James Lee Jobe responds

James Lee Jobe: I was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1956. I had a messed up childhood which isn't unusual since the Industrial Revolution. I split time between parents; inner-city Baltimore and rural East Texas. I knocked around a lot as a young adult, I was a serious drifter, and I enjoyed that life. I settled down at thirty and became a family man, and began a 25 year career in radio. DJ, newsguy, traffic reporter, commercial producer, morning show talent, morning show producer -- mostly DJ. I am retired from that with not much money. Today I work with a local homeless shelter and with my church, I host 2 poetry series and teach a poetry workshop. My health could be better.

DV: How did you decide to become a poet?

JLJ: I didn't. I was born a poet. I have been writing poetry continuously since 3rd grade, age 8. I was always prolific, but a dozen or so years ago I decided I would write a poem every day, no matter what. Even a rough thought about the math tells you I have thousands of poems. I don't have a degree, and didn't pursue the academic life, but I have had some fine teachers, just taking classes and workshops over the years. Robert Hass, Andrei Codrescu, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Hannah Stein - they were the best, I suppose. Early on I read an essay by Robert Bly about taking on a poetry mentor or two. They didn't have to know it or even be alive, but one needs to study every word they published. I took on Bly and Pablo Neruda immediately, and others later. Once you are in that deep, you are never turning back. I have a hard time understanding the 'casual' poet; the one who writes a poem every now and then. Why do they bother? Either the passion is there or it isn't, and if it isn't, you're kidding yourself.

DV: I guess I'm guilty of being a casual poet, then, in that I write when the "spirit moves me." That's when the passion is there, and not in a diurnal fashion. I was never able to keep a journal or save works in progress -- they either happened or they didn't, though sometimes they took a long time to gel. But poets are as different as their poems -- I don't intuitively see much commonality between Bly, Neruda, Hass, Codrescu.... Or between their work and yours. 

JLJ: What makes you think I picked teachers for their commonality? How dull would that be, if everyone I studied, or studied with, were alike? I wish I could have 100 teachers, all of them different! With Bly and Neruda, however, I would think there is some commonality and that it is obvious, especially since Bly was one of the first Americans to translate Neruda and that the Spanish poets of a century ago were the major influence on his early career. On a Fullbright in Norway, Bly first read Federico Lorca Garcia, Neruda, Juan Ramon Jimenez, and Antonio Machado; it changed everything for him. None of that was available in America then, the mid 1950s. He translated all of those poets. There is a 'common' ecstatic quality in their work. Codrescu, I was in Baltimore at the same time he was teaching there. He also had a column in a local paper and I liked his writing. This was before his NPR work and before Exquisite Corpse. A brilliant poet and a madman teacher! There were always good looking girls around him, too, and I was single and young then. Hass, he does workshops here and there from time to time; you would be crazy not to take one or more if you could. Poet Laureate of the United States. Stein and DeWitt are local, and both gave me a strong discipline in editing. Brilliant women, both.

DV: I understand that you are being considered as the poet laureate of Davis. What would that post entail?

JLJ: I have no idea where I stand with that. I don't even know how many of us are competing! What would I do with it? Create new work for official functions, like the 4th of July picnic, political issues; a certain number of them per year are required in the two year term, but it isn't that many and I love that sort of thing, so I would be bugging them for more. Also I offered to be available for any classroom to workshop or read age appropriate work. And it would be my intention to publish an anthology of local poets, of which there are many. We have an active scene. I already host two poetry reading series and teach a poetry workshop. I keep busy, and would gladly get busier for my little city. I truly love Davis. 

DV:  Have you ever written that sort of official "occasional" poetry? 

 

JLJ: Never! It will be a new and challenging experience. I like that.

DV: Your early life is quite a contrast to your mature, settled life. Which part do you think has been more conducive to your muse?

JLJ: Being mature and settled has been far better for me. I know I don't speak for everyone. You don't need to be young and in love, and you don't need to be in Paris or San Francisco to write. You need the discipline to sit down every day and work! The material to write about is all around you, wherever you are. Picasso said, and I am paraphrasing here, inspiration finds you more often with perspiration. Something like that. In my thirties and forties, I had a family to raise, to look out for. Responsibility is a  great teacher. In my fifties, kids grown, I adopted William Stafford's habit of writing a poem a day, every single day, no matter what. That discipline is a wonderful thing; for me, it opened a door. Poems come in all the time. Again, I want to stress that I am talking about myself here, not poets in general. Everyone has their own process, and I respect that.

DV: What do you think makes a poem "great"?

JLJ: What Thelonious Monk or Beethoven does with music, do that with language. That's great. Beethoven could take the pain of his existence and depict incredible beauty with it. To show the pain, that isn't so hard, but to create something beautiful from it that lasts forever, as long as people last, that's brilliant. That's great. Garcia Lorca was wonderful at that, exactly that. Li Po, too. William Stafford. But even that isn't enough of an answer. Whitman didn't do that, and Whitman is great. In his case being totally unique and original is great. What is great to me might not matter at all. What's great to each individual? I need simple beauty in the language. I need clear images. I need to feel. This was the toughest question so far! I do believe I have failed to give you a solid answer.

