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LOCAL POST J§FF FALLIS TALKS ABOUT MJSIC,
CERSMONtf AND WRITING IN THE REAL WORLD
J eff Fallis has been blessed with two additions to his
name. The first. "Doppler,"’ is a result of his devotion to
the Weather Channel's website and an uncanny ability to
correctly predict any day's percentage chance of rain. His
second moniker, the Poet Laureate of Athens, is due to his success
with the poetic art form as well as the fact that he is the only
poet most of his friends know. I am not attempting to downplay
Fallis' talents. As an English major in college and now as a high
school educator, I am well aware of the difficulties inherent in
composing and interpreting poetry. Most of us have written at
least one poem, and most likely, it sucked. Fallis' poetry, however,
returns the reader to the moments just prior to such a revelation:
the time at which we thought how easy writing a great poem
would be. The conversational tones, the universality of the emo
tions evoked, and the pop culture references within his poems
make them accessible to even the most lyrically challenged reader.
They remind the audience of Philip Larkin's belief that poetry
should be read once, immediately understood, and then put down.
However, the latter of the three is often the most difficult with his
poems. Like the catchy '50s doo-wop music of which he is so fond
and channels within much of his work, his poems contain everyday
observations and emotional hooks which continue to repeat them
selves long after the reader has left the text behind.
Since graduating from the University of Virginia with an MFA
in Creative Writing, Fallis has had works published in The Indiana
Review, Ploughshares and The Oxford American, among others. Like
Michael McClure and Lawrence Ferlinghetti at The Band's The Last
Waltz and Allen Ginsberg on Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. Fallis
has bridged the divide separating popular music and poetry. He has
read poems as an opening act for Phosphorescent, Elf Power, and
during the Orange Twin showcase at last year's South by Southwest
festival. The 2006 music issue of The Oxford American features six
of Fallis' music-themed poems. Here, Fallis talks about poetry, life
in Athens and beyond, music and the art of performance.
Flagpole: Athens is widely recognized for its music scene; how
ever, outside of the University, there is not much public interest in
creating a literary scene.
Jeff Fallis: That's why I started doing the readings I did. Most
of my friends were musicians and townies and deejays and stuff. It #
just kind of happened. Spenser [Simrill] was doing those things.
He got me to do those first readings with him. I did some stuff at
Flicker. I did this thing at the Georgia Theatre last October with
Elf Power and Phosphorescent. I gave something again at Go [Bar]
with Spenser, and then Laura Carter [of Orange Twin] saw one of
those and asked me to go to South by Southwest in Austin. It
would be nice if there were other writers I could do things with
and give performances. I just haven't met them.
FP: Your most recent publication is in the Oxford American's
music issue. What do you think about being published in this literary
magazine of the South ?
JF: It makes sense. I should be getting published in here, if I
am doing things right. I have paid a lot of attention to Southern
music. I have lived here most of my life. You don't want to just
say you are writing about regional things, but I definitely identify
myself as a Southerner. I think it has had a massive impact on me.
There is some reason why I have chosen to live here for so long af
ter I could have gotten away. But. I don't want to sound arrogant.
My poems deal with Southern music a lot, though.
FP: Can you comment on the fact that some of your poems con
tain references to or are a narrative based within Athens?
JF: I have lived here a long time. A few of the poems about
Athens were written after I moved away. I like the idea of specific
ity in places. At the time I wrote the ones [now appearing] in the
Oxford American, I was reading a lot of Frank O'Hara. He has those
poems where he is naming where he is getting a sandwich, like
17th Street. He wrote those lunch poems that he wrote during his
lunch break when he was working at the Museum of Modern Art
in the '50s. I like how Van Morrison on Astral Weeks names these
songs after these specific places. Those things [are what] I was
paying attention to at the time. Writing about some place can al
low you to put some distance between it and yourself. With some,
I was writing about Athens and Georgia, but I was writing about
stuff that had happened to me. I ended up using a fictional prism
12 FLAGPOLE.COM • JANUARY 31,2007
D€SP§RAT€ CO/ft/AUNiqU€
FRO/A ANOTHER NIGHTCLUB
Everything is an experiment.
You know that, just like you know
about the jive assault & the secret chord
progressions, just like you know
how to make me feel human again.
I don't know what this band's called,
but they should rename themselves
Humpty Dumpty & the Eggs.
My body is an envelope of moonlight,
my watusi wakes the mouldering dead.
Shake it to the left, shake it to the right,
you ain't shook your sugar
till you shook it all damn night.
The horns ring in the rafters,
the whole room pulses like a baby’s temple.
I redraft my own constitution!
I declare an international holiday!
j It's a new year!
Backscratchers wave in the wind!
The stuff I got'K bust your brains out!
I should never have left you, you help me forget myself.
The delicious meadow of your shoulders,
the whip-smart swagger of your delirious flesh,
all on a couch, under the lamp's lascivious light!
This time I mean it.
this time I'm sticking around.
The choked rhythms will lead us to glory.
I'm an improvisational genius, hot stuff.
