An Interview with Lawrence Joseph [by Aspen Matis]

Lawrence Joseph is the author of seven books of poems, most recently A Certain Clarity (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). His other books of poems include So Where Are We? (FSG, 2017), Into It (FSG, 2005) and Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973 – 1993 (FSG, 2005). He is also the author of Lawyerland (FSG, 1997), a nonfiction novel. He is Tinnelly Professor of Law (emeritus) at St. John’s University School of Law and lives with his wife in New York City.

I corresponded with Mr. Joseph via email about poetry as an access to viewing and comprehending “the inner lives of a culture,” the language of law, and the power of musicality to jolt us into new worlds. We also discussed the writing of poems as a “prayer for illumination and perfection.”

What is poetry’s greatest role in your inner life? Why do you write poems?

I write poems because I need to. Making poems is an integral part of my sensibility, of who I am. Poetry, for me, is human language in its most charged, distilled form, deeply infused with emotion and feeling, intellect and sensuality. A poem is an aesthetically composed object, an expression of the poet’s interior and exterior worlds. Robert Hayden described “the writing of poems as one way of coming to grips with inner and outer realities,” as “a spiritual act, really, a sort of prayer for illumination and perfection.” I wholeheartedly agree.  

What do you see as poetry’s role in our present society? A unifying force? A destabilizing force of social and personal change? A reprieve from the mundanity and suffering of day-to-day existence? An access to greater empathy? A glimpse of inspiring beauty and truth? A compass that reveals new clarity of thought, redirecting our collective course?

Poetry helps us make sense of, and see, the realities of the worlds that we individually and collectively live in. It shows us the inner lives of a culture. At any given time it is the common voice with in us.  

Your most recent book of poems, A Certain Clarity, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in March of 2020. Described by the publisher as “passionately driven by an acute awareness of a deeper order in which beauty, love, and justice are indistinguishable,” the work presents selections from your six prior books of poetry. The New York Times calls the book “a major work of American art.” In your perception, is there an inquiry or exploration that unifies this newest collection? An underlying intention? And what do you hope the book’s readers will be left with, after the final page?

Each of my books has been written as a book, not as a collection of poems. My intention was that A Certain Clarity also be read as a book in itself. From the beginning — my first book, Shouting at No One, was published in 1983, and included poems written back to the mid-70s — my poems have addressed the power structures of American imperial war-making, finance capital, racism, misogyny, and ecological destruction, revealing the vicious hatred in America of the poor and weak. But, also from the beginning, I’ve set against these worlds of cruelty, violence and subjugation deeper truths — for me, the most human truths — of beauty and love — truths which, first of all, I believe in, and are, ultimately, what in my work I wish to leave my reader with.

You are the Tinnelly Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law in New York City, and — writing as an attorney — you have published on the subjects of employment, tort and compensation law, labor, jurisprudence, and legal theory. John Ashbery once called your work “poetry of great dignity, grace, and unrelenting persuasiveness.” Is there a place in your vision where your legal and poetic fascinations meld, like tin-lead alloy wires becoming solder? Or are these professional threads necessarily distinct — two independent filaments of your mind’s tapestry?

In the United States the language of law covers every social, economic and political issue. During my forty-five years professionally as lawyer, I’ve practiced and taught this language, written critically about it, know it well, and have used it in my poetry. When Wallace Stevens, a career-long practicing lawyer, was asked about writing poetry and being a lawyer, he replied: “I don’t have a separate mind for legal work and another for writing poetry. I do each with my whole mind.” I feel the same way.

What are you working on now? What creative pursuits most excite you?

I’m writing my next book of poems, which will pick up where my last book, So Where Are We? left off, in early 2016, before Trump’s presidency and the pandemic. I’m also working on several prose projects, in various forms and genres.

Do you have any wisdom or guidance you’d like to share with young poets? 

I’m always learning my language, the American language, which, of course, is constantly changing, as America itself is constantly changing. Over time, I’ve created my own tradition. I look for poets and poems that jolt me into their worlds. I take apart poems that I love on every level of form and content that I can imagine and try to write poems that will have the same effect on a reader that these poems have had on me. And music, sound — poetry is, above all, sound. Be as attentive to the sounds of your words as you are to what your words say.

Comments

[Bloxorz]

He is a talented person

[age of war]

This one is great and gives a lot of information.

[Milton]

The first line of Paradise Lost is "Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit."

[five nights at freddy's]

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[Joe Gomez]

I just wanted to let you know
that the plums
in the brown paper bag
in the fridge
got eaten.
Sorry!

[Robert Dashwood]

In this interview, Lawrence Joseph shares profound insights on poetry, language, and identity. His reflections on the human experience resonate deeply. He should be a senator in the congress of poets.