DV: You certainly aren't the first to fail. You probably would have been the first to succeed. It isn't technical mastery, though that's a big part of it -- probably less so over the last century. There are a lot of pitch-perfect poets who are forgotten or were never known. I suppose being famous during one's lifetime is an advantage, compared to being discovered posthumously -- and even more so now with the infinite-like number of poetry blogs and ebooks in existence. A look at "the canon" of even a half century ago, as  indicated by the anthologies of the time, bears little resemblance to today's canon. Attitudinal changes play a part -- Rudyard Kipling goes unread due to people's objections to his supposed imperialism. And the list of non-qualifiers goes on and on. Personal taste would be the criterion for MY list of great poets but that evades the larger question. I suppose the answer to what makes a poem great is much more cultural, and traditional, than it is strictly literary, and dependent on "expert consensus." But I am no closer to answering the question than anyone else. I was hoping YOU could answer it! To return to your own poetic journey, do you still have any work from your Drifting Days that you wouldn't mind sharing? In what ways has your poetry changed since you've entered your Settled Period?

JLJ: A lot of it was silly. I had a whole group of Godzilla poems, for example, wherein Godzilla represented 'Everyman.' For example, it was loneliness that drove him to destroy Tokyo. Also I wrote a lot about Baltimore as if it were representative of typical western society. It isn't! None of it exists unless you could find some of the original publications they were in. In a moment of grief in 1983 I burned everything I had in a 55 gallon steel drum, in an alley off Cathedral Street in Baltimore. A dear friend had killed herself, and I decided to not write again. That only lasted a few weeks. I have everything since then. Here is an example of a very old poem. I hadn't been 'settled' too long when I wrote it. It is reflective of my tone and voice at around 30.

What the Hog Said

They give me food, so I stay. How wonderful to have nothing more
expected from you than pleasant obesity. I eat, therefore I am. It is

so beautiful the way the corn goes down, the joy of the swallowing;
the humans miss all that. They worry about numbers, bolts of cloth,

what color the shed is, and why the chickens aren’t laying. Fools!
The food is why I am here! I eat now, so they can eat later; it is a

simple plan. If not for the glorious food I’d push on, move west.
I’d stand on my hind legs and just walk away from it all.

These days I give myself tasks; I wrote poems based on lines by Rumi, Lao Tzu, and George Trakl, 20 poems each. I spent a year writing nothing but prose poems. I spent two years writing everything in lower case (even paying my bills) to soften my voice. Currently I am not using titles at all to make sure my poems stand alone, without outside definition of any kind. And I still take on tasks of study, for example, having taken on a practice of Zen Buddhism, I studied the Zen poets of China and Japan for over a year. I learned the Japanese form, Haibun, and wrote a few dozen of those, and a fair amount of haiku. I teach a poetry workshop. Whatever the participants are assigned, I do as well. And I host two poetry reading series that keeps me in touch with a lot of poets and what they are doing. All of these things are good for your work, I believe.

DV: What is your current "task"?

JLJ: My current task is short, untitled poems with a Zen theme or ending, that focus on place, setting. And that place is here, the Sacramento Valley. That isn't all I write, but it is the main task at the moment. I still write at a poem a day, and I edit or re-edit two or three others. Editing usually goes like this; what I call the first draft is really the first typed draft. I write first by longhand, almost everything. I wait a full month for the second draft, and several months for the third. I like to forget why I wrote a poem when I am editing it. I like to forget the first edits when doing the second ones. It helps me be objective, that kind of distance. I keep them in computer files of 30 to 40 poems. For example, when folder 80 is full, I start editing folder 79 and putting new poems in folder 81. Later in the day I will be editing from folder 60 or so. I go back into older folders more at random.  I am on folder 150, currently.

DV: When do you release these falcon poems into the wind?

JLJ: Daily. I blog everything, every draft. Every couple of years I delete the entire blog, so that the poems go away, and I start another blog. The deleted poems get submitted. The bulk of the poems going out right now are from 2013-2015. And older, sometimes. Most editors don't want things that already exist somewhere, even a blog, so this works for their needs as well as mine. If I send you some poems, you can Google them and not find anything. That said, at 61 I am not as interested in publishing as I once was. Most of what is published now happens when a publication asks me to send in some work. Why? My blog gets hundreds of 'hits' everyday. More people than ever read my poems every year than all of the years put together that I spent in 'littles,' pre-internet. It's a system I like as the response is immediate.

DV: Are your ethereal blogs thematic? For instance, your current one is "Zen." Does that indicate the subject matter or is it just a cosmetic brand name?

JLJ: No. There is no theme to the blog. I am trying for some Zen work now, but I will still be on this blog when I have moved on. The blogs are a tool; they save the poems until the final versions are backed up elsewhere. Also the blogs are for you, the reader, just to read for fun. I actually did one themed blog a long time ago; it was the least read one of all!

