In Conversation: Lo Kwa Mei-en

Daniel Cyran: Greetings Lo, thank you for agreeing to do this written interview with me. I appreciate your willingness to explore these questions. While I have not read your award-winning collection, THE BEE’S MAKE MONEY IN THE LION, I want to focus a bit on the book I have read, and utterly adore, YEARLING (Alice James Books, 2015). This is such a timeless / monumental collection to me, a spiritual monument. From the opening epigraph of (my first love, ah) Emily Dickinson, to the concluding piece, CANON WITH WOLVES IN THE WATER—it feels like a long & exciting journey from first page to last page. I’m hoping this interview will inspire folks who may have missed out on the initial run of YEARLING, hopefully they’ll be inspired to pick this collection up. As for folks who have it on their shelf, hopefully they’ll be able to re-trace their steps a bit to re-visit this brilliant collection.

Lo Kwa Mei-en: Hi, Daniel! Thank you very much for inviting me to do this interview, and for your kind, uplifting words about YEARLING. Both mean very much to me, and I am grateful to be in poetry community with you here.

DC: If it can even be qualified, what role does the spiritual have in your work? I know that the title, THE BEE’S MAKE MONEY IN THE LION, is a eluding to a Biblical passage. And your poems feel deeply spiritual. What do you think of the relationship between the spiritual and the act of writing a poem? How are these related/unrelated? What do your spiritual leanings look like, in the physical world? What I mean by spiritual, I suppose, is that as human beings, we do have some kind of relationship with the unknown & the unseen. So I’m wondering about your relationship with, and how you interact with the unknown & the unseen in your poetry practice.

Lo: My relationship to the unknown is basic: I fear it, and learn to live with the fear. As for the unseen, which I would like to reframe here as the unperceived, the word that comes to mind is privilege. So much of the comfort I have experienced in life–comfort which has become a spiritual priority to question–has been derived at the expense of my complicity in the suffering of other people. And my complicity is resourced by a system in which I have had the luxury of not-perceiving specific, ongoing, material harms. Thus, it’s of spiritual importance to me to continuously challenge my relationship to the unknown and unperceived, and to develop practices with which I can do so. Poetry is absolutely one of these practices.

My spirituality is informed by folk religious practices that my familial and spiritual ancestors shared with their communities. I am a practicing animist. My practice requires the belief that I have real, material relationships with all beings, whether I like it or not, whether I perceive it or not. I believe I am responsible for my roles and actions within those relationships, and I am responsible for how my choices impact those I am in relationship with.

These beliefs brought me into a way of living that blurred some relational categories I’d taken for granted. For example, I have a more impactful understanding as myself (as supposed “consumer”) in relationship with water (as supposed “resource”). Water is not a thing I am entitled to own or control, but an entity whose past, present, and future are simultaneously connected to my past, present and future and the past, present, and future of all beings, too. How will I honor these relationships? That question reminds me that all liberations and all injustices are connected. Every time I feel thirst, I may immediately reach for a glass of water. But the people of Palestine in Gaza have been denied access to clean drinking water for over four months. I am in relationship with the water only some of us have access to, and with the people of Palestine, and with the government representatives I will write to tomorrow again to remind them that the people of Palestine have been denied access to clean water for over 4 months now, and that I as their constituent demand that they use their privilege to act against genocide. I am in relationship with the corporations and institutions I have the power to boycott in support of justice. I think the spiritual can be found in the connections of all relationships.

Related to the above, I made a major change in my relationship to poetry. After years of experiencing intense panic, shame, and anxiety about writing and publishing poetry, I realized that I was living in relationship to poetry with myself as consumer and poetry as resource. As if poems were things to productively consume, and publications were things that would prove I was a person of productivity, which I equated with worthiness. Every time I tried to write, I brought those relational values to the page. After seven years of this hell, I no longer loved poetry–not because I stopped believing in the magic and power of poetry, but because I was not giving poetry appropriate respect, love, and care. I decided to stop writing and publishing poetry, and to focus on working to repair my relationship to poetry by reading and remaining in community with poets, and to make amends to poetry.

One part of this amends, as an animist, means saying “thank you” out loud whenever I read a poem. I thank the spirits of the poet, the poem, and poetry, too. Sometimes, now that I have more days where I feel close to poetry and not estranged, I wonder if one of poetry’s forms is like fungus, or lichen–multiple, liminal, actively strange, impossible to separate into selves/others without compromising our truthful understanding of its nature.

 

DC: In a 2013 interview with Gulf Coast Magazine, you mentioned being terrified of making magic from bare speech and written-down language. And since then, you’ve built an incredible oeuvre of magic & music within your poetry. I’m curious if you remain terrified of this process or of this possibility of the magical emanating from bare speech. What is it about this possibility of magic & bare-speech that is fear inducing? Additionally, I wonder what role fear presently holds in your work, and how you relate to fear as a poet & human being.

 

Lo: My first reaction to this question was, “Crap, I’m afraid of re-reading that Gulf Coast interview!” I did re-read, and what I meant when I wrote that was: Speaking out makes me feel afraid.

