PROBE

Watermelon and Chocolate,
a Brief Chat with Charles Harper Webb      
Interview by Jarret Keene      

    (continued)

Jarret: How difficult was it to write an elegy like "Cocksucker"? I mean, imagine a lesser writer trying to write something called "Nigger." Can it be done?

CHW: Trying to get the tone right was tough -- avoiding P.C. tedium as well as general offensiveness. I tried to tell it straight (no pun intended) and trust in my own complicated feelings about the subject. I've been very pleased by the positive responses I've gotten from gay readers. I suspect that a good poem could be (and probably has been) written called "Nigger." Maybe I'll try it some day. A writer who won't risk failing is unlikely to write anything I'm interested in.

Jarret: Who's funnier? Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges?

CHW: That's like asking me which tastes better, watermelon or a chocolate shake. I love 'em both. (Though my mother didn't like me to watch the Stooges, and thus raised them in my estimation.)

Jarret: How many times did you perform "Louie Louie II as a rock vocalist? Did you ever master the lyrics?

CHW: Countless times. I used to mumble the words, the way the Kingsmen's singer did, making sure to articulate, "At night, in bed, my girl and me," and "Fuck your girl all kinds of ways." My audience and I wouldn't have had it any other way. What a letdown, years later, to read the "real" words.

Jarret: What do you think of Bush's recent cancellation of a poetry event at the White House?

CHW: I have very mixed feelings about that whole situation. I understand why Mrs. Bush cancelled the event and why Sam Hamill and the poetry community reacted as they did. I'd have to write a major essay to express "what I think," so I'll leave my answer at that: mixed feelings.

Jarret: Have you ever written an anti-war poem? Why or why not?

CHW: I've been called (among other things) a poet of praise and celebration, and I believe that any poem that celebrates life must be anti-war. On the other hand, how much celebrating of life was going on in Auschwitz? In other words, sometimes war is necessary. What's hard is deciding, at the time, when that time is. So I've never written a straight out anti-war poem anyway. As I said before, my feelings are mixed. A poem called "Bat Boy Joins Up," which will be coming out in American Poetry Review, expresses some of that ambivalence.

Jarret: How do you think Tulip Farms and Leper Colonies differs from Liver, if at all? Do you feel your work is moving in some sort of "direction?" Or do you strive to be unself-conscious?

CHW: Tulip Farms doesn't have the sprinkling of (what I think of as) wild, free-associative poems that Liver and Reading the Water had. This is because I've collected all of my new poems of that type in another manuscript, as yet unpublished. So I think Tulip Farms is more "of a piece" than the previous two. I strive to write what my conscious mind wants me to write, and decide what that is when I make a new collection. I'm always trying to write things that strike me, at the time, as new.

Jarret: What's your next book like? Does it have a title?

CHW: My next book is tentatively titled Tear-stained Confetti. As to what it's like? I haven't lived with it long enough to say for sure. It has more poems about my son, who's 4 now. It's fatherhood approached with, I hope, the candor with which I approached a poem like "Cocksucker." Out of, say, 50 poems, maybe 10 have to do with him. Like most writers, I think my next book will be my best yet.

Jarret: Well, Charles, the reading last night was fantastic. I want to tell you that your book, Liver, was a source of inspiration to me during graduate school and that I'm seriously indebted to your work. It was crucial to the writing of my dissertation, Monster Fashion, which was published last year by Manic D Press. I owe you, man.

CHW: I'm glad I could help.