Suzanne Lummis: An Interview

by

Daniel M. Jaffe

Suzanne Lummis is a poet who repeatedly inspires “ah ha!” moments in her readers—moments of insight, recognition, understanding. She is author of the collections In Danger (The Roundhouse Press—California Poetry Series) and Idiosyncracies (Illuminati), and the chapbook, Falling Short of Heaven (Pennywhistle). Her poetry appears in several prestigious anthologies: Everyman’s Library anthology Poems of the American West (Knopf); How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets (Heyday Books); Poetry as Purpose: Poetry of the Western States (The Autry Museum of Western Heritage with Sun & Moon Press); Poetry Daily: 366 Poems (Sourcebooks, Inc.); and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Heyday Books).

Currently the editor of the poetry and arts publication, Speechless The Magazine, Suzanne is the founding Director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival (LAPF), which, under her principal editorial direction, published Grand Passion: The Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond.

Also, Suzanne is one of the Nearly Fatal Women known for the serio-comic performance trio of that name. She wrote the lyrics for a children's musical production of Twelfth Night produced in California by the ETC Theater Company, and wrote two plays of her own, October 22, 4004 B.C., Saturday and Night Owls, for which she received Los Angeles Drama-Logue Playwriting awards.

In Danger contains many poems strong in mood. I asked Suzanne which comes first when she writes, a mood or a poem’s particular subject? How does she decide whether a poem should be ironic, tragic, tragic-comic? She replied, “Oh I'm so glad you noticed, felt, mood in certain of these poems. That's an aspect of my poetry that matters to me a great deal, and it’s not talked about much in the literary monde. That is, in published conversations and interviews with poets, reviews and essays and so on—mood, atmosphere, they don’t come up much.  These days people—well, some people—talk about linearity, syntax, narrative, shattering the narrative. Actually I don't know what they're all talking about now, what’s the newest and latest. I read one poet’s bio note, something like, ‘In my poetry I aspire to disrupt syntax and disengage words from their conventional meaning.’ Doesn't that just make you go, ‘Wow, wait a minute! Let me make myself a drink, get a slice of cake, turn Charlie Parker on low, and slip down onto the chaise lounge with my peach margarita and this guy's poetry.’  
 
“Anyway, I’m off-topic. It’s one of those hard ‘which comes first’ questions, but I think many times, for me—in certain poems, not all—mood precedes subject. Mood can trump everything. At times, though not always, mood, in a poem can have a more palpable impact then emotion. No, well, a different impact. It’s something that comes up from under. Mood and atmosphere. It can have a narcotizing effect. Plath’s ‘The Moon and the Yew Tree,’ my god. Certain things by Weldon Kees, a couple of the Robinson poems. And of course there are great examples in fiction, too. Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays. Every time I read that book I feel as if someone's slipped some black market sedative into my coffee.”    

When reading In Danger, one feels the influence of film noir. Suzanne explained that “it's even more true of my next manuscript of poetry, Open 24 Hours. Film noir helped me evolve my creative approach to urban violence and the ever present possibility of danger. What I like about the best of those black and white low budget films of the 40s and 50s is that quality of cool detachment, but also the absence of graphic sensationalism in their handling of violence. Certain types of contemporary movies, for example, seem detached in some respects but really depend on a carnival delight in murder and mayhem.  And their exploitation apparatus is in full swing; anything goes so long as it pays off at the box office.  I find that so uninteresting—‘common’ in the earlier sense of the word, low and illiterate.  

“But, as much as anything, film noir can be recognized by its style—and again, mood and atmosphere, a pervasive tone. Noir style results in that detached manner that interests me. By ‘detachment’ I mean these movies, the best of them, don't broadcast a sense of pity or appeal to the audience's sympathy, no sentiment. The noir doctrine goes,  'It's a tough world, baby. Get wise. Get used to it. Watch your back. Watch your step. And if you get caught in some jam, don’t come crying to us. We warned you.’   
 
“In The Lady from Shanghai Orson Welles observes, ‘It’s a hard, bright, shiny world.’ Or was it ‘cold, bright, shiny?’ Something like  that.
 
“I don't mean to say this is my view. I'm fairly sure I can't sum up my world view in one sleek line. And I myself am moved to pity. All the time. But that sort of emotion by itself won't serve my writing, won’t help me—not directly anyway—with the task at hand, which is to turn out a poem I’m pleased with, a poem that doesn’t go headfirst into every pitfall available these days.  But from the noir disposition, the noir attitude, I got an idea, or hints—how to take on certain subjects without melodrama, sentimentality or a righteous, self-congratulatory tone.”  

One poem from In Danger that fascinated me was “No Metamorphosis,” a play on Kafka’s story, “Metamorphosis.” I asked Suzanne how she came up with the idea for the poem, and she emailed a poetic reply:
           
         “It's actually a massive rewrite of a poem published a few years earlier that
also involved cockroaches. The first, I decided,
         was more silly than clever, less clever than glib, so I went at it again,
retaining—in the end—no more than four of five lines of the
         original.   

         “I've come upon many poems on this subject, and the odd thing is I've
never seen a bad one. No, never a
         bad poem  about cockroaches. But I've read, heard, tons of lousy poems
about mothers, fathers, relationships, death
         and sickness, birth, love, anger—any sort of emotion, if the poem is only
about the emotion—society and politics—any
         subject on which you're convinced you're right, even if you are right—as
well as many uninteresting poems on not being able
         to write a poem. Which is not to say such points of focus never work.
Obviously these subjects have yielded good and great
         poems, immortal poems. But they don't steer the poet away from bad
habits, if he's got some of those.  
 
