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Volume 2 Number 2 • Fall - Winter 2010-2011
Sleet Magazine is beyond proud to present a conversation with poet Ed Bok Lee, the author of Real Karaoke People, winner of a PEN Open Book Award, the Asian American Literary Award (Members' Choice), and other awards. Ed is an important voice on today's stage. His work has been recognized by such organizations as the McKnight and Jerome foundations, and the NEA. His second collection of poetry East of Mongrelopolis with Coffee House Press is due out in 2011. [Editor]
Sleet: Obligatory opening to an interview: tell us a bit about yourself.
Ed Bok Lee: I had a dream last night about a banyan tree, during which nothing really special happened. The tree was part tree, part old man, part root vegetable, part huge tired spider web. Which is basically what a banyan tree is. I kept waiting for it to move or speak or throw up or something. But it didn't. It was just a banyan tree.
Sleet: How do you think the banyan tree relates to being human? I mean, if you were the tree in your dream, would you have changed your actions in the dream?
EBL: I think most dreams are pretty forgettable. But if you read a person's dream journal, you'd probably in total learn a hell of a lot about them — maybe things they don't even know about themselves.
Sleet: If you are not writing, what are you doing?
EBL: To me, empathy is a muscle, which happens to help one's writing, but also makes you a more universal citizen. So I try to take a lot of stairs through life…and am often late.
Sleet: So, when you aren't writing you're taking the stairs?
EBL: I guess I spend a lot of time plotting how I can escape the place I'm currently in. I like to visit different places, so I think about that a lot in my free time. Unfortunately, sometimes it's like anti-meditation, anti-being-present. But then when you get there, it's the complete opposite. For a time.
The Art
Sleet: After reading, Real Karaoke People, I have to ask— what are three songs that you would ban from karaoke for all time? Why?
EBL: I would never ban any songs from karaoke. Karaoke is a rare art form in that the best is the best, and so is the worst. In fact, the worst is often better than the best. (I might consider banning trained singers, though. But only those that don't tear something inside when they sing, kind of a like a small time professional wrestler and his hidden razor.)
Sleet: I am drawn to the way you are able to capture the voice of everyday normal people. What made you gravitate towards this, and not, say dogs, or grassy meadows, or sports teams?
EBL: I love sports and dogs. But every era of human history, it seems to me, has a different overall sound. A magma of sound. Of course, you hear it in a period's music, but I'm also talking about the distinctive way the people speak, the inflections in their voices, the noises they produce with their bodies while moving throughout their lives (very different in the Age of Plastic vs. Age of Wood or Stone Age). So there's that, wanting to artfully enact and preserve this magma of sound. But on a deeper level, I think I'm more excited about the rhythms and inner sounds of thoughts…consciousness…of this particular time in which we all live and think and feel. So I guess you could say I'm drawn to the sounds of consciousness shifting, ever elusive, always on the move — and human voices are great shadows of that inner shifting, without which the “soul” of any piece, I feel, would lack true dimension.
Sleet: You're very much a part of this period of consciousness, this shifting, how do you see your own inner voice moving or changing? And how would you say it compares to the global consciousness of your era?
EBL: That's the beauty of writing. The more writers writing the broader, more detailed the mosaic of the times. The only way I personally can “see” this inner voice moving or changing is through writing — and usually only a while after the fact.
To answer the second part of your question — I think that's where a collection of poems, or stories, or novel, memoir, etc. comes in. Hopefully, in total, you begin to get a sense of some chunk of the world. And the more books you read, the more rich and intricate your mosaic of understanding, of experiencing what it means to be human…the richer you become as a human being.
Sleet: Have you ever fought with the idea of being a writer?
EBL: Nah, I'm more the referee. Because you have to be fair, above all. Fair to both your imagination and its opponent—that being or entity or whatever it is your imagination is attempting, in a way, through words, to de-throne, because the latter thinks it has down the way to live and be and think and believe and see and speak in this world. And ultimately, what the page craves most is the best, “fairest” contest possible.
Sleet: What do you think it means to have a writer's life? How has that affected the way you now see the world?
EBL: Maybe if you're someone who endeavors to record the experience of life in the written word, a part of you is already dead. And fundamentally you have to accept that. Then get on with it…like a journalist amid a war or blue ribbon bake sale, an important funeral or fire or 100th birthday. All, in a mysterious way, become equally important.
Sleet: When you write a poem, how do you know when it is finished? How is that different from knowing when a collection is finished?
EBL: For me, a poem feels pretty done when rather than remaining some second-rate blueprint of the world, the words have somehow coalesced to make some actual part of the world, however briefly, seem more like the blueprint.
A collection for me is basically the same.
Sleet: And what does that mean to you in terms of revision? People sometimes balk at the idea of a writer sitting at a desk for hours thinking about a single sentence— what would you say to those people?
EBL: It's not about sitting for me. When something incomplete is lodged in my mind, it sort of goes viral until the language medics have netted and clubbed it. That can happen whether I'm drinking a beer or taking a shower. Or, most commonly, taking a shower in beer. That is, when least expected. So I encourage people who like to write to do things they normally couldn't conceive themselves doing. And, if it doesn't help your writing, at least you will have lived a more interesting life.
Sleet: Deborah Keenan said that, “The poem with line breaks is a river that you travel, but a prose poem is a lake — still and deep.” To me, it seems the borders between writing poetry and prose are sometimes blurred, what do you think about this, and how does your approach differ for each?
EBL: That's a good analogy. Sometimes for me I feel like a poem is the introvert in the family, and a prose poem is the extrovert.
New Book
Sleet: You have a new book coming out: can you tell us more details about that? (i.e.: who's publishing it, what's the title, when's the release date, what do you love about it, what is your favorite poem from it, and can you PLEASE share a line or two as a sneak peek?) What challenges did you face when writing the collection that you did not have with your first collection?
EBL: The new book is entitled “EAST OF MONGRELOPOLIS” and has poems and some prose in it, like the first book. Coffee House Press is publishing it in 2011. I don't have a favorite poem, right now, or one I hate the most. Everything is sort of in between. The first collection had a lot of very early poems. This one has newer stuff; although many poems I'd written before the first collection even came out. Now I'm working on other things. I guess publishing is always like that.
The book is part of a trilogy I'm working on, all depicting aspects of a place called Mongrelopolis, which is equally state of mind/being and geographical locale. The trilogy also consists of fiction, a novel, and a third manuscript whose final form remains to be seen.
Rather than quote myself here, I've collaborated with some experimental filmmakers, to make some short poetry films.
Sleet: Crazy small world, I'm working on a trilogy, too. I wonder, did you know or see the entire story line before you started the project, or is it coming to you as you work?
EBL: A little of both, yeah, then revisions of both.
Sleet: How, or where can I find this when it's up? Is it on your website?
EBL: The directors said they'll post them on youtube as soon as the final edits are completed.
Sleet: Can you expound on this place called Mongrelopolis, without — of course — giving too much away?
EBL: Honestly, it's somewhere inside me, from all the people I've met and places I've been, and I think because I didn't see it really anywhere in one place in the culture, in America, the America and world I live every day, it's become very important to me to create this place/state of being in whatever art forms I possibly can.
Two new poems from Ed Bok Lee are featured in this edition of Sleet.
More of his life and work can be seen at edboklee.com