Tim Seibles on Writing in the Trump Era [by Nin Andrews]

NA: In this era of Trump and the Republican stranglehold on truth, I have been having a hard time writing, or even thinking about writing. I feel helpless when I read the news or talk to people who are so politically different from me. Yesterday, I was at the doctor’s office, listening to two elderly white men talk about how great Sean Hannity is, and how our country is, at last, in good hands.  I could feel my blood pressure sky-rocketing. Afterwards, I sat at my desk, and instead of typing, I stared out the window, thinking of Roethke's lines, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see,/ I meet my shadow in the deepening shade . . .” 

I began to wonder, how are others coping? I thought I’d ask a few other poets, starting with Tim Seibles. 

NA: How are you coping in the Trump era? Are you writing? 

TS: During these times of Trump—times of idiocy, corruption and the resultant despair—I have found writing to be a place of energizing solace.  Though it is an illusion (at least in part), when I’m working on a poem, I feel like I’m talking back to the horror and cultivating some form of resistance to the infection that this administration represents.  Poetry, whether it be raging, broken-hearted, or ecstatic, is life affirming. It reminds those who are interested that others also suffer and yearn and see the trouble.  In some ways—both obvious and not—poetry itself means that being alert emotionally and intellectually is worthwhile.  In my darkest moments, I still believe that such engagement will help decide what kind of future will follow this insane period.

NA: Please share a couple of poems on the topic.

TS: 

KNOCK-KNOCK

It’s quiet—
like a fly
in a frog’s mouth. 

Say something
loud
but secret
like starlight
banging on a bug’s back,

something
so true
that
just the suggestion

un-hands the clocks—

why pretend
that I’m not
what I am:

a hard-on
held by the head nun,
that rogue fart in the flower shop,
freak branch
on the family tree,
that mad song
in a mum city—I am that
misfit music, that
two-headed Ken,

that Whoopsupsidethehead,
antsinyourpants
whatcanIsay:

I bum-rush the world,
find another world inside:
that last chance,
the lost choir,
that Ghost Dance
come again—

who says

we can’t

be free?

NOT NEARLY ENOUGH          #2
                        for Cesar Vallejo

Yesterday, maybe—tomorrow perhaps,
but today, no one is reading
my poems, no one at all!
It’s as if my whole life
has been covered like a parrot’s cage,
so everybody can get some sleep.

I didn’t mean to shout, to blaspheme,
to interrupt, curse, use slang, obsess?
over women’s thighs.  I did not
mean to cause trouble    did I?
Maybe I did.  Of course, I did—

but for the best possible reasons:

• There’s no pretty way to fight ugliness.
• There’s not nearly enough love going around,
• nowhere near an adequate array of sexual
• collaborations: in fact, a wild lack
• of empathy and daring, especially
• from God who has fallen wildly
• short of my expectations.

Where is the man who sees war on TV
and runs screaming naked down the street
with the head of his johnson flapping
back and forth, thigh to thigh
like a flag in a jock-less wind!?

And, with her marvelously chocolate booberoos
glossed with sunlight and saliva, where is
the woman who bursts into Our Lady of Hope
Cathedral singing Tell me somethin’ good!?

We see children, we were children—
with dolls that peed, with wooden trucks,
with wind-up frogs, and hide & seek—
who knew better than what our parents said.
Tell me: how did we let these fuckheads run the world
off the road?!  We cannot snuggle our brains
up our asses and wonder why morons
come to power with their sad toupees,
their burger-driven breath, their prune-sized
hearts    and wonder why our lives fit like
barbed wire brassieres!  Am I right or am I wrong??

This is mostly what I’ve been trying to get at
with poetry, but maybe I overdo, maybe
I pile on, maybe I’m impatient, maybe I’ve lost sight
of what people really want, which is to cuddle
the status quo like a syphilitic teddy bear! 
My mother used to say—before giving me
a good spanking—
You have gotten beside yourself, you
onion-headed little maniac.  In fact,
I am standing beside myself, right now:
staring at myself staring back at myself,
asking—with musty contempt—“Why
aren’t you reading my poems?!”

Tim Seibles is the author of several poetry collections including Hammerlock, Buffalo Head Solos, and Fast Animal, which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award and winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Prize. His latest collection, One Turn Around the Sun was released in 2017. He just completed a two-year appointment as Poet laureate of Virginia.

Photo credit: Jennifer Fish

Comments

[ALAN WEARNE]

Give us a break, Tim Seibles and Nin Andrews, compared with what Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Ritsos, Neruda, Garcia Lorca and [so I learnt today] Soto Velez had to put up with, your gripes seem to me very, very minor league. And these poets are only but a start of those who have had to truly suffer from despots and worse, sometimes with their lives.

[Nick Eliopulos]

What are you going on about, Alan Wearne? Telling someone from afar that their gripes are very very minor league is a crummy shitty thing to do. And who assumes that the speaker in the poem is sharing unalloyed personal information and emotion. You are seriously talking about a poetic suffering pissing contest? Jesus Henry Christ Junior.

[Sandra]

You know what'll be, Peggy? We'll get kicked around. . .

[Sandra]

Anagrams are good.