Books / Interviews / Poetry · October 31, 2021

Jeffrey Johnson

Jeffrey Johnson Interview: The Irresistible Pull of Moonlight, Flamenco, & Noam Chomsky’s Brain

Meeting Jeffrey Johnson on the street in Setagaya on a sunny afternoon in October, you’d be forgiven for assuming he’s a moderately normal, well-adjusted man. He sports a neatly trimmed goatee and is dressed in the quietly suave manner befitting a professor of literature at Sophia University: well-fitted jeans, a black T-shirt, spotless white sneakers. We actually talk about the weather for the first couple minutes, I kid you not (my fault; I was totally the instigator of this). But soon we have ascended the sketchy, graffiti-splattered elevator to a rooftop café called A-Bridge, settled in with our drinks, and I ask him about growing up in the pseudo-slums of Minnesota on West 7th Street. Jeffrey turns those dancing green eyes my way and confesses, “We used to steal stuff from the junkyard and get chased by Dobermans.” Instantly the air in the room changes and I know exciting things are going to happen during this conversation. He goes on to explain that he and his hoodlum friends didn’t want to get caught with too much hot cash so they’d spend the take as quickly as possible on “frivolous shit”. Like what? “Like riding around in taxi cabs.” And just like that, I have a new hero.

Jeffrey’s been writing most of his life, starting with lyrics at age 11 (he was a guitarist in a band) and progressing in his 20s to bits of whimsy scribbled on bar napkins and passed hopefully to intriguing-looking women. And while he’s got a number of academic publications under his belt, including “Haiku Poetics in 20th Century Avant-Garde Poetry” and “Bakhtinian Theory in Japanese Studies”, as well as serious poet-lord credentials as one of the founding members of the Tokyo Poetry Journal, “Conjurers Dream of Voyage”, released this year by ToPoJo Publications, is his first volume of original poetic work.

The collection is lush and sensual and playful, slinking like a friendly but by no means tame beast through five roughly linear sections: Departures, Arizona, Tokyo, Spain, and Fin. The poems herein pounce upon and celebrate images and themes spanning flamenco, peyote vision quests, crows, stray dogs, women, wind chimes, and Noam Chomsky’s brain.

Yes! Noam Chomsky’s brain. Specifically: eating it.   

ME: On the one hand it’s about eating a human brain. And on the other it’s about vomiting out some kind of insight. So tell me, what possessed you to write it?

JJ: Chomsky changed the way we think about things. With his theories about language and also with his political stuff. So it started as an ode to Noam. For having changed our perceptions. I wanted to know, how does his brain matter work? That incredible brain! It changed all of us.

That vein of insatiable curiosity infuses the entire collection. “Love Letter to Granada”, an exquisite and softly erotic snapshot, stems from his fascination with the pomegranates he saw everywhere in that city, whose name is the Arabic word for the fruit. “Even the barrier posts to keep you from driving up the sidewalk are shaped like pomegranates,” he marvels. “The city itself is feminine.”

And then there is the irreverent mixture of humor and rage in “Chien andelou”, starring a masterless dog / flitting shaky across the screen, replete with the lavish imagery that characterizes Jeffrey’s verse and peppered with an exhilarating bitterness: you masterless motherfucker / you belong in your own self-shat heaven. Whence all this? Jeffrey explains it, somewhat unexpectedly, by his passion for the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca.

JJ: His was the first poetry I fell in love with. I wanted to write something about Lorca when I was in his home province. I was never satisfied with what I wrote, but the movie “Chien Andalou” was said to be about Lorca, so I settled for that commonality.  

ME: Interesting. Because basically it’s all about your bitterness at people letting their dogs shit in your entryway.

JJ: Well, but as it developed, I began to feel an ironic distance from the bitterness… And then there’s another ‘shit’ connection, that has to do with Jack Kerouac. There’s a haiku he wrote where a cow turns and looks at the observer and lets out a dump! And so, the humor of the dump. And I swear to you, I would laugh uncontrollably reading that haiku.

ME [mildly scandalized]: It’s astounding to me how you’ve elevated this topic…!

JJ: And another thing, he talks about a spider descending from a ‘self-shat thread’. So the ‘self-shat’ in “Chien andelou” is from Kerouac. It’s essentially the notion of self-generation. Of not just shit but of your individuality.

It is impossible to read Jeffrey’s verse without being drawn into its complex web of distinct yet subtle eroticism. Intimate love is the centerpiece of “Perfect Time”, a hypnotic treatment of bodies and minds as one—your thoughts invade me / as we bind and intertwine / you speak to me in perfect rhyme / you come to me in perfect time—and whispers softly in every line of a dreamlike haikai—Sweet parting / the tangle of bedsheets / holds onto her scent. Other poems, while ostensibly about other topics, retain this hazy lust woven into the very language, as though unaware. We read of a bejeweled vagina in reference to a city, and later of visions of blank ecstasy ejaculated onto pristine skin, with reference to another city. Things reach a crescendo in “Moonlight”, passionate yet concise, where a woman and a celestial body receive equal billing in what amounts to a psalm of gratitude in honor of feminine beauty. I ask Jeffrey if this is intentional, if he has carefully crafted this style and point of view, and he shrugs mysteriously. I press further. He offers, “I feel that in the greatest of poetry, form meets content. They fit each other. I think that’s what I was trying to do with “Moonlight”.”

