I was tagged on facebook by Susana Gardner to create this auto-interview about my forthcoming opus, Vile Lilt.
What is the working title of the book?
Vile Lilt is the title, no longer the working title, but I hope the title works. I’m interested in the fact that people keep mishearing/misreading it as Vile Lit.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
It came floating down the stream hidden in a giant peach, donburako, donburako, making that sound as it went…(una grossa pesca galleggiava!).
What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry, plays, benshi scores.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
For some reason the vision of Ruby Keeler’s face, multiplied, floats up before me, as in this scene from Dames (1934) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXMPXo8Epn8. I suppose she would be the guiding persona, the stand-in for my “authorial” presence in the work? Since it is “lyric” poetry, I would hope also to be played by Young Werther, Miss Havisham, and of course Meena Kumari. Mahipal and Sandhya are already present in the Navrang benshi piece, as are Eriko Hatsune and Fhi Fan in the Uzumaki piece. I would hope that Cynthia, Maureen, Jane, and Patti would play themselves in the play, “Beatles’ Ex-Wives’ Reunion.” I would need to hold auditions for people to play the parts of Dana Ward, Brandon Brown, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, William Blake, Havelock Ellis, Dr. Zizmor, Mikhail Bakhtin, Lev Vygotsky, Ezra Pound, Dante Alighieri, Sylvia Plath, Guillaume Apollinaire, Joe Brainard, Oscar Wilde, Lew Welch, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jack Spicer, and any other sundry characters. I guess it will have to be directed by the Quay Brothers.
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Girl loses boy, writes poems, in full costume.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
From January 14, 1964 until now.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Some kind of helpless compulsion or itch or voices in the head: a vile lilt.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
There are many words in the book you will not know. Examples: preponed, pedunculate, banausic, tolazoline, enfoldion, phenolic, desmid, hybriddy, stuckly, kumkum, ptyalize, viridity, prognathous, runch, chicot, sandilands, Bobis, guggling, megachiropterae, viridine, dhobis,
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
What means this…”agency”? It will be published this spring by Roof Books!
What is it that you want of a book?
I want them to be (like) dioramas I can enter and get lost in.
Tagged: Adeena Karasick, Sharon Mesmer, Lynn Nino, Thoe Htane, Yi Ywel Yway
Otohime 