Chelsey Minnis poem & interview
Can you type a dialogue you've had in real life that you remember and liked?Sad-OMy sadness feels like heavy earrings that makes my head ache.
Someday I would like to spend too much money on a shag rug so that I could lie
down upon it and not smell one scent from my childhood.
When I'm about to get angry, that's when I start to feel good...
I stare out the window, unprincipled as a tiger...
If anyone tries to comfort me I will vomit on the balustrade.
If anyone asks me why I'm like this I will say "im gon tu kil u!!!"
As a child I totally squandered my love on my parents and was, as a result,
crucified on a cross†.
I will spit out my food if anyone tries to imply anything...
Sometimes an arrow starts to come out of my head like I'm bored → I'm bored →
And then another arrow comes out like I want to read a book ↑ I want to read a
book ↑
I try to stay bored for a while but then I start to become amused...
I want to put makeup on people's eyes so they can look like damned darlings...
People keep talking...But it is hard to stop them when I only want to be petted...
I can barely listen to what they're talking about. They're talking about someone
who wants them...
Can you type a dialogue you've had in real life that you remember and disliked?Man (walking in door): “Baby?”
Woman (sitting on couch watching tv): “Baby?”
Woman (getting up off couch) “Baby!”
Man: “Baby!”
Was that before your reading at NYU a few weeks ago? How was that reading?Cab Driver: “Where are you going?
Woman: “58 W. 10th st”
Cab Driver: Silence
Cab Driver “What are the cross streets?”
Woman: “Oh, um, I don’t know? Um, I think they’re 10th and Greenwich
Ave.”
Cab Driver: “Where are you going?”
Woman: “It’s NYU…it’s ..”
Cab Driver: (interrupting) “I don’t know where that is”
Woman: “oh...”
Cab Driver: (interrupting) “I need the cross streets. I don’t know
where that is.”
Woman: “Oh I have the directions right here…” (hands over printout of
directions)
Cab Driver: “What is that? No. that doesn’t help. That doesn’t help me.
See, I don’t want that. I don’t know…” (on and on berating the woman)
Woman: (getting pissed) “Uh…”
I see on the Internet that you read with Michael Earl Craig. How was that reading?Yes. I think the reading was enjoyable. At the end there were questions from the audience and I felt very embarrassed because I started to talk about how I want to quit poetry and how I’m so sick of it—and everyone in the audience looked aghast and discouraged*. Then a couple of the other poets who were also reading said “But, we like poetry!” and I suddenly realized I had been creating a powerful negative vortex and I was sorry for it, so I tried to recover and nod my head and act as though I too, enjoyed “the life of the imagination” or whatever the heck they were talking about.
*I don't think everyone was aghast and discouraged because "I, Chelsey Minnis" wanted to quit poetry but because most of them were graduate students in poetry and had such hopefulness for themselves and their poetry...and they didn't need to see someone ragging it out...
When people Google your name they will get to this post now, I think. What do you want people who are Googling your name after reading your poetry to know about you? Or to know about anything, even if it’s not about you? Can you type that here?I felt like there was a “death valley” in the middle of my reading-but I hadn’t done any readings for a long time and I was pretty nervous. There was someone in the audience who actually called out a “request" for Michael Earl Craig to read a certain poem! (They were like, “Read the “waffler” poem!). I was like, “he totally planted that person in the audience.”
Chelsey Minnis is the author of BAD BAD (Fence, 2007) and ZIRCONIA (Fence, 2001). Read her here, here, here. Wave Books will publish her next book, POEMLAND, in 2009.Oh, I don’t really want them to know anything about me or anything about anything, I guess! I know it’s very pessimistic but I assume that when people are googling your name it’s because they never liked you and they want to make fun of you by seeing what misguided things you’ve been doing to try to promote yourself.
14 Comments:
i think chelsey should be allowed to quit poetry if she desires. and nobody should be yelling at her for it because it takes more courage to stop something than it does to be bored while doing it.
tell her to pay me $500 and I will help her quit poetry
here is a client testimonials of my services:
"I called ryan after my one-hundreth publication. I wanted leave poetry 'on top' but didn't think I was capable of leaving on my own. ryan was very persuasive, and eventually broke my wrist in three places and put me in a wheelchair. I am no longer writing or reading poetry and I couldn't be happier."
"some offer this service for $100 or $50 or even $5 dollars. but you get what you pay for in life. ryan will fuck you up, poetically, and you'll quit cooooooold turkey"
" excellent customer service. excellent excellent excellent"
"ryan is so good at what he does, I married him after he helped me quit poetry. thank you snookums"
i now love chelsey minnis.
thank you.
i love chelsey minnis too. she's exciting. her ne'er do well-wishing bad attitude inspires me to an irrational hope. i like that when i google her name there is almost nothing there but the books and this then reconfirms everything that i find exciting about her work. i'm not sure if i believe in chelsey minnis entirely, but i really want to. i wish i had a thousand dollars that i could anonymously send her if it helped her to keep writing. but i would understand if she quit. i wish i had a thousand dollars anyway.
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i like the poem, and the interview. a good post.
Tao, I like your reading of "Sad-O" on Weird Deer. I like Chelsey Minnis.
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Hey, Chelsey. It is me. Loretta. I've been wanting to get in touch with you just to find out how you are. I am not really interested in leaving my phone number on an internet site, so I will just go on searching for you in other ways. Would you like Spumoni with that?
I am that guy googling your name after reading and really digging your poetry. I am commenting two years after this interview and wonder if you have given up poetry. It would be ironic. I was googling to find your contact info to solicit you for an online journal I'm trying to start: boojournal.wordpress.com. I suppose I'm glad I found this article first, just because it will make me give up early in the process of finding your contact info.
I suggest not "giving up" poetry. Though i can certainly relate to the desire, I think it may be misguided. I think you would find everything else you try just as meaningless and burdensome and ridiculous. It's all pretty equally unsatisfying; I think you're just focusing on the unsatisfyingness of poetry because that's what you're trying to invest in currently (2 years ago). Perhaps some distance from the practice would renew some forgotten ideas of why you started the habit in the first place, but most people (me)seem to put way too much faith in poetry, like it will save something somehow, and then it's dissappointing when it doesn't. I find when I go away from poetry for a while I can usually approach it with more realistic expectations, if i come back.
Regardless, if none of that applies and you will (have) give it up anyway, I suggest not discussing it with other people before hand.
I enjoy your work. i hope you're content doing whatever you're doing.
nick demske
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is this our generations version of poete maudit?
i am reading this because i googled her name after reading her poetry.
i like her negative vortex
i think anyone who read Bad Bad ought to anticipate the possibility of a negative vortex being created.
People have, in addition to positive thoughts, negative thoughts to share; and the author seems like, if nothing else, a Person
i think there are people who arent allowed into the superface club, where everything is superficial.
these people are usually amazing/crazy/whatever, but they might hate being alive because there arent many rewarding rewards. all the schwag is in the superface club.
outside of that, everything crumbles in the cynical gloves
maybe Minnis wants to quit poetry because it isnt real enough
it is a way to speak, but speaking isnt real enough
cut the cord which feeds from the superface club's soda fountain...
all words are high fructose corn syrup?
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