DV: You say that Baltimore is not a typical American city (actually, you said western, I suppose in the sense of Europe and its cultural descendants, so I'm taking you out of context). In what ways is it not typical? And, based on your wide travels, which cities do you regard as typical? (And, of course, the question that always most bedeviled my students: Why?)

JLJ: Go there. Don't stay around the Inner Harbor. Stay in Charles Village or Highlandtown. Go bowling.  It has its own accent, style, foods, and is heavy in R & B music, but what do people know? Orioles and Ravens. First of all, Baltimore is a poor city.  And I don't mean just city funds, I mean in terms of people living below the poverty level. Maryland, as states go, is not that poor. But the biggest city? Visit Annapolis or the Eastern Shore. A lot of old money. And Baltimore is violent. It competes with Chicago in murder numbers, and Chicago makes like 4 or 5 Baltimores. It can be really ugly. Boarded up slums with junky squatters. Gangs that rove on mopeds, armed to the teeth. People in bandages wherever you go. Baltimore is funny. Baltimoreans (often, BaltoMorons) are hilarious. Strangers talk to strangers and it's like listening to a stand-up routine. And they can be really homely. I know, that's cruel, but get on a city bus and scan the crowd. If you are a '5,' in Baltimore you're a '10.' Next, where is it? Randomly ask some of your students where Baltimore is, exactly. No phones allowed. Is it north or south of Richmond? New York? Philly? Over a million people in the metro area, yet a big ol' hunk of America doesn't know where it is. No writer has ever captured it right. Not John Waters, not Anne Tyler. But they get close at times. What is a typical city? Dallas. Houston. Oklahoma City. Salt Lake City. Manchester, England. Liverpool. An OK downtown. An OK arts scene. A lot of successful industry. Huge, endless sprawling suburbs that are identical. Am I stereotyping? Yeah, but not that much. What is an exceptional city? New York. London. New Orleans. San Francisco. Portland (Oregon, not Maine). Austin. Paris. Cities that are unique, fun, vibrant, and survive all the changes that time throws at them. Cities with panache. Baltimore isn't exceptional or typical. It's downright weird sometimes. Sometimes I miss the weirdness, but I have adopted Davis as home, and home it is.

DV: Why don't you make it one of your tasks to become THE chronicler of Baltimore? Your remarks here seem like the kernels of some really colorful, insightful poems.

 

JLJ: A Baltimore poem pops up every now and then. Baltimore has a fine poetry scene, it always has. I'll leave it to those who are living it now. A lot of my poems center on place; it's always been that way. Baltimore had its turn. Now it's the Sacramento Valley. I write about what's in front of me; my valley, my town, my creek, my home, my life, my beliefs. 

FV: Do you have any Davis/Sacramento Valley poems for us?

JLJ: Four poems, untitled:

--
I live in this huge valley, right in the middle.

I’m ninety miles west of the Sierra Nevada mountains,

And about the same east of the Pacific Ocean.

People go there, to both places, for the beauty,

And both are beautiful. But so is my valley.

It is a more subtle beauty than vast mountains

Or the wide and tossed ocean. Beauty rests here.

In the shade of a century-old elm or valley oak.

In the sigh of a Delta breeze kissing the grass.

The magpies and raccoons know it,

And the river otters and wild turkeys. And me.

--

Those wild finches, they appear and disappear 

In a flash, sometimes one will land on my patio 

Or in my yard, and peck around. Just a moment 

Or two, and then gone again. Where do they live, 

Where do they sleep? So tiny and delicate, so free, 

In a valley as big as all that,

In a world as big as anything.

--

Wake up, Mother! The Tule elk herd

Is moving across the Sacramento Valley

Like dancers on an old television show.

Wake up, there is cancer in the air

So you will feel right at home. O Mother,

The herd has made it to the edge of the valley

On the slope of the Vaca Hills. Even now

They are moving under the darkness

Of the oaks and into the buckbrush.

Before they disappear, let’s give one a name.

---

Yolo County, Sacramento Valley.

Light in the winter morning,

A gray glow through the tule fog,

A fog that sits low across the bottom lands,

Hugging the creeks and blanketing the reeds and oleander,

A gray sunrise that is just barely kissing the dawn,

And the silver sky is low, all is still,

An easy light, gentle and gray,

A love, a thought, a hope.

And the creeks themselves,

Cache Creek and Putah Creek,

Dark and cold and fast,

Rinsing the earth,

Washing away the dust of summer with winter's bath,

Like dancers to a wild Spanish mambo,

Sisters of the rock and bone of living,

The blood veins to the body of the valley,

As strong as gods, full of life,

And full of death.

The valley is a marsh,

A garden for herons and waterbirds,

A green grocer for any who would tend it, love it,

Treat it like a mother or a daughter,

The soil made rich and sweet from the centuries spent under water,

When this valley was a great sea,

From water to soil to table to stomach,

Worked with love.

It is winter,

It is morning,

Another fine day in our valley.

DV: I guess it is fitting that we should close our conversation with these wonderful vignettes. Thank you so far for your time and forthrightness.

JLJ: You're very welcome. I enjoyed it. Let's both keep promoting poetry; there is something in poetry that is often missing in many lives.