To finally feel the truth of something and to feel like I must express this or else betray what it means to be human–that, to me, is speaking out, and is also my personal experience of poetry. Speaking out is uncomfortable because it renders me and others accountable, and accountability can change everything. Often this change involves criticism, rejection, abandonment, and material loss. I think this process is magical not despite but because of those risks. However, today I would say that speaking out is to be embraced not because it is magical but because it is ethical. I try to remember that every time I go to write something and feel discomfort at the thought that somebody might read it or hear me say it, that this is an appropriate, correct way to feel. Discomfort surrounding accountability is no longer an acceptable reason for me to turn away from a project. Instead, the fear response is an important sign that I should continue working with whatever it was that made me feel afraid of accountability.

A crucial piece that helped me shape my thoughts above is “On Speaking Out” by Daniel José Older.

 

DC: With the “POET IS WORKING” story in mind, do you think a poet is every able to “stop” working—even when we are not physically writing, we seem to be at work. Even resting is a part of the process. The process never ends, ha! Is there any distinction in your mind between your craft on the page, and your life away from the page? Is there a felt duality here, or is there more of a unification between your life & your poems? How do these interact with each other, for you?

Lo: Are poets ever disengaged from the process of poetry? I believe that everything, absolutely everything is or can be poetry. I do not believe that anyone is ever really separated from poetry!

Here are some questions this topic inspires:

●        What value does work hold for you in your life?

●        What is the relationship between what you identify as “your work” and your writing?

●        What value does rest hold for you in your life?

●        What is the relationship between your rest life and your writing?

●        How do you know when you are writing?

The sole distinction I used to think was the difference between “writing on the page” and “life away from the page” was having enough time to write. Ten years ago, I had embarrassing amounts of free time and minimal responsibilities. I had multiple days a week where I had 3-4 hours straight to write. I was in very bad spiritual condition and no matter how much I wrote, I felt terrible about it. These days I feel lucky when I have a full hour during which I can descend into the work, and despite feeling that my time is no longer my own, I’ve never felt happier or more connected to art. Some of my best writing last year was done in the pick-up line at school, in the parking lot of KFC, in the kitchen waiting for water to boil. I used to fill journals and apps and to-do lists with rigid plans to better “manage” my time in order to “maximize” it. It turns out I was better served by surrendering to the spirit of poetry, who does not abide by capitalist time. Learning to care for a child was an added gift of a depth charge in this area. Realizing that not everybody receives more time in life to continue the work of writing was crucial, too.

Last year, I attended a workshop by novelist Suyi Davies Okungbowa. The workshop helped me grow my perspective and skills around caring for my life, art, and time. The workshop was designed from his newsletter, which is one of the best-written and most generous writing newsletters. I highly recommend his non-fiction as well as fiction work.

DC: The animal world seems to be omnipotent in your YEARLING poems. Which I deeply admire, because it feels almost unnatural in many ways, with the state of technological “advancement” – that we as a species have virtually removed ourselves from the natural world, from the food chain. The presence of the speaker(s) & the evoked presence of the animal “other” becomes apparently singular, or unified. Your speaker(s) don’t ever really seem to be separated from the animal world, from the natural world. What is it about animals (human or otherwise) that fascinates you? The human connection to the animal world feels vital in your poetry. What is it about this human connection to these “other” creatures which is so vital? Why is it so seemingly difficult for us human beings to feel our animalness?

Lo: I have an easier time interacting/existing with non-human animals than with other humans! I think this is why my poems often express in the language of non-human images. When I wrote in that language, I did not feel any pressure to explain myself.

I think one reason humans treat our connection to non-human animals as attractive and vital to explore in art is because sharing our lives and imagination with non-human animals forces us to confront the realities of relationship. And despite any wishes we might have to the contrary, to survive the future we have been creating, we will need to live relationally.

That said, the way I used animal imagery throughout YEARLING was intentionally symbolic and therefore depersonalizing. When I wrote a title that contains “Wolves in the Water” I was working towards creating an image, not writing about a specific collective of individual wolves, or even about actual wolves as a species. I seek and admire the work of writers whose art about animals is relational. One of the best pieces of writing I read in the last six months is Jia Tolentino’s tribute to her dog, Luna, who passed in 2023. I’m also still excited about the publication of The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry, edited by Ruth Awad and Rachel Mennies, which was released by Sundress Publications in 2020 and “interrogates our lives as they’ve intertwined with humanity’s most beloved house companion.”

 

DC: I notice hints of the surreal woven throughout YEARLING. And I’m curious, who are the poets, writers, artists who have the biggest impact on your writing, both historically & presently? Who and/or what inspires you?

 

Lo: I have been privileged to be changed by the work of many more poets, writers, and artists than I name here. To focus on the scope of YEARLING, the poems of Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rita Dove and Lucie Brock-Broido were so important to my understanding of what poetry could be. The book would not have come to life without the work and writing of Patrice Malidoma Somé. The poet who had the biggest impact on my work is Kathy Fagan, who was my teacher before and during the time I wrote YEARLING. Having a relational connection to a poet whose art I admired changed my writing life.

Another inspiration I’d like to mention is horror. I am bowled over by how horror writers embrace structures of genre to create hyper-real, surreal spaces in which compassion can deeply and meaningfully take root. This capacity, in conjunction with the horror genre’s embrace of the viscerally felt experience for the reader, has convinced me that horror and poetry are close kin. Justin Phillip Reed recently released With Bloom Upon Them and Also With Blood: A Horror Miscellany, which I am beyond excited exists. Writers whose writing has changed my life through horror are Nathan Ballingrud, Victor Lavalle, Catriona Ward, Shirley Jackson, Stephen Graham Jones, and Octavia Butler.

