Jim Barnes Transcript

December 8, 2007

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Announcer: You’ve been listening to Sound Authors, where authors sound off. If you’d like more information about Sound Authors and Dr. Kent’s guests visit Soundauthors.com.Now, back to Dr. Kent and friends.[music]

Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors radio. Today is December 7th, and it’s the 40th anniversary of “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.”My next guest is Jim Barnes, a much-published poet. He’s from Oklahoma. He’s of Native American ancestry.Welcome to the show.

Jim Barnes: Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Kent: Where are you speaking to us from?

Jim: From Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Kent: How is the weather down there?

Jim: Well, it’s quite mild now, but it promises snow later on tonight.

Kent: Tell me a little bit about your newest book to start off. It’s called “Visiting Picasso.” Am I right?

Jim: ”Visiting Picasso,” yeah. Don’t ask me if I knew Picasso; I’d probably lie to you.[laughter]

Jim: It’s published by University of Illinois Press. It’s about 100 pages of some of the best poetry you’re ever going to read.

Kent: [laughs]

Jim: What else can I say?

Kent: Can you read us one?

Jim: Can I read you one? Yeah, yeah. Nothing to do with Picasso, but I think you’ll understand who it is to do with.Let me take about three minutes. Is that OK? You got time? You’re not going anywhere are you?

Kent: I’m not going anywhere.

Jim: All right. The title is from St. Louis Post Dispatch. It’s a headline that appeared on the 18th of July, 1998: “Deputy Finds Dean’s Tombstone on Highway.”"Over 40 years ago, I saw you in my mirror, mornings below the slow day’s dawn. Working the night shift miles above Bohemia and in love with smiles anyone gave.I was you to the core. Looked like you even then. Hung my hands in pockets lightly exactly the way you did, and wore the light-blue pants. Our names the same signaled something I tried my best to grasp. Maybe I have it now.But for you, Jimmy, I would have remained in the North Country, and never have known the freedom of road and will. I was a slow rebel.Double for you in the smoky taverns of Oregon where lost women in mournful bins spill their lives on Saturday nights.You taught me how to desire, and what the desiring is for: departure. The setting out must go on and on.So I think of this, these decades late, after reading the Reuters release. In July there are shivers in Fairmont. Someone’s life somewhere is about to change - The tailgate down and the bed empty and scarred.Your name, our name, Jimbo. Flat on the road; sliding west with traffic. ‘That’s the way it ought to be, always this far from Eden, ‘ I thought then.This, far from the lumbering towns are lots full of ‘oh I sees’, I see you still. The standing shadow in every ditch, or curve someone sometime did not make, and a momentary reach for misguided glory.The pickup reaches home toward midnight. The two men, in late middle-age, lean their arms on the rim of the empty bed and gaze into the nothing they have carried to the sanctuary of the deep Indiana fields.”OK, there you go.

Kent: Beautiful poem.

Jim: Thank you, thank you.

Kent: You have a great gift for story-telling. Can you tell us a little bit about your story; where you’re from?

Jim: My story? Well, it’s dull. I have to imagine; I have to pretend. I’m an Oklahoma farm boy, ranching still in Atoka part-time, living still part-time in Santa Fe. It’s an interesting life. Still, after having put in 39 years in academia, I’m thankful to be anywhere.Finished up my career at Brigham Young University just two years ago. Prior to that I taught at Truman State University in Missouri.

Kent: And how is retirement treating you?

Jim: Well, if it were truly retirement…I don’t know. I’m so busy that I’m busier now than I ever was teaching.

Kent: A long sabbatical.

Jim: [laughing] Yeah. Actually, I only had one sabbatical in my academic career. I chose not to go. I’d rather work than wolf.

Kent: So when did you become a poet? You have such a gift for words.

Jim: I’m still working on it, man! I’m still working on it. I’m afraid of each poem I write. I’m afraid of failing so I have to go on and do another one and another one and another one.I started writing perhaps when I was working in the North Woods in the Pacific Coast range trying to romanticize a very boring job where there was nothing to do except work, drink and stay out all night on the weekends. I thought there might be something else and sure enough there was; it was poetry, it was fiction, it was good writing. Something that I continued along for these days when there is so much bad writing.

Kent: Do you know Picasso? Your book is called, “Visiting Picasso.”

Jim: Well, not well. Well, actually not at all. But you know, one does pretend or what’s a life for?

Kent: You’re a Native American poet. My parents actually live in Oklahoma and they work a lot with the Native American community. I know from their work that some of the folks would like to be called Indians. I don’t know whether I should say Native American or Indian. You’ve been called a Native American poet but your poems aren’t limited to that. They are not held down by that. Can you talk about that for a second?

Jim: Yeah I’m part Indian. Native American, I don’t know any Indian who likes that term. That’s an academic term. It’s a safe term, you know? But Indian is the general term and Choctaw is the specific, as specific I have. I guess there is specific in the blood. I’m an eighth Choctaw but I’m a quarter immigrants Welch. God only knows what the rest is except Mongol American!I’m a poet. I don’t care what they call it. They can call me a Welch poet if they want to. They can call me an American poet if they want to.But I write. I’m a writer first of all. My blood doesn’t talk to me. My head talks to me. I am a child of my environment. Anyone who says he isn’t, these days, is a liar. I mean a downright liar, a no good liar. You’ve got to be aware of your environment. You are from who you are. Oklahoma is where I started. Oklahoma is where I’ll probably end. There are a lot of other things in the middle as there should be, I think.I’ve traveled about the world. I’ve seen some good things, seen some bad things. If I want to use these in poems, I will. I owe nobody anything except the truth as I see it. Lord help me to give it to them all.

Kent: Amen. How many poems have you written in your life?

Jim: I don’t count. [laughing] I don’t know, too many, probably. Those I don’t like I try to throw away though. I don’t know. I don’t write a lot anymore. There was a time I could do one a day at long stretches but now I don’t do that. I’d be kidding myself if I thought I could. I wouldn’t even want to, you know?I like to write and then enjoy having written. That is the best part, man–having written.

Kent: Do you, by chance, listen to any Otis Redding? [music]

Jim: I have heard Otis Redding in the past, yeah.

Kent: His last song was “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” 40 years ago. It was a gentle beautiful song. You have that same soul and the same heart–beautiful gentle stories. I appreciate you being on the show and we’ll look for your book, “Visiting Picasso” anywhere on the web or where can we find it?

Jim: You can find it at University of Illinois Press’ website or you can go to my website which is simplyjimbarnes.org. It will refer you to my work. I appreciate you having me on. It has been a pleasure.