Poem-A-Day: Day 320

Questions and...Answers?

Excerpts from an interview with David Shields
as he quotes entirely out of context.

Q: Is genre a minimum security prison?

A: Everything I write,
I believe instinctively,
is to some extent a collage.
Meaning, ultimately,
is a matter of adjacent data.

Q: Are all our stories the same?

A: Soul is the music people understand.
Sure, it’s basic and it’s simple,
but it’s something else
cause it’s honest.
There’s no fuckin’ bullshit.
It sticks its neck out
and says it straight from the heart.
It grabs you by the balls.

Q: Are the creators of characters,
in the traditional sense,
no longer managing to offer us anything more
than puppets in which they themselves
have ceased to believe?

A: I can see
why you’re a Miss Nude USA regional finalist.
You have beautiful,
long,
silky,
blue-black hair,
a perfect pout,
and a gorgeous body.
Please send me
the color photos you mentioned of yourself
in fur,
leather,
lingerie,
garter belt,
and heels.
Thank You. Payment enclosed.

Q: Is the novel dead?

A: Something can be true
and untrue at the same time.

Q: Do any artists tolerate reality?

A: Shortly after 9/11,
the Defense Department hired Renny Harlin,
the writer-director of Die Hard 2,
to game-plan potential doomsday scenarios;
in other words,
fiction got called to the official aid,
reinforcement,
and rescue of real life,
as if real life
weren’t always fiction in the first place.

Q: Is there nothing to say
that hasn’t been said before?

A: Truth,
uncompromisingly told,
will always have its ragged edges.