance. You just think this is how the world is. Then the 60s hit. I was very involved in the 60s. I was born in Washington, D.C., so I was right there for Resurrection City, for marches on the Pentagon, for all things that were centered around D.C. I did my very best. I got tear-gassed. I got maced. A lot of people in my generation were on the opposite side of the 50s, of this monolithic tower of ignorance that had to be taken down. I didn’t write about it, but I was very physically active. That went on through the 70s. It felt like things were working. I was introduced to feminism by my ex-wife, who died far too young. It looked like women were getting their voices, like Blacks were getting their voices. Then when the 80s came along, I began doing more writing and less physical engagement in the act of protesting. Now I’m seldom physically engaged in protesting. When I moved here, the Trident Base was just going up and they were putting this nuclear submarine in. We went out and got arrested. I was in my 50s, and that was the last time I’ve been physically involved in a protest. Though I still protest. I’m just doing it in my writing. That’s the evolution of my consciousness of the politics of writing. I didn’t write much when I was physically involved in activism, and now I’m not physically involved but I’m writing all of the time about the issues. I think that’s an appropriate place for my voice. Who knows? Maybe things will change next year and I’ll get maced again. [laughs] I’m looking forward to that. [laughs]