17 an AJB reunion

From left to right are Alices: Daniel Johnson, Carey Salerno, Marie Harris, Helena Minton, Christina Davis, Doug Anderson, Sue Standing, Ruth

Lepson, Kathi Aguero, Suzanne Matson, and Oscar—the dashing poodle.

Daniel Johnson signs his book, How to Catch a Falling Knife, for Suzanne Matson.

Doug Anderson and Ruth Lepson catch up at this year’s reunion potluck.

Christina Davis and Kathi Aguero smile and proudly sport their “Best Friend” AJB buttons.

O S, Suzanne Matson and Joseph Donnellan hosted a reunion potluck for Boston-area Alices. Everyone brought a dish to share along with their many fond AJB memories. We ate well, shared in our love for poetry, reminisced about the Press’s time in Cambridge, and saw some new and familiar faces.

C. S

aler

no

C. S

aler

no

C. S

aler

no

C. S

aler

no

Alice James Books: First, congratulations on being a new father! What have you learned since the birth of your son, Liam?

CHAD SWEENEY: In a matter of weeks this past spring, my father passed away and my son, Liam Greenleaf, was born. � e two events were like an earthquake releasing shocks of grief and joy. Even my eyes were sad, as if the light were sifted through a curtain between life and death. But that sadness evolved into a nearly unbearable compassion for the temporary nature of living things, including stones and ants and clouds. I’ll never recover from either event.

AJB: What can you tell us about your alter ego, Juan Sweeney?

CS: Well, Juan Sweeney is my ancient Irish-Spanish ancestor, a mad troubadour poet who possesses me from time to time. I’ve translated a collection of his poems from the “Lost Notebooks” which disappeared in the 13th Century but were later discovered in the walls of Sweeney Castle. Juan loves it when the bull kills the matador, as the saying goes. He gets me into trouble within minutes of his arrival.

AJB: What’s your favorite musical instrument, and why?

CS: � e forest. Its sounds are diff erent depending on where you stand. When a forest is played by snow...ah...or summer, or the silence of deer! I love a good birch grove at dusk when the swallows are weaving for insects. My second favorite instrument is a construction site, for obvious reasons.

AJB: What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?

CS: George Bush’s second election, believe it or not, was even worse than the fi rst one, though many of the same actors and all the same producers were involved.

AJB: If you could pick any historical period to live in other than this one, which would it be and why?

CS: � e mid-22nd Century was a good period, the Tibetan Renaissance and so forth, and the Floating Island poetics which added new verb tenses and polyglot harmonics. And the shoes! Imagine climbing a ladder in shoes like that!

AJB: Both you and your wife are poets. Have you ever stolen a line from her, or vice versa?

CS: I do love Jennifer’s poems, and we’re so often together, sharing experiences, but fortunately our poetry seldom overlaps, as she tends to write about what happened, and I write about what didn’t happen.

AJB: What was your all time best Halloween costume?

CS: Conehead Princess ChadwinaI was teaching Spanish in San Francisco, and mymy third-graders could accept that I was an alien and a hairy-legged princess, but they refused to believe that a conehead could speak Spanish. “It’s just not possible,” they said.

AJB: Do you have any secret artistic infl uences that you hesitate to admit?

CS: Yes, but I hesitate to admit them: Bruce Lee, Jimmy Carter, and Oz.

AJB: Where’s the best place to eat in Kalamazoo?

CS: Our house, defi nitely, and if you’re in town, please give us a call. We cook with organic vegetables and Amish bread from the Farmer’s Market, and we have a lovely front porch to sit on late into the night.

AJB: What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you in public?

CS: At the Best American Poetry book release in California, I was reading for a frighteningly large crowd when an infant girl suddenly began to wail. It was obvious to everyone that she was criticizing my poem for its excessive pathos and awkward prosody. She was right, of course, so I apologized to her, then began the poem again, incorporating her suggestions—to which she stopped crying at once.

AJB: What would AJB fi nd if we looked under your bed?

CS: You’d fi nd my wife and me. We prefer to sleep there in case someone breaks into the house—we’ll already be hidden and have no need to wake up.

AJB: We ask this of everyone: if you could have a conversation with any deceased poet, who would you choose?

CS: Well, I’m in touch with several already, but the one who refuses to take my calls is Milton. After Milton went blind his daughter read to him, which I fi nd astonishingly tender. With an imagination as vast as his, I’ve always wondered what his daughter’s voice must have looked like, fl uttering around in the vaulted dome of that great blindness.

18

Chad Sweeney

alice asks...

Jennifer K. Sw

eeney