 

DC: I consider you a poetic trailblazer. You do something that no one else can do. I guess this can be true of all poets & artists, but I don’t think it’s always true, all the time. If that makes sense. So, I’m wondering, what’s next for you? What is the next trail you plan to traverse? What are you excited about as far as your future & present endeavors?

Lo: Thank you for your kind words. I am humbled to be perceived that way and thankful for YEARLING to receive that consideration from you.

After several years working hard at caring for my relationship to writing, I am happy to say I’m currently living in right relationship with writing. I feel clearly and simply that I live to honor writing and other writers, and that when I do the work of my heart, I am one among many writers in the world. This, more than the below projects, feels like the most important exciting trail to name. I will never take for granted what it feels like to know that to survive, I must write, and not be certain if that outcome will be possible. I hope I’ll always hold compassion for others who have similar experiences.

I’ve been working the most in genre fiction. I write short stories and novellas in the storytelling languages of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. I also keep a (dormant) genre-crossing tarot blog called Little Nightporch, where I wrote short stories on a ten-day cycle based on the astrological decans and their corresponding tarot cards. I’ve been working on a book of poetry, a narrative about the life and death of Pinocchia. I have been given the chance to write poetry again! Wow.

 

DC: Thank you for being so generous with your time, Lo. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to momentarily factor my curiosity into your world. I wish you all the best with your current & future endeavors.

 

Lo: Thank you so much for your time, care, and writing. I really appreciate getting to share this space with you, and I wish you all the best, too.

Lo Kwa Mei-en is the author of The Bees Make Money in the Lion (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2016) and Yearling (Alice James Books, 2015). She lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Justin Robinson Interviews Will Alexander

 

Justin Robinson: You’ve expressed facing difficulties at a young age regarding reading. Did this childhood experience help shape who you’ve become?

 

Will Alexander: Your initial question has allowed me to register an original initianation as  transmutive lingual  protocol.  Born as an only child as I would play and as I played my imagination would run rampant though I didn't know it at the time this initial psychic state ignited a lifelong lingual initiation. But at the time? (as was stated in my initial book of essays Singing In Magnetic Hoofbeat) a grammar school teacher a Mr. Beacon provided for me a magical jumpstart concerning reading comprehension. Which has led to the manner by which my language continues to register, not only to infecting  a larger community but  continues to auto-infect me as well. I remain engulfed in a seeming maniacal phosphorous that ignites as alchemical imminence as it continues to register as power that principally empowers via palindromic drone. Never have I thought via isolated perception to craft a text and extoll its utterance into print but beyond this to continue to enter a realm that protractedly continues prone as it is to a pyrotic principle that is empowered as transmutation by heresy. This presence seems to initiate a  pressure that magically condones presence by auto-osmosis, alive by living inner spell that writhes as numinous fever. This state spontaneously issues via audic fragment provoking as it does magical susurration via unprovoked lightning-like presence by streaking. It feels as if one is immersed in a river of lightning, not unlike, to generally paraphrase Michele Leris, into a lifelong phase that persists as audic blessing that over time, magically erupts into sustained palpability as presence. This is not unlike a realia that naturally para-phrases primal interiority state not unlike  the magical formation that we presently witness through the James Web continuum that teloscopically witnesses the a-sequential formation of galaxies. 

 

Justin Robinson: Indeed, it is this initial play as an only child that turns you toward a burgeoning “psychic state.” The word “play” here reminds me of engaging with non-human things, calling forth the interconnectedness in your texts between all living things. Mr. Beacon, as lifeline to language educator, witnessed your level of sensitivity to language and to life more broadly. It all makes sense, then, that your language, in whichever form it chooses to reveal itself, continues positively “infecting a larger community” as well as yourself. 

Justin Robinson: You once told me: “I’m going to write myself into paradise.” Months later your follow up was: “I wrote myself into the hospital.” Is your ability to balance the consistent call to write with your broader health an ongoing negotiation?

 

Will Alexander: There exists a reality for me to push naturally and this state for me maniacally insists on continuing to condone this insistence by what I consider to be a manical praxis keeping up with my inner state that reveals itself through language. Not some optimum ideal that exists via ubiquitous discretion. It persists as a powerful reflex that feels as if welling up from nature itself. Not unlike a persistent ether rising via powerful volcanic priority. It is existence not as some form of super-imposed celestial ambivalence but as rhythmic explosion that morphs not as a haunted spectrum, but as delirious vibratory rate that merges with its own vibration, as miraculous palindromic that merges with its own insistence that ignites as hypnotic dynamic. At an earlier stage of development I naturally blanked out on the signals that my body was sending, therefore imbalance began to exist as part of my living habitat so I began to compensate for this deficit as balance therefore what I formally ignited morphed into existential disunity. 

 

Justin Robinson: I’m hearing that this need to engage with language via explosive practice is not a vain situation, whereby language is used for superficiality, but an insistence on attunement to the creative forces within you, ostensibly creating tachycardia not as hypertension, but as lava flow that forms and informs the natural forces that amalgamate your texts. I hear also that not paying attention to language, that not giving yourself over to language, is what creates misalignment and “disunity.” Moreover, knowing the signals that your body is sending you when it comes to a supraconscious level of engagement is what creates positive circulatory health, not what causes ill health. 

 

Justin Robinson: I have a student who spends much of their classroom time dedicated to writing in their notebook. The other day they put their pencil down and posed the question: “Why don’t people pay more attention to the Sun?” May you respond to their question, and in doing so, link your language to the language of the younger generation?

