Playing Poker With Robert Bly
STUART ROSS INTERVIEWS JASON HEROUX
Jason Heroux lives in Kingston, where he writes poetry and works as a civil servant. His poems have appeared in literary journals in Canada, the US, Belgium, England, Ireland and India, as well as in the anthology Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets. The Mansfield Press published his first collection, Memoirs of an Alias, in 2004. Jason played an extra in Barnum, a 1986 TV movie with Burt Lancaster. This Magazine Poetry & Fiction Editor Stuart Ross talked shop with him.
What got you into this poetry racket?
I like one of the things [Carl] Sandburg said about poetry: “Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.” I guess I got into the poetry racket because that’s the kind of animal I am.
In Memoirs of an Alias and in your newer poems, you give humans, animals, plants, and inanimate objects the same kinds of qualities. Do you see them all as one?
Some days I see them all as one, and other days I see them all as all. I enjoy giving different things similar qualities because it shakes up my perception of the world. I just like to blur the boundaries and then see what happens.
Do your fellow civil servants know that you write subversive, surrealistic poetry when they’re not looking?
Some of them do and they’ve been very supportive. Others give me strange looks. One woman told me, “I’m glad I’m not in your head.” I know how she feels. I’m glad I’m not in my head too.
Do you think poetry’s worth devoting a lifetime to?
Oh sure. Life without poetry is like a large open wound without blood. I’ve devoted 15 years of my life to poetry and it’s been worthwhile so far.
I sense you’d like to play poker with poets from beyond Canada. Who’s around the table?
Tomas Tranströmer, above all. Bei Dao. Tomaz Salamun. It’s a little late for Olav H. Hauge to join in, but there’d be an empty chair for him. I don’t think anyone at the table would understand each other, so we’d have to invite Robert Bly and Charles Simic to translate. James Tate. Franz Wright. The list never ends. Not that I’d last very long at this table. I’d be happy just clearing the ashtrays.
Does Kingston itself influence your work?
Yeah. It’s a strange city that sometimes feels like a set on a David Lynch film. I remember one day walking along the street and seeing an artificial leg lying on someone’s front lawn. It was a very old-fashioned leg, it looked a hundred years old, and there were ants crawling all over it. A part of me wanted to take the leg home. But then I thought, “What am I going to do with a hundred-year-old leg covered with ants?” That’s Kingston. Or maybe it’s just me. I can’t tell anymore.
