The Interviews (1)
In books that lay around me my poems wander.¹
No let’s get started can we start with your name.²
See erasure. See collage. See fragment. See lyric essay. See cut-up. See remix.¹
A nothing detours her. A question. And it’s a whole story. As if what we want are the things that do not happen to us. Not in reality.³
I called this one the prince of blue, which was, in fact, his name.⁴
Can you tell us a little about him.²
I need to speak of these women in me who have entered, they have struck me, they have hurt me, in me they have wakened the dead, and I’ve tasted the world in their tongues.³
Part ode. Part admiration. Part obsession. Part compulsion. Part fear.¹
Why not answer.²
Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond.⁴
Why not answer.²
The truths I have known have left me completely despaired, a telephone ringing¹
in an empty house.²
Why not answer it.²
To answer your question it takes a whole lifetime.¹
¹ She
² Anne Carson
³ Hélène Cixous
⁴ Maggie Nelson
Sara Krassin lives, writes, and fights for human rights in Minnesota. Her poems have appeared in Heimat Review, Anodyne Magazine, Third Point Press, and others. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Hamline University and her BA in English at Bethany Lutheran College.
