Interview with Philip Jason
1. If you could defy gravity just once, what would you do, and where would you go?
I am caught between a younger impulse to cover enormous distance in the air, a sort of super-heroistic fantasy of traveling from one location to another location at an impressive and normally impossible pace, and a more mature desire to simply hover in some quiet place, deeply contemplating what it feels like to be weightless.
2. How does creating poetry help you to ground yourself in reality, or transcend it?
Because I view poetry as an essentially ruleless phenomenon, I am free to bust through the normalized limitations of thought and discover surprising ideas and experiences that would otherwise have remained a latent part of my reality. It is possible to consider this an act of transcendence in that it takes me beyond the boundaries of what is ordinary to me, but it also grounds me into parts of myself that I wasn't really aware of before.
3. Can you share a favorite line of poetry that holds a gravitational pull on your mind or heart? Why?
I don't think I can at the moment, though I've been trying for the past few hours. While I often find myself moved by the force of other people's words, I channel that into my own work, extending what I envision as a circuit that runs through and connects all the poems that are part of a lineage of inspiration. By the time I am done, I no longer feel the words pulling on me. They remain beautiful, but their gravity has been turned into the force contained by new words.
Philip Jason’s stories can be found in Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, and J Journal; his poetry in Spillway, Lake Effect, Hawaii Pacific Review, Pallette and Indianapolis Review. He is the author of the novel Window Eyes (Unsolicited Press, 2023). His first collection of poetry, I Don’t Understand Why It’s Crazy to Hear the Beautiful Songs of Nonexistent Birds, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. For more, please visit philipjason.com.
I am caught between a younger impulse to cover enormous distance in the air, a sort of super-heroistic fantasy of traveling from one location to another location at an impressive and normally impossible pace, and a more mature desire to simply hover in some quiet place, deeply contemplating what it feels like to be weightless.
2. How does creating poetry help you to ground yourself in reality, or transcend it?
Because I view poetry as an essentially ruleless phenomenon, I am free to bust through the normalized limitations of thought and discover surprising ideas and experiences that would otherwise have remained a latent part of my reality. It is possible to consider this an act of transcendence in that it takes me beyond the boundaries of what is ordinary to me, but it also grounds me into parts of myself that I wasn't really aware of before.
3. Can you share a favorite line of poetry that holds a gravitational pull on your mind or heart? Why?
I don't think I can at the moment, though I've been trying for the past few hours. While I often find myself moved by the force of other people's words, I channel that into my own work, extending what I envision as a circuit that runs through and connects all the poems that are part of a lineage of inspiration. By the time I am done, I no longer feel the words pulling on me. They remain beautiful, but their gravity has been turned into the force contained by new words.
Philip Jason’s stories can be found in Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, and J Journal; his poetry in Spillway, Lake Effect, Hawaii Pacific Review, Pallette and Indianapolis Review. He is the author of the novel Window Eyes (Unsolicited Press, 2023). His first collection of poetry, I Don’t Understand Why It’s Crazy to Hear the Beautiful Songs of Nonexistent Birds, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. For more, please visit philipjason.com.