 

Will Alexander: By drawing within the climate of super-imposed study he begins entry into the imagination, into the principle of the non-condoned. This limit by seeming stricture courts its opposite ranging into the realm of non-limit. This compels a state where non-pragmatic questions are posed, where penetrant insight elicits unembrangled states of awareness. What indeed would occur to general consciousness if the Sun did go bad. All disciplines would instantly enter the state of the unknown. The question instantly triggers panic by unknown entry into collective psychic state into what call collective brainstorming, where all form of prior mental assignation would instantly dissolve. Thus it would enter de Bonoesqe mental territory where all facets of the mind would issue itself into a phantom electrical state. This phantom state of mind would connect at an instantaneous level sans general product distraction. New principles of mind would evolve beyond a principle garrison mentality, beyond a non-known knowledge of itself. As J. Krishnamurti once put insight heals wounds of the mind. An ironic transmutation of the collective mental system, no longer regressing into an operant mystique. What I've laid out remains an extreme proposition that the student has began to enter through other means. He does not ignore nor bicker with his own inner means, what prevails is glistening entry into another presence. 

 

Justin Robinson: Indeed, this student poses radical questions. And they are disheartened, not by the responses received from supportive colleagues, but by the difficult overall understanding that these questions are perceived to have no place in dominant forms of discourse. I hear you regarding these “unembrangled states of awareness.” And being as inward as this student is, which may be life enhancing, is not without a sense of isolation that is palpably felt as ongoing struggle. 

 

Justin Robinson: Your writing speaks directly to ongoing catastrophic historical injustices. I’m thinking about the Moriscos in Secrets Prior to the Sun and “The Congo” in Refractive Africa. At the center of both texts is a fierce and unflinching radical love. Please talk about this love, which does not engender answers, but rather an impactful risk that generates recalibrated ways of knowing and engaging with these histories.

 

Will Alexander: What I've imaginally emblazoned in Refractive Africa remains a nubile tenor of consciousness. A more flexible state that seeks the state of a lingually less harassing principle, that never precludes via the tenor under the aegis of fatigued language by linear composting. Not mirage as discipline but by magnetic inference where words naturally attract themselves to themselves, what I would call spiralling momentum. Never egregious realm by ostentatious comingling but alive by  attration to psychic higher principles.  Both the Moriscos of Granada, and indigenous inhabitants of the Congo and greater Africa, were forced to dissolve their natural rooting through toxic violence and displacement. This forges natural gathering as resistance via unification as natural attraction. What emits from this attraction condenses into natural love via the tenet of enforced uprooting. By retaining form according to prior psychological valance an evanescence proclaims its own blazing according to prior metrification as balance. Unified by dillema, not by ostentatious reaction as causation, but a protracted form of healing ensues as an ensemble that heals sans self-deracination. As I've stated in my proto-publication On Dar el-Hikma, the general demeanour of psychic inclusion via higher thought in Christian and Jewish elements would have not embrangled contact would have sustained higher presence within North American natural indigenous principles that of course included the Chumash. This latter psychic state proclaims the mind by seeming ineffable, by a state of mind, that may have led the general mind beyond its current predicament. 

 

Justin Robinson: I understand from your response that the language in Refractive Africa maturates organically, without superimposed ideal, model, or linearity, which aligns itself with “psychic higher principles” much like the language cultivated by the “Moriscos of Granada, and indigenous inhabitants of the Congo and greater Africa.” The radical love within each text asserts itself via language that connects again with the language and ideas which excelled in critical supraconscious ways prior to colonial violence. This “natural love” promotes healing through discursive practices that lead “the general mind beyond its current predicament” of psychophysical annihilation.   

Justin Robinson: I want to talk about Los Angeles and what this world city means for you. In your essay “Los Angeles An Anomalous Maze” from A Cannibal Explains Himself to Himself, you say: “Los Angeles is suffused by so many other psycho-lingual experiences that English is now in rapid transmutation.” What do these “psycho-lingual experiences” look like when they join the language of the Chumash?

 

Will Alexander: Los Angeles being the region that I've hailed from I pose it not as a regional fixation not via Hollywood and its related psychic intervals that impose themselves through entertainment, but a region rich with imaginal enrichment. I think of a quartet of names such as Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenburg never synonymous with the stars' built upon sovereign entertainment. Instead it has harbored imaginal innovation that has remained my principle psychic infection. To remain in this state that I have morphed into what I consider to be one of dazed tribulation. My art never possessed by numerical character, but upon imginal resistance as destination, upon indwelling radiance. Never sequestered into mystical vincinity according to belief but as identity by what I presently call charismatic spirally that poetically infects its rise into higher lingual vincinity. A precarious state within present pseudo-standards one needs imaginally invade a living lingual dusk, a precarious maelstrom of energy that lifts itself into a magnetic lingual state. Because Los Angeles remains off the main road of Eastern material capitals such New York  and Washington DC I am able to project this lingle state within fielding an unstable aninimus concerning the maturing of my present praxis as if I blinded myself according by untrue emotion. 

 

Justin Robinson: It's this “quartet of names” among others that continue to hold “imaginal innovation,” energetically infusing the streets of Los Angeles long after their physical departures from earth. Perhaps because of these above-mentioned names the City of Lost Angels ceases to be placed in close approximation to Hollywood stardom. And it’s this studio embranglement that necessitates, in part, your “living lingual dusk” as intrinsic boundary. Not being an “American” city perse, Los Angeles for you organically and continuously creates itself by heterogeneity rather than economic or congressional stints.  