This idea re-emerges a little later, when the conversation shifts to another unique form in the book: the inclusion of 16 color photographs, taken by the author and interspersed among his written work. It’s a fascinating addition—a visual glimpse into the worlds already presented to us in poem.

ME: I love that you’ve included these photographs. What was your motivation behind that?

JJ: It’s true, in great art, form and content should be one. And great art should be experiential. It should appeal to a lot of perceptions. That’s called synesthesia, right? Hey, did you know in the Heian period they used to have something called ‘incense symphonies’?

ME: [instantly over-excited] What! Incense symphonies?!

JJ: Yeah! All of these Heian aesthetes would get together and… So I wanted to do that. Strip the words out. I think these photographs go with the poems somewhat.

This is certainly true, and they are moving snapshots in their own right: quiet, colorful odes to what caught the poet’s eye on his excursions throughout Japan and Spain. (“That flamenco, man… The guitar players are out of this fucking world.”)

Earlier I used the phrase ‘haikai’ to refer to the three-line poem about the lingering scent on the bedsheets. Why ‘haikai’, and not ‘haiku’? And also, how are the eleven haikai in this volume so damn interesting? Not an easy feat! 

ME: Jeffrey, to be honest, I don’t really find most haiku that engaging. Unpleasant to write. Boring to read. But I really like yours. I mean, you write about gomi!

JJ: I have a different perspective of haiku than most people do, and the reason is… Well first, the notion of haiku for most people is a kind of Basho orthodoxy.

ME: [interrupting like a child]: Basho Orthodoxy would be a great band name!

JJ: But in fact, it was comical until Basho wrote a handful of poems that changed the genre forever. In Basho’s day it was referred to as haikai.

He explains how the comic form was popularized in France around 1919 by Paul Éluard (“he was THE French surrealist poet”), and how to this very day in France, they’re referred to as haikai more often than not. In his own eleven offerings, Jeffrey mixes the more traditional themes with humor: seasonal observation with athlete’s foot, for example (Rainy season is imminent / a tingling rises / between my toes), and natural beauty with modern pollution (Litter strewn across the beach / the wind peels away page after page / of yesterday’s news). And while Basho is undeniably the supreme ruler of the form, and therefore deserving of respect, this respect has its limits. “Like a lot of poets, I love a handful of his poems. But there’s a lot of repetition in it, which dulls it.”      

To truly experience the resonance of Jeffrey’s poems, it’s best if you can hear them in his own voice, deep and lulling. It is a top-notch voice, unforgettable. One of my personal highlights of a Halloween several years ago, me dressed as a cop and reciting poems about various illegal activities, was Jeffrey eying my costume after the performance and gravely rumbling: “Those are veryshortshorts.”  (!!!) I ask him if he’s ever considered releasing an album, Leonard Cohen style, and he just laughs. Admits he’d be interested, but doesn’t feel he has the musical chops.

Doesn’t have the musical chops? But here I must disagree. What of his iconic performances in the smoky cavern of Bar Gari Gari, mesmerizing the assembled Drunk Poets See God open mic crowd with his sonorous incantations, variously backed by local music legends Morgan Fisher and Samm Bennett? Jeffrey’s been a fixture on that scene since its inception in 2013, back when there were only three or four people in the audience and the stage was squeezed in right beside the front door. Jeffrey’s eyes light up when I mention it, but with a characteristic modesty, he turns the praise away from himself and towards the musicians. “Morgan blew a note, and I just followed that note with my voice. It’s incredible that Morgan will come out and join us when he’s such an accomplished artist. I’m thinking, what is this guy who was playing with Queen doing backing me?!”

Fortunately for readers, one does not have to go back in time to experience those electrifying performances. Many of the poems in “Conjurers Dream of Voyage” are followed by a QR code linked to a recording of the original live performance or to collaborations with Samm Bennett of Polarity Records.

(Check it out: Samm Bennett & Jeffrey Johnson Collaborations in Word and Sound)

As with his decision to add images to the book, I am thrilled that he’s chosen to include sound, as well. It goes back to his statement about the best art being experiential. Jeffrey is no stranger to melding poetry and music, having taken the creative reins of Tokyo Poetry Journal volume 3, which was dedicated to sound and coincidentally was released around the same time Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. And music itself has been a profound influence on his writing.

“I was listening to Bob Dylan from about 9 years old,” he says. “And eventually there was a time when I felt that he had become a yoke—one that I had to throw off, to be able to get my own poetic expression. And I stopped listening to him for years. Refused to listen. So, Dylan was huge. Immeasurable. He transported me.”

(Side note: Like an asshole I tell him I’ve “never really cared for” Dylan. Jeffrey looks crestfallen. To make him feel better I confess that actually there’s one song by him I really like, about not wanting to work on Maggie’s farm no more, or something like that. “Oh, Rage Against the Machine did a great cover of that!” he enthuses. Rage Against the Machine!! I had literally come this close to wearing my RATM halter-top to this interview!)

When I ask Jeffrey about his poetic influences, the answer is immediate.

JJ: Lorca was the first poet that really knocked me sideways. An emotional thing. And with William Carlos Williams, that was like this technical thing. He was somebody who, technically, I admired.

ME: Any modern poets who inspire you these days?

JJ: Well… I think Jim Jarmusch does poetry with film. And so he’s one of my favorite poets. Again, it’s experiential, right? It’s visual, he’s always got great music, and there’s always a poetic line in it.

ME: OK, and another thing I have to ