Another celebration!! I'm not going to lie
I am a huge fan of John's writing both his poetry and his prose. A skilled writer John has an amazing ability to show the inner workings of a person. Many of his narrators remind me of
Lemony Snicket ( Daniel Handler, A Series of Unfortunate Events) the voice is strong, powerful and omniscient and this can be seen in both his poetry and stories. John has always had a wonderful presence in the community, knowledgeable, funny...a little cheeky at times :) and beautifully encouraging, it is a delight to know John :)
Hey John ðð
+John Fugman
Over the coming weeks we at POETS would like to celebrate those poets who we believe to show exemplary skill within their craft. We have compiled a list of of names and you are one of them.
To help us celebrate you as a poet we would like to get to know you a little better by asking you some questions whilst you engage in conversation with me ð
If you could dine with a poet of your choice (past or present) who would you choose?
John - Hi Karen! I don't know about "exemplary skill" but thank you! haha It's an honor to be selected. Dinner with Allen Ginsberg would be a treat. I enjoy his subversive works. He liked to write about big topics. He opposed "the man". He was a fan of sex and drugs, eastern religions, equality, peace. I would love to hear his thoughts.
Karen - I saw a brilliant film on Allen Ginsberg a few years back, it is incredibly interesting, sometimes I think poets lives are more interesting then their work ha ha I think Allen would make a brilliant dinner guest, not only is he extremely interesting but i think he would also be a great source of inspiration
Okay, if money and imagination were no object, where would you go with Mr Ginsberg for dinner and why?
John I'm a cheap date. Any pub in the land. Somewhere with strong drinks and artery clogging food :)
Karen - Any pub!! Ha ha I actually love that, because many poets/ writers would have started their creative lives in taverns and in my opinion this is an element of the artists life that has now been lost, we don't have enough tavern time :)
The important question is....what dessert would you guys be eating?
John - Traditional dairy related desserts wouldn’t sit well with all the alcohol, so I’d have to say something with a lot of carbs haha
Karen - ha ha ha ha ha no it would not!! I am always amazed to see dairy and alcohol together..like Baileys....but to be fair Baileys is very delicious :)
It's been fantastic getting to know you better John :) Just a couple of last questions to complete the interview :) Do you feel your dinner party (all those attending) would be formal or informal in its discussions?
And we would really love to take the opportunity to share a piece of your own favourite poetry, a personal fave :) as well as a famous poem that is your favourite
John - Definitely informal. Getting me to do anything formal is a very difficult task. ð
Karen - Oh I love that answer, informal always appeals to me so much more than formal.
John -
One of my favorite poems
America
BY: ALLEN GINSBERG
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don’t really want to go to war.
America its them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Berkeley, January 17, 1956
John - *Citizens of planet Earth*… I find that introduction to be quite amusing—mostly because it conjures images of extraterrestrial beings addressing a frightened population of self-aware mammals. It’s funny because only an offworlder would believe that the inhabitants marooned on our third planet are a united people, and with the simplest investigation one would find their assumption to be incorrect. In literature, the aliens address us as Human—while the various nationalists loaf about, trying to appear less apish in front of our intellectually superior interstellar visitors.
I wonder if they will recognize us as intelligent creatures, if they will be impressed by our mathematics, and if they will be able to interpret our attempts at communication. Most of our people cannot complete the necessary calculations for travel to the stars or even understand the languages of their fellow occupants. If the aliens decide to judge our species by the brightest among us, we will be extremely fortunate—but then they might be far too intelligent for us to comprehend and thus consider humanity to be little more than a sentient lower life form.
When the colonization begins, I could be among the first humans to be exterminated, as it’s likely I’d make a pilgrimage to the landing site to witness the historic moment. But I would observe from what I assume to be a safe distance away—maybe on top a nearby hill that contains various elements which might serve to disrupt the performance of their scanning equipment. In reality, it probably won’t work. I imagine it will be difficult to fool their technology. The first wave of invaders will capture me and take me to their ship to be probed by some rather efficient scientists who aren’t afraid to use invasive techniques on the local wildlife. I hope they will be able to find mercy within their hollow, pumping organ, but that concept might be as foreign as the violent beasts splayed open on their surgical tables.
Perhaps we will be able to avoid the invasion by journeying out to meet them as they pass through the Oort cloud on the way into our inhabited system—but that’s merely a dream of one global citizen who, without assistance, is incapable of enacting the necessary change.
—©John Fugman—
John - I always want others to understand and enjoy the Citizens poem...
Karen - Superb choice :) John has introduced the idea that often our own personal favourites are not always the pieces that are met with the same 'love' when we present them to the outside world, a harsh lesson that we all as writers have to learn the hard way :)
I think myself and John have discussed a few times the difference it could make to a poem if we accompanied it with a brief description of what the writer was aiming to achieve when writing it, especially in regards to being able to offer valid feedback that allows the poet to grow - this personally is something I would like to see more of within the poetry communities across the internet.
John -
This seems to be more of a crowd favorite as well as a favorite of my own.
The ring on her finger only slightly bothered me;
I was distracted by her tongue in my mouth
and Freddie Mercury on the dive bar jukebox—
A dollar per play for the classics;
the other stuff was on at The Basement
and I wouldn’t be caught dead among the Greek
fraternity and sorority members writhing in its depths—
Bottomless American ale with purchase of cheap, ugly glass.
But sometimes, when I was drunk enough,
I could withstand an hour or two sweating
in the rather dense fog of pheromones,
pretending to give a fuck about bullshit philosophies—
The wisdom of ancient Sophists
swallowed and regurgitated by shallow minds
whose sole purpose for oration
was to prevail over their pseudointellectual brethren
in often futile attempts to impress intoxicated mates,
Ignorant of their infinitesimal position
in the fabric of space-and-time. Anyway,
her perfume smelled of money spent on pollution—
A relaxing fragrance of Lavender
abating my anxiety and heightening my arousal.
I thirsted for carnal knowledge of the divine being ravaging my senses—
Sending my collegiate imagination
on an exploration, in the interest of science, of course,
to the molten core of a celestial goddess;
the adultery not fully registering. For all I knew
it could have been a purity ring—
A gift from her parents which she wore out of habit
and not some virtuous belief imposed upon her
by the professors of her family’s chosen faith.
If I could go back to the moment she spotted me—
The blonde rugby player wearing the ironic T-shirt
and very proficiently knocking back drinks—
I would seize the opportunity to avoid a bitter heartbreak,
and I’d attempt to seduce her friend in the bright summer dress.
—©John Fugman—
Karen - It was an absolute joy to interview John and see that more relaxed
version of him that lives beyond the excellent writing. Thank you John for making time to speak with me :)
Both images sourced from google search
