Under the Radar

Past Megaera contributor Jessy Randall has just published a new chapbook with Unicorn Press titled Slumber Party at the Aquarium. Let's learn more.

Megaera: Thanks for the opportunity to get some insight about you and what makes you tick. First off, tell us a little about yourself and your writing habits.

Jessy Randall: I am the Curator of Special Collections at Colorado College and I live in Colorado Springs with my husband, three-year-old son, four-month-old daughter, and sister-in-law.

My very favorite answer to the writing habits question is Scott Poole's in the online magazine Slow Trains -- read it at http://www.slowtrains.com/vol2issue1/pooleten.html (question #2).

I started writing when I was in third grade and my elementary school had a “Poets in Residence” program. One of my first poems was about salt. Another was about the pulp in orange juice. My mom saved both of those. I also wrote a long, sad poem about the death of my hamster (fortunately for everyone, this remains unpublished). Lately, my writing habits are: dash off a poem or idea for a poem right before bed or early in the morning, work on it a few days later, don’t look at it for a couple of weeks at least, look at it again and sometimes cross it out completely, let it lie for another couple of weeks or months, then eventually type it out and submit it to a magazine. Some of my poems are fifteen years old and still haven’t been published, but I keep sending them. I seldom give up on a poem, even if every editor of every magazine rejects it. Some of my best publication credits are for poems that were rejected a dozen times. I generally write poems in longhand, in a green composition book like Harriet the Spy’s.

M: Your poems often have a lighthearted, playful style, even if they're addressing a serious topic. Is this a conscious decision? Why or why not?

JR: I suppose because if the subject is fairly heavy (a broken heart, a tumor in your body) and you write a heavy, serious poem about it ... UGH, how boring! Boring for some imaginary reading audience and for myself. My friend Amanda told me once that I am very funny when I’m grumpy or upset. There are certainly topics that I would not be able to be lighthearted about, but my own troubles and failures and desires – those have enormous comic potential. Maybe I want to get across that sort of giddy feeling that you get after going without sleep for a couple of days, a kind of hilarious misery. Like most new parents (my daughter is four months old), I have some experience with the cumulative effects of exhaustion!

M: In your new book, "Slumber Party at the Aquarium," your poem "Voice of my Tumor" appears to address a recent experience with a tumor. What happened? Did writing about the experience in your poetry help you to cope with it?

JR: You can read that poem online here. I suppose I could be a real pain here and claim that the tumor poem was not autobiographical – but yeah, okay, I had a tumor in my side, it really wasn’t a big deal, it was benign. And the doctors were very nice about it at every stage, they told me it was likely to be benign all along. But still, you know, you start thinking about your own mortality. Imagining the tumor talking to me in a funny voice was quite helpful.

M: Who would you say are your biggest literary influences? How have they influenced you and the way you write?

JR: My favorite poets of all time, in no particular order, are Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, Ntozake Shange, Nikki Giovanni, Russell Edson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Margaret Atwood. Kenneth Koch was my teacher at Columbia. He told me to be brave in my poems, instead of trying to prove my intellect with literary allusions and so on. That was the best advice I ever got. Frank O'Hara's "I did this, I did that" poems were very freeing -- maybe they have pushed me to write about subjects that are totally inappropriate to poetry -- like a yeast infection or some science fiction character that no one's ever heard of. One thing all these poets have, I think, is a kind of wit -- a jokey quality, like you're sitting around with your best friends from high school and just cracking each other up, totally honest and comfortable.

M: Many of your poems contain unusual, absurd, and often amusing juxtapositions of circumstances. What do you find appealing about the absurd?

JR: There’s a Kurt Vonnegut character (I can't remember which novel -- maybe Bluebeard?) who says modern artists are pulling off a huge scam –- that they are just kidding around, making painting jokes of one kind and another, and then suddenly collectors start paying them huge, ridiculous amounts of money for their work. And who's going to say no to that?

M: What one question were you aching for us to ask you, but we neglected to ask?

JR: I kind of expected you to ask where I get the gall to think it’s okay to just take text from friends' emails and slap my name on it and call it a found poem. And the answer is, I don’t know. But no one has stopped me yet.

M: What is your favorite color?

JR: Green.

Her chapbook, Slumber Party at the Aquarium, is 32 pages long and has just been published by Unicorn Press in a signed, limited edition of 100 copies (ISBN 0-87775-253-2). The price is $11.95 plus $1.95 for shipping (total $13.90) to Unicorn Press, 201 N. Coulter Dr., Bryan TX 77803.

For more information, please contact the poet at jessyrandall@yahoo.com.