I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. Do you like me seek out interviews of your favorite authors?

I cannot get enough of them.

They are a genre unto themselves.

The parish review is the gold bullion of the form. I think I've read nearly

all their interviews of poets. As a practitioner, I want to know from the inside how great poems get written.

Plus, it is there I hear a passion for writing that makes me feel normal. It is there too that I receive

suggestions to read long forgotten writers. I also mind interviews for quotes or rare facts about

poets that I bring into the classroom and conversations. That's me as a reader, but as a writer interviews feel like a hazard of the profession.

I find myself repeating the same stories or responses.

I must have told a thousand times the tale of that time that I watched The Godfather in a limousine

with poet Sonia Sanchez en route to Bard College, where she read.

And then afterward we dined at the home of the great Nigerian novelist Chenua Aceb.

Interviews are also hazardous because it quickly becomes very clear

when the interviewer has not read a single book or even a poem of mine.

I get asked the most basic of questions.

It gives me Groundhog Day feels.

But I am always grateful.

The opportunity to explain the inspiration

behind my poems, which can be obscure or difficult is rare.

Today's poem is the kind of interview that I long to give.

One full of non sequiturs and expansive evasions.

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