 

Justin Robinson: From your first book Vertical Rainbow Climber to The Coming Mental Range and texts yet to be published, were your parents able to witness your lifelong engagement with language, including drawing and painting?

 

Will Alexander: As I look back on things it must have crippled them with difficulty. I was never embrangled by aspirations derived from a householders conditioning. Instead my eye was set upon clinging to a non-pragmatic seeming impossible pinnacle poised upon the principle of an impossibly defiant vertigo. Even if I were poised say upon the sullen gambler of that may have a race horse junkie I may have been more understandable to them with them feeling less deprived according to psychic deficit. As it was I remained within invisible demeanour as if I persisted in a state parallel to evolment from a coffin rising into verbal effulgence sans understandable vicinity. Vertical Rainbow Climber remains for me a prince gift of daring spirited on by the likes of Bob Kaufman. For me it continues to persist by tenacious lingual rise, a principle foment that gathers internally not unlike volcanic bursts from the Saturnian moon that is Io. 

 

Justin Robinson: Yes, you recognize your parents’ difficulties, and yet were entranced, then and now, by this “impossibly defiant vertigo” to go a “non-pragmatic” direction. This lack of pragmatism made you less understandable to them. The “gift of daring” that is Vertical Rainbow Climber provided you vital feedback, inspired by Bob Kaufman in particular, that language recognized you in ways, perhaps, that your parents may not have been able to, then. 

 

Will Alexander is an American poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and visual artist. He was the recipient of a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry in 2001 and a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2002

In Conversation, with Will Alexander

DC: How are you holding up, Will? What’s new? What have you been doing to stay sane during the pandemic?

WA: The pandemic though morose and solemn for planetary culture at large inscripted my presence with an ironic oasis where the prior grasp of the world dissolved and further clarified my understanding of its dissolution. The circumstance has allowed me to focus insight over and beyond its grammar of turbulence. New lingual spells appeared unbidden for me because the territorial forces of the culture were momentarily stilled. Its interim allowed me to ruminate on the fertility of language itself which meant that a quaking of phonemes transpired which led to the phosphenic explosion of what I continue to realize is none other than lingual mystery. An eloquence of range not as transposition but capable of delving into the improvisersatory state that is living. 

 

DC: In much of your work, and with The Combustion Cycle specifically, there is this notion of the “I” that seems almost larger than life itself, or as large as life itself. When you are speaking from the perspective of the Henbane Bird, for example, the “I” possesses a unique simultaneity. You seem to not only be speaking from your vantage point as a specific human being with a specific point of view, but on a larger scale/perspective, simultaneously speaking from the Henbane Bird’s perspective, your specific perspective, as well as the perspective of humanity as a whole. Your “I” seems to connect all of the worlds “in there” and all of the worlds “out there.” How has your approach to the “I” managed to stay so fluid over the years?

WA: The 'I' which I've employed has remained transpersonal since the inception of my writing. By the time it had evolved to what was to be The Combustion Cycle it had become analogous to an inner nano sail translating its powers to unimaginable zones and distances. This is how the imagination has evolved for me always broadening its scale never recognizing expected linear cultural boundary. This understanding was seeded by Surrealism, not in an ideological sense but as a kind of inner ozone that freed me from the bombastic utterance of linear detail. An utterance of range transpired and evolved into a hyper-range not unlike the concept that is the nano-sail wandering unimagined vacuums. This wandering not only covers distance but also sonic alteration of phrasing but creates sonic alteration as distance. Equational trans-function not entrapped in itself as circularity. I call this compound suggestility which creates alteration as it continues to exist not as bound or orchestrated tautology. This creates range as unknown faculty. What transpires is that energy rises and becomes an improvised element without remaining riveted to a tedious concourse. The unexpected summons exhilaration. One ceases needing mechanical levers. As was stated many years possibly attributed to Breton when the verbal current seems to internally run aground just start the next phrase with a word beginning with the L. Praxis at this level has allowed us to go beyond these early stages so that in-grown ignition suddenly ignites and takes off as unplanned wizardry. I feel this to be a higher more inclusive field of comprehension.  A qualitative understanding not strictly tied to ideology or conscious political fragmentation but literally an evolved more comprehensive faculty that creates its own facility. Not a state based on a prior of information that by the nature of its energy attracts the accuracy of future states. 

DC: The way you read and the way you approach readings seems to be heavily influenced by Jazz music. I admire the element of improvisation in your readings. Although I don’t know that I’ve ever heard you refer to yourself as a “Jazz poet.” As far as American poets and the evolution of language are concerned, do we truly understand the richness of debt we owe to our fellow American Jazz musicians?

WA: This question brings me to my initial great experience improvised collective music universally known as Jazz. When I first listened to John Coltrane ignite Afro Blue was an experience of felt language. I knew the sound was not a condensed strategy but enabled itself as a communicative energy. Its pulsation felt right. Hearing Monk and Dolphy the intervals felt right. Then listening to Elvin Jones, Max Roach, and Roy Haynes I understood that a non-standard approach could be applied to the same medium. As I started to express myself in the English language I understood these same principles applied. I would just apply the presence of life to language and an equation would form and begin to yield verbal satisfaction. But as Max Roach once pointed out this is hard work and not the user friendly manner of paint by numbers. Charles Mingus once said find your own originality. This remains a gamble at all stages. Nothing is guaranteed except the unending search for verbal gold. Life within this tenor evolves as unmatched quintessence. 