         “I believe poems about cockroaches tend to work well because, for one, the
poets in question inevitably either live among the
         creatures or have memories of residing in such dwellings, and they truly
know them—their appearance and little behaviors. These
         writers file very specific reports from the front on the never-ending
struggle between humans and roaches. No poet generalizes on
         this subject, ever.  And no two poems on this topic are alike. Lucille Clifton
has a wonderful little piece called, I think, ‘Killing
         the Roaches.’ And Martin Espada's is called ‘My Cockroach Lover’ and
begins ‘The summer I slept/ on JC's couch,/ there
         were roaches/ between the bristles/ of my toothbrush,/ roaches pouring/
from the stereo . . .’  
 
         “Right off you feel the physicality and energy of the language. Also, to
some extent the subject tends to draw writers of a
         certain sophistication, because the middling poets might still be busy
writing that they can never forgive their fathers (thirty years
         later), and the really amateur poets dwell on Life (which is big) and Time
(which passes).  
 
         “Well I've come this far and haven't quite answered your question, but I'll
give you a hint about ‘No Metamorphosis.’ I was thinking
         about the one immortal story that stars a roach, the unfortunate
transformation of Gregor Samsa, and thinking a bit about Ovid, too.
         The poem notices certain possible similarities between roaches and
humans, or at least the one human who appears in the poem. It
         notes differences too but maybe these differences aren't as large,
meaningful and permanent as one would wish.    
 
         “Incidentally, my current residence of many years has no roaches.”     
             
Another of Suzanne’s poems that captivated me was “Writer’s Block.” I asked if she could talk a bit about what inspired it. She explained that,                    

         “. . . as a teacher I sometimes receive poems about staring at a white page.
Often there will
         be lines like ‘What shall I write about? I've got to have something for class!
My mind's a blank!’  The students don't realize
         this has been done before—they think it might be fairly original. I usually say
'first off, all stop staring at the dang blank page
         and get something going on in your poem. You can't write, O.K., but do
something. Trot down Doheny or up Silverlake cursing
         quietly to yourself because you can't write. That is, in the poem. Get off your
duff—give yourself an action.’  
 
         “‘Writer's Block’ came about after a stretch of time when I hadn't written.
Finally I interviewed myself about the problem
         (that is, before attempting a poem). I asked myself, O.K. what's the deal?
Why can't you write?  The answer came back, Because
         right now there's not some great, generative emotion in my life. And my
interviewer self went, Tsk, Amateur!  Well what's causing
         you the most emotion, great or not? The answer came back, The fact that I
can't write. And my bossy self replied, ‘Then, write
         about that!’ (duh).  
 
         “And at that point I sat down and wrote the poem you're asking about. But
you'll notice there's no blank page and no frustrated
         writer staring at it. In the poem I get drunk. And it's true that someone once gave
me a jar of Kahlua that eventually turned sticky and
         could only be eaten with a spoon. I put that jar in the poem though, really, by
that time the Kahlua had been spooned up long ago.  
        
         “‘Writer's Block’ broke my writers block.”

Suzanne is adept at seeing significance in the ordinary.  Does this sort of perception come naturally, or did she have to train herself to view the world this way?  

“You know,” said Suzanne, “for that I've got to credit my age. God knows there's not much else to praise in my age, except modern dentistry, tap water in every home, electricity, the movies . . . okay, there's quite a lot. That way of noticing the oddness or loveliness or some particularity in the commonplace, though, this is something that contemporary poetry's pretty good at.  Come to think of it, it may be the outstanding quality of the poetry of our times, the way many of today's best poems insist that we look again at these seemingly ordinary, even lowly, things, objects of bland domesticity, brutish creatures and insects, scuffed street corners. . . . Whatever once seemed too low for the subject of poetry can now be the subject of poetry.   

“I'd be giving myself way too much credit if I said it came naturally. I learned it.  I learned it from all my great teachers, Peter Everwine, Chuck Hanzlicek, Pulitzer Prize-winning Philip Levine (who would probably rather not be labeled "Pulitzer Prize-winning Philip Levine"). I also studied for one semester with Mark Strand, poet laureate in 1990. My first poetry teacher was Ingrid Salisbury, now Ingrid Wendt.  

“That's a lot of teachers' names for readers to wade through, but for me it’s a lot of good luck. If I hadn't had the opportunity to work with such good poetry teachers my own poetry would—excuse me while I slip into some vernacular—suck.”

Readers wishing to learn more about Suzanne Lummis’s work can check her website, and Speechless The Magazine.


Dan is the author of The Limits of Pleasure, a rather controversial novel nominated by some for awards and by others for public burning (well, almost).  A former corporate lawyer, he shed his suits to become a rebel with a cause—creative freedom in life and art. Dan frequently publishes short stories and personal essays in literary journals and newspapers such as The Forward, Green Mountains Review and The Florida Review. He compiled and edited With Signs and Wonders: An International Anthology of Jewish Fabulist Fiction, and translated Here Comes the Messiah!, a Russian-Israeli novel by Dina Rubina. He also teaches fiction writing for UCLA Extension. Dan can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and his web site is http://danieljaffe.tripod.com