I'll lead the rebel deserters from a police orchestra
to the tentative heaven of all evenings.
to screen myself from some things that were maybe too painful to
write about directly. I came up with a character and a scenario to
mix some things together to get at. Some writers say, "You have
to lie to tell the truth." Sometimes you can just blurt it out, but
sometimes it is better if you have some distance from something,
then you can get at it better.
I had this other poem about Wilkerson Street, and then there's
Washington Street in this poem, and Barber Street. Those all came
from the same period. It was a year or so after I had lived in
Athens, and I was trying to write about it. It already has this kind
of mythical aura about it. For me. a lot of it came out of listen
ing to R.E.M. It was the same for a lot of people in the '80s. You
hear about Athens. You wonder, why Athens? Why not Auburn,
AL or Fayetteville. AR or Hattiesburg, MS, or Oxford or Columbia,
SC? Athens just produced so much. There is this kudzu entangl
ing everything. These deserted buildings. This beautiful decay. A
lot of it is gone. When I first came here, you could still see some
of that. But. they've gotten rid of it. You can still see it in nooks
and crannies. You can drive down Pulaski and see it. You look out
at that field, and there is the Wishing Wall. When I moved here. I
was here for the Elephant 6 thing, and there Were all these char
acters in town. These great Southern eccentrics. People hanging
out in the art school. It is an interesting place. I spent some time
in Charlottesville, but there is something about Athens. For me.
maybe like most writers, I tend to mythologize things a bit, and
maybe that's what I do in the poems. And people are still doing
great things. I have been amazed and energized and impressed and
hopeful at every show I have seen Dark Meat and Phosphorescent
play in the past year. There's crazy shit happening all the time. It
is interesting.
FP: What do you think about the current state of poetry, particu
larly in towns like Athens?
JF: One of the problems with poetry is that it has become too
attached to academics. People view it as a career and pay too
much attention to credentials and fellowships instead of the poet
ry they are actually producing and whether it reaches out to some
one outside of [the academic] community. A lot of times, most
writers publish in these literary magazines, and they get awards,
and they are in MFA programs, but not much of it extends beyond
the same community of writers. For poetry at least. That's why,
for me, I love it when I have something in the Flagpole or in the
Oxford Americon. These are things people actually read. They read
the Flagpole while they are waiting for their burrito to come. One
friend of mine picked up the Oxford American at the airport on’his
way to his honeymoon. People reading it on the toilet. I like that.
I like the idea that it is out there in the world where people actu
ally read it. That's a big problem for poetry. I won't blame it on
the public. They aren't stupid. If the right type of poetry was get
ting out there, people would read it. I think it's the poets' fault.
Poetry's not for everybody, though. Just like rock 'n' roll is not
for everybody or classical music or samurai films. It is interesting
to me still that at weddings and funerals, which are two ancient
ceremonies that the world still honors, that's where poems get
read. With as much time as people spend watching TV and mov
ies and on the Internet, no one is going to, at a funeral, put up a
podcast or play their favorite episode of "C.H.I.P.S." or something.
It still has some position, it is interesting that words can still
have that power.
FP: What do you think readers will get from your poems?
JF: There are people who are reading these poems right now
who have no idea who I am, have never heard me read. They are
getting something out of it. It might be something totally differ
ent from what I imagined. Their response or interpretation is just
as valid as whatever I intended. That's what's so interesting about
works of art. I put something in one of the Marvin Gaye poems,
"We put something out in the world and it moves beyond us, takes
its baby steps and goes around the corner where we are only dimly
aware of what effect it's having, who it's making time with." That's
what's kind of wonderful—that something can be out there and
affect someone in a totally different way than you intended or
sometimes the exact way you intended. Sometimes there can be
dreadful misinterpretations: maybe you should correct those. But.
the openness of it is good.
FP: h writing a cathartic exerase or an exercise in expressing
yourself to others?
JF: I think it is an amalgam of both. A lot of times when I
write there is a tension that I need to get out. That is in there
sometimes. But on the other hand, I do think about communicat
ing with other people. That's important to me. It's an odd thing,
because, like I said, you have no idea who is going to read it and
have what kind of response.... If you go too far in either direction,
you can get in trouble.... I think it is a peculiarly individual thing
to try to sort that out. I'd say you have to be true to yourself and
true to the poem. I get kind of sick of this therapeutic, write a
poem to get our feelings out. Obviously, that's true; you want to
get your thoughts and feelings out. I think it is good to not just
look at it as self-expression. I think that a lot of our culture is
geared towards that, and I think we have got too much of a good
thing. It can become narcissistic, if you do that. But. you are also
making an object or a thing that should be able to stand out there
on its own, away from you. Then, it can have meaning to some
other person. I think there is a way of going about that where you
are honest to yourself and your intentions, but also kind of aware
that you are making something that can be outside of yourself,
that may outlive you and be of use to other people in some way.
Christian Barner CKKtarnerCg^a
Jeff Fallis will be readtrfg his poems at Flicker Theatre & Bar on Wednesday
Feb. 7 at 8:30 p m
3 4, FEATURE. ARTS & EVENTS MUSIC COMICS & AD , . CLASS:?