  

DC: What do you make of this society’s current predicaments with and approaches to the exploration of outer space?

WA: As humans we remain within a dangerous presence. We have to a large degree been convinced by the mantra of unstable wish. If you take the word belief it has evolved from the Latin term which means to wish. When combined with distance and uncountable stretches of time how does the Occidental standard of human time compare? I am more inclined to a philosophy of natural integration with the flow of time itself. Not the body as a random barrier set in opposition to a state of reality that has fostered it. The latter being the Occidental mainstream that is showing extreme fatigue as a harbinger of failure. When I saw reference to a sun that was supposed to be only 39 light years away I knew right away that general value system remains doomed. Not via ideology or religious belief but the manner in which one mathematically feels language as accuracy not unlike the balance of a painted canvas or the accuracy acknowledged that flourishes inside of indigenous mathematics. As I've recently related the nearest actual sun system to Earth is 25 trillion miles away. To approach in linear terms remains a disaster no matter if Russia, China, and America launched a combined fleet of nano-sails it remains a combined enterprise of hubris. 

 

DC: Is creating art the most viable shamanistic endeavor available, in today’s society? What other ways do you see present-day shamans positively influencing and/or healing their people?

WA: For me my basic enterprise is creative language. Language can internally transmute capacity allowing neural connection to deeper states. An evolved neural capacity. So for me language remains the operant value, but as we opened with the capacity of music. What makes the modern state so blinded and tragic remains its compartmentalized human strategy to various areas of life. The only power it accepts is visible force, this being power that prevails by what I'll poetically call Roman Strychnine. Obviously what I am speaking of is not a transcendent bank account or momentary athletic prevalence. I am thinking of methods that invoke protracted inner sustainability.

 

DC: What are your motivations for creating art, music, poems?

WA: For me creativity remains a mantra and wells up from what I consider to be mysterious alter vents.  A precarious strategy to be sure but one effective by means of protracted sustainability. 

 

DC: You recently released quite a generous offering of poems in The Combustion Cycle. How has the reception of The Combustion Cycle felt to you? What kind of feedback are you getting from readers and listeners?

WA: The reception from The Combustion Cycle has been fabulous both critically as well as sales wise. I say this not out of false modesty but there are at least a half dozen books to appear after it. Three are poetry, and one on old Islamic scholarship entitled On Dar El-Hikma, and two books of essays from Litmus Press stretching into 2022 and beyond.

In Conversation, with Heller Levinson

Lurk

DC: How are you holding up, Heller? What’s new? What have you been doing to stay sane during the pandemic?

HL: Thank you for your interest, DC. The new = working on upcoming LURE which is expected to be released in Spring 2022 by Black Widow Press; = the  hybridic essay, jus’ sayn,’ (which you inspired) focusing on John Coltrane’s “One Down, One Up;” = the frequent alightments I’m privileged to attend to; = looking forward to further intercourse with the visual artist Linda Lynch as well as more dialogic engagement with Will Alexander. 

Interesting that you should use the term ‘sane’ as I have no idea if that is at all applicable to me. Recently I’ve been drawn to the notion of insane in a vague equivalence to Breton’s fascination with mental patients. If the dictionary definition of ‘insanity’ is ‘irrational,’ ‘utterly illogical,’ ‘absurd,’ then I’m all aboard. I seek to stretch, to flee the tyranny of causality, the demonstrable, the quotidian, to eke out new pathways where undisclosed nuggets lurk in mineralic mayhem.

I think one would be hard-pressed to attribute/apply the term ‘sane’ to our current global condition. 

Explorations in the Hinge domain keep me grounded. By connecting to the vigorously sentient restorative Lingual Power, Enlargement to a Vaster Potential ensues.

DC: You certainly count as one of the most prolific among my colleagues. Releasing 1 solo-efforted book every year for many years now. What does your ‘schedule’ look like? And if there is none, how do you manage to continue the prolific output of material(s)? What keeps you active?

HL: It always surprises me when others consider me ‘prolific’ as it does not feel that way to me. I mean, writers write, & if writing is one’s major focus, it seems natural that a rhythmic outflow would follow. I do not feel there is anything to champion about ‘prolific’ per se. Rilke produced roughly three books but the insights they contained were massive. How many does not concern me, how Illuminative does.

I keep active – I would use the term ‘charged’ – because I am drawn/intrigued/enchanted by the material I’m investigating. The beguiling activity of probing & fleshing-out terms such as Seep/Lurk/Lure & their constellates is ever-thrilling. I often feel like a mad scientist in his laboratory enthralled with the elixir of discovery. I view the terms I’ve been exploring – lurk, seep, lure, linger, meander, errancy, askew, bewilder, baffle, trespass, among others, – as the Resistance Fighters of today. They are all behaviorisms capable of eluding the blitzing technological suffocations, the gridded binary statistically loaded explanatory. 

I believe that if a reader attends to my applications (poems) with some attention, they will find strategies for avoiding the cultural momentum intent upon shutting down the human, of mangling the pure impulse. In this sense, they might even be considered survival guides.

