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Joe Hall is currently about two-thirds done with a 35 day reading tour in support of his new book, The Devotional Poems, and while staying with me here on his Seattle stop, Joe and I did a little interview and photo shoot. (The rule, fyi, for the interview was that Joe could only answer with phrases and lines from his new book.)

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Besides Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” & Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” what sort of music and sound things have you been listening to on the ol’ lonesome Poetry Road?

In the motherfucking sounds and motherfucking light

All the horns that do not blow

A stethoscope and a quarter ounce

 

Getting loose, kind of stupid

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Away from Cheryl (yr monogamous partner of over 7 years , whose absence you named your DC Reading for:“Cheryl’s Gone”), how do you deal with physical loneliness and arousal of the Poetry Road (all the Sirens, deserts, Mermaids, thorn-stimulants, wenches, etc, etc, yawn,…)???

I wake up and my balls are dragging behind me

Like wet paper bags of trash

So I murder that huge ball of pink grasping

Hands

With one shrinking word

Waiting on tender feet

Blotched faces to the flames

 

I never meant to go, to flee, to leave you

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The Poetry Road’s notorious for its trolls, amputees, retards, asylums, demons, bloodsuckers, boring fucks, universities, asskissers and other generally unsavory beings: but tell us about something hallucinatory and magical that you were blessed, though, to witness against all this madness of a Poetry pilgrimage?

Two falcons, screaming, beating

An astrolabe of petrified eyes

Palming their cocks

Blazing against the bars

Over the word virgin

 

A marble slab

Waiting in darkness

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Ok, I can’t take it any more. (Shiver. Shiver). We have to address the elephant in the room: what contributions–yeah, baby!–are you going to make for next year’s National Poetry Month?

O Beast O Beast O Beast O Beast

O Beast O Beast O Beast O Beast

O heaps on heaps on heaps on heaps

In the Cowboys, the Yankees, and the Holy Ghost

Of small textured things on heaps of larger less textured things

O Beast O Beast O Beast O Beast

O Beast O Beast O Beast O Beast

 

Shake me useless

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Certain lunatics claim to have found “Salvation”, “God” or cold-fingered “Enlightenment” on The Poetry Road: what approaches did you make into or out of (or billions of miles away from) these famous, purported Transcendences?

Blasts searing a tree line or cinema carpet

And here the manger is

In the main block

The Harmenz of heaven

Looking after each row for real shade

In the codeless tundra

 

Just say my name and I will be with you

Asshole

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Despite the best and most Saintly souls and intentions “bad decisions” just seem inevitable, part and parcel, on the mystical journey a questing Poet-Mind must take: give us, then, some examples of some bad decisions that you’ve made so far?

Poured beer in my ear, took pictures, stripped me

Made me walk on my knees on concrete, urinated on me

Stacked me in a pile of other bodies, took pictures

Because I am a registered sex offender

And you

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Bio: Joe Hall likes to cuddle by the fire, explosive Chardonnays, a nice game of Polo, giving as well as receiving, bird watching, dressing up for fancy Charity Gala events, or wearing torn jeans at a hoe down. But above all, Joe prides herself on being a real Francophile and a serious collector of small, pink thimbles.

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(& Joe Hall might be coming to your home next)

Tags: Joe Hall, photo shoot interview