james tate
Do you know anything about [lemurs]? They’re just fabulous. They’re the most wonderful primates imaginable. They’re only in Madagascar and they’re endangered like most things, you know. The people cut down forests, killing them because they have superstitions about them because they have these long fingers that they point and the natives think that means [you’re] going to die, if they point at you. But [they’re] very, very gentle creatures. They constantly hug each other. They have these long, long tails. Anyway, no, I don’t want to make a big deal out of this. I’m a normal person who happens to like animals a lot. I don’t want to get too self-conscious about how they get in my poems because that’ll, you know, stop me.
Interview with James Tate, by Mike Magee.
Some poems by James Tate:
- “Goodtime Jesus” (re Jesus’s donkey: 1, 2, 3)
- “The List of Famous Hats”. I drank a lot of wine one night and called James Tate’s home number (through 411; this was before Google was integral to my life) and left a message on his answering machine telling him how funny this poem is.
- “The Lost Pilot”