BBAW Interview with Jeanne

I was excited for my pairing this year! It's always fun to chat with other bloggers. If you haven't seen Jeanne's blog, Necromancy Never Pays, go check it out and then get to know Jeanne a little better

Why did you start blogging way back in 2008? 

I actually have the answer to this question on my blog because it explains the title, Necromancy Never Pays. 

One day in February of 2008, my family was playing a game called “Would You Rather” and got a card asking whether we’d rather have three questions answered or be able to resurrect someone. The kids and I went for the three questions, but Ron was hesitating over resurrection. “Oh come on,” I said, “necromancy never pays; literature shows us this over and over.”

“Oh yeah,” Ron said, “The Monkey’s Paw.”

And then we went on to the next card. Some things are just clear, once you remember all the stuff you’ve read about them.

How has your blog changed over the years?

I post less frequently and the posts are longer. Sometimes I include photos now, which I hardly ever did on Blogger (I moved to Wordpress in May 2011). Since my kids left home for college, I talk about them less but discuss books they’ve given me or asked me to read more.

What’s the best and worst parts about blogging?

The best is to have a forum to talk about “what makes this book so great,” as Jo Walton puts it. Sometimes it’s also nice to have a place to articulate my thoughts in front of the small part of the world that reads this blog.

Are there any worst parts? Maybe when an author takes offense at something I’ve done on the blog, most notably the poet Franz Wright. He did not like the way I offered his poem up to my readers for play. http://necromancyneverpays.blogspot.com/2010/04/intake-interview.html

You share a lot of poems on your blog – do you have a favorite? Do you write poetry?

Asking someone who loves poetry for one favorite is like asking someone who loves reading for one favorite book. I can tell you some of my favorites, in various ways:

Philip Larkin, by the number of poems discussed on the blog, is evidently my favorite poet. My favorite Larkin poem is either the one that begins with “My mother, who hates thunderstorms…” or “Home is so sad.” Then there’s my favorite one to introduce people to, which begins “They fuck you up, your mum and dad…”

Wallace Stevens is another of my favorite poets.  Especially since moving to snowy Ohio, I love his lines from the end of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” about what it’s like when it’s going to snow:  “It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing/ and it was going to snow.”

Other favorite poems:  Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts, Dobyns’ “How to Like It,” and Yeats’ “That the Night Come,” the last of which I inadvertently memorized when I was young and can still recite.

I do write poetry. I have a chapbook entitled “Preface to Photo Albums Three and Four” and put one of my poems (“Animal Retribution”) on the blog in January 2012, when I was experimenting with sandwiching various kinds of poetic content with blog spam.

What’s the last book you read that you think every library should own a copy?

Most libraries do own copies of the kinds of books I read. I wish sometimes that public libraries had room for more of the classics, so if someone wanted to read Sterne’s Tristram Shandy she could go pick it up, but I’m not sure how many people would do it.  I got my local public library to order some of the YA titles my kids and I were reading when they were middle school age. Now anyone in my small town can check out a copy of de Larrabeiti’s The Borribles, although I’m told that few do. If I read about a book and discover that my library doesn’t have it, I can put in a request. Sometimes it takes a while, but the local libraries in my area are quite responsive to patron requests.  It’s because of me that the local library has a copy of Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World.

Fun right? Now be sure to check in with your favorite blogs to see who they interviewed!