Curious that in the second paragraph of Kerouac’s book the Vanity of Duluoz, he anguishes over the fact that “people have changed so much” commenting upon how the exuberance of walking has shrunk to a “slouching stroll  . . . is it because they’re used to walking across parking-lots only? Has the automobile filled them with such vanity that they walk like a bunch of lounging hoodlums to no destination in particular?” He remembers a healthy walk from 1935. I had to laugh when I read this because today even the activity of driving is being taken away from us as vehicles are becoming self-driven. Human shrivellization is occurring at an incredible pace. The shutdown is omnipresent, from dismemberment of limb to benumbnent of mind.

DC: Conversely, what do you think of capitalism’s relationship to productivity? 

HL: Not sure where the ‘converse’ in this question is unless you’re referring to poetic production in which case there is no parallel since, in my case anyway, there is no profit component involved. My books don’t sell enough to remunerate either myself or my stalwart & heroic publishers Joe Philips & Susan Wood of Black Widow Press.

I think it’s clear that capitalism’s relationship to productivity is a highly effective one. Capitalism has enabled hordes to be fed, clothed, & perpetually amused. Evaluating the benefits of this prosperity is subject matter for a separate discussion, but I would point readers to Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death which was published in 1986. I’m sure Mr. Postman could never have imagined the Pan-Screen Submit-Surrender-Succumb Syndrome infesting our lives today. Another source for evaluating the effects of the capitalist goodies-fest is Nicholas Carr’s well-balanced The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing To Our Brain.

I am leery of criticizing a system I don’t have a superior alternative to (untested envisionments, yes), but there is a pernicious element to capitalism which imperils any moral redemption & that ‘peril’ is the Profit motive. The responsibility of a Corporation (corporations control the majority of the planet’s resources) is to its shareholders. Shareholders invest with the expectation that their investment will increase in value. & the corporation’s enterprise value, as measured by its stock price, is a function of profitability. When ‘responsibility’ is defined by profit rather than any thought as to the ‘good’ or ‘sustainable’ or what negative planetary results could such an action cause, then clearly the planet is up for grabs & the result of this economic architectonic is what we have before us today: the dying days of the Earth.

As Dubuffet said, “Everything has to be reinvented,” or The Mother: “We must wage war against everything established.” 

Capitalism’s aim is ‘wealth’ production & what we (principally speaking for U.S.A. where I am a citizen) have been fed regarding what is wealth contributes to the “State of the American Mind Address.” Americans have been fed the notion that Wealth production, amassment, is the supreme Happiness & the pursuit of that happiness has been promised them in the constitution. But the concept of wealth that’s been disseminated as the Holy Grail is monomial & limited. Wealth in the capitalist system is countable, it can be calculated, measured, smelled, fondled, & spent. We can google the net worth of Elon Musk (156 billion as of 6/21/21), but how do we calculate the Wealth of a poet in their garret, an artist in their studio, a scientist in their laboratory, where the buzz bazooka bonkers eureka of creative exploration infuses their beings with rapturous jubilation. I believe it was Blake who said “Talent is Joy.” How do we measure Jubilation? The Hinge Institute has offered a course on Bafflement 101 & I think I will suggest we add Jubilation 101 to the curriculum. When speaking of ‘productivity’ how do we measure the quanta of Insight.

It is in the area of interior wealth that I feel Hinge is uniquely able to prosper. When persons discover the sheer thrill of the Hinge Encounter, trips to the mall will become boring, alcohol & drugs will be deemed deficient stimulants, Hollywood entertainments will appear dull, & consumption derided as an insufficiency cover-up. Those who feel Space Travel is the ultimate kick are the imaginatively deprived. That will be another course to add to the curriculum, Imagination 101. The majority live binary lives: 1). what can I sell 2). what can I buy. They are constricted to an unrewarding nothing-is-ever-enough transactional consciousness which is well-suited to burgeoning the American economy. The Hinge Universe, which emphasizes reveling natural capacities, eschews purchasing power as a viable launching pad to the Ecstatically Reverberant. Neither actively selling nor buying, the Poet is a threat to the national economy which in turn threatens the state of the union.

DC: In Hinge Theory, of which you are the originator, a posit is made that language is alive. Do you see language as a separate organism from the human organism? Or is it more so a part of our human being-ness? A combination of the two? Would language be alive without human beings?

HL: I see language as being part of the sentient universe like trees, clouds, frog, sprout. So yes, language would be alive without human beings as other pulsations can & will exist without the human animal. I believe it was Heidegger who said: “Language is the house of dwelling.”

DC: When I think of your work with Hinge Theory, I am often mentally drawn to William S. Burroughs, who posited something similar to what you’re doing with Hinge Theory. Although seemingly at the other end of the polarity. Where he estimated that language is a virus. What are your thoughts on this? When I hear “language is alive” my first thought is definitely not that it is alive as a virus. What are your thoughts on WSB’s observation? Do you agree? Disagree? Why?

HL: From what I remember from my Burroughs’s reading, which was many years ago, there is some overlap in our views on language. I think we both share the notion that language was here before the human being, that it arose out of the original gases & vapors, that it is primordial, reproductive, & sexy. As far as his thinking ‘language is a virus,’ that is his entitlement. For myself, language is language & a virus is a virus. When one attempts to reduce something to something else, you risk obscuring/diluting the something you’re transferring, robbing it of its indigenous integrity. Additionally, I don’t believe language requires a host as a virus does.

