Los Angeles poet
Suzanne Lummis sat down with HipPoetics founder Nicole Street to talk Snooki, Facebook, teaching poetry, Noir, and everything
Lummisian.
NS You
recently put together an extensive series on noir called “Night in the
City,” that took place at over a dozen locations spread
throughout Los Angeles within a week. It must have been a tremendous amount of
work to organize.
SL As
far as I can tell, everything is a lot of work. If I were trying to make a
small farm become self-sustaining, it would be a lot of work. If I wanted to
enter politics as a congresswoman, that would be a lot of work. If I had
invented something and I were trying to get a patent for it . . . so,
everything is a lot of work. I’m not feeling sorry for myself in that respect.
The thing about poetry is that unlike many other endeavors, the stakes are very
low…The remuneration isn’t very good, unless you get to the superstar level,
and start receiving those ten, twenty, hundred thousand dollar grants that go
to a small elect group of people. Also, the recognition compared to celebrity
fame is very small. Its just a little group of people across the country, a
little echelon of people who might know your work and know who you are. But on
the other hand if you’re aspiring to write something so good that it endures
for a very very very long time -- maybe one “very” is good enough. Maybe it
doesn’t need any “very”. Let’s just say you want to write something that
endures for a long time, something that will outlast the fame of Kim Kardashian
or Snooki. Is that her name, Snooki? Then poetry has its possibilities.
NS I’d
like to talk about what you’ve been doing the last several years, but I’m
wondering if we could move in chronological order. Charles Webb suggested
exploring your early life, particularly the influence of your parents.
SL Yes,
my parents were very interesting.
NS How
they’ve affected your life choices, your direction
SL My
father was a very adventurous man, a great lover of beauty and all of its forms
in nature and art and women. My mother also a great appreciator of the arts,
always fascinated that I wanted to write, and it was something I feel that in a
way that she always wanted to do, and that it seemed to be working itself out
in this generation.
My father and mother, Keith Lummis and, back then, Hazel
McCausland met in the US Secret Service. My father was a Secret Service agent,
under the Treasury Department, so his job concerned crimes against the federal
government, and smuggling and counterfeiting. My mother was the third woman to be hired in the Secret
Service office after WWII when all the men went overseas and they started
giving women these jobs that opened up. The job description back in those days
was “secretary,” but she once remarked to me – “the truth is Lois and Diane and
I ran that office”.
When Keith – all his children called him “Keith” because he
always he felt the word “daddy” sounded silly, “Dad” too glib, and “Father” too
grave and formal – when Keith first set eyes on my mother he was still heart
broken after the death of his first wife several years before . He was
devastated -- it almost killed him. He was not interested in women for a while.
But, as he tells it, when he first walked into the Secret Service office and
saw my mother sitting at the front desk, the thought went through his mind -- I wonder if that will be the girl that I’ll
marry. Later, he couldn’t explain to himself why he had that thought
because he didn’t think she was a beauty, that she was some lush babe.
They dated for a long time. My mother did not particularly want to get married,
ever—that was highly unusual in those days, almost unheard of. She wanted to be independent. And my
father really courted her, pursued her, worked to convince her. After both had died we found letters
going back and forth between them – my father persuading her, allaying her
doubts, telling her how much he loved her. My mother was afraid she wouldn’t be
a good wife and mother. In fact she proved to be wonderful in both areas. Once
she committed she gave it a hundred and ten percent – she put others happiness
before her own, sometimes too much.
But thank goodness my father was a persuasive and eloquent letter writer
or I would not be sitting here today with you. You’d be in some other coffee
house interviewing a different writer.
Click below for the rest of the interview.....