Recently I’ve been focused on what I call the Linguistically Undocumented which refers to a word’s under-recognized, marginal, border-line status. By submitting a word like LURK to multiple modules/formulations thereby provoking multiple exfoliations, the word appears fleshified, muscularized, densified as it evolves & matures. Hopefully, after a reader experiences over fifty LURK behaviorisms, they will become more intimate with the term. When they hear or see the word a bell of recognition will go off, their rapport with LURK will have enriched their world much as a birder studying a cardinal for months will feel that they now have a rapprochement with the cardinal, with their song, their mating & nesting habits, their postural dispositions. 

This is part of the campaign. To awaken persons to the Universe, to free ourselves from the culture of measurement & classification, to embrace the Immeasurably Incalculable.

DC: You also study animal behavior. Which sounds quite fascinating, and I imagine there are many parallels with your work away from and with the pen. Could you please elaborate on some of these parallels? Differences?

HL: That’s actually funny. When I moved to NYC from Los Angeles about 15 years ago, surrounded by a preponderance of human animals, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to learn more about my fellow creature, so, somewhat flippantly, I added that to my bio. No one has ever asked me what animal(s) I was studying.

Less flippantly, I have had some deep experiences with canines. In L.A., I helped train dogs for the sheriff’s department, principally in the area of scent & protection work. I also competed in the German dog sport of shutzhund. In New York I worked with a 2 dog team in protection training (there is a video of this on youtube with over 1.4million views…ironically, my poetry readings average 100 views).

My work with canines has indeed been one of the deep privileges I’ve been gifted. I will shy from your word ‘parallels’ as parallels do not ‘touch’ & substitute fuse/intercourse with. The animals taught (& continue to teach) deep humility because they are so sensitive, emotive, & canny. It exacerbates that Universities spend millions of dollars measuring (again that ‘measuring’ reflex) a dog’s intelligence with testing, calculations, studies, etc. What a waste of time & money! Anyone with any experience with dogs & animals know they are intelligent. One study shows that a mature dog can understand as many English words as a 7 year old. My experience indicates that a dog can pretty much understand whatever you have to say. With my 2 dog team (Emily & Nietzsche), I had only to think a thought & they would react. I did not even have to issue a command. I have rarely experienced that level of telepathic intensity. Who are we to rate a dog’s intelligence? How do you rate their olfactory intelligence? There are multiple intelligences & to try to format intelligence in accordance with our scale of values is to demean the universe around us.

A great Hinge event is cross-species intercourse. Intercourse here is used in the large sense of communication & mutual dealings. Dealing with animals is a wonderful spiritual exercise in excising the ego, . . . you can’t approach the essence of the ‘other’ if you are still self-entangled.

DC: Through our discussions over the years, it has been made clear that music has an important role in your creativity. What are you listening to these days? How has your relationship with music impacted your relationship with words, with language?

HL: The second part of your question elicits differing response-approaches. The normative reflex would be to list & delineate the various ways in which music has impacted my poetic practice, e.g., ‘Trane’s use of the augmented triad in the first chorus of  “One down, One Up,” shifted my imagistic relations while Elvin’s cascading triplet patterns suggested new possibilities for how line disjunction could enhance percussive power.’

This would be a slight response. By parceling & peeling-off slices of influence I would be betraying the enormity of influence. Sure, I could itemize & say that I consider Eric Dolphy  my poetic mentor, as I tried to emulate his sonic with my linguistic, that musicians such as Dizzy, Brownie, Jackie McClean, Horace Silver, Blakey, Bill Evans, Pharoah Sanders, Jim Hall, Wes, Trane, among others, changed my world as well as tunes like ‘Three Blind Mice,’ ‘Delilah,’ ‘Love Supreme,’’Passin’ Thru,’ ‘Kulu Se Mama,’ ‘Song For My Father,’ ‘One Down, One Up,’ & I’d just be getting started.

But rather than  pointing to an A/B causal relationship, e.g., Blakey’s press roll taught me how to develop line sustain, a vaster more fusionist approach asserts that I am my assimilations. From this perspective, all my life events  inter(mingle)(course) fecundate rotate & flux in creative ekstasis. I use the term ‘event’ rather than ‘experience’ because ‘event’ permits amalgam & does not preference a subject as having undergone the ‘experience.’

The short answer, then, to “how has your relationship with music impacted your relationship with words, with language?” would be: Yes, it has. But more precisely then ‘impacted,’ which sets up a binary division between music & my poetry, would be to say that music has fused/merged been assimilated/absorbed into my self, the being that I am. Included in that assimilation would also be artists – Giacometti, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Soutine, Agnes Martin, Pollock, Franz Klein, Linda Lynch, to name a few – as well as canines, certain oak, cherry & birch trees, the brook in my backyard, thunderstorms, twilight & so forth. Nothing is alien. This is the Great Cosmic Smooch. The intercrackling rainbow warble fluting from whale brow. To isolate & sort so I can say this relationship produced this result is simply not applicable. To simplify through reduction sucks out the Savor, destitutes Sapience.

Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of 50’s & 60’s jazz as well as songbirds. I live in the woods & the birdsong this year has been unusually fertile.

DC: What was one gratifying thing that was said to you, in relation to and/or following the release of LURK?

HL: One gratifying comment that was emailed to me:

“I started reading LURK out loud, as is my wont, and my Polish sweetheart’s boy said to me ‘what is that, some sort of incantation?’ You see how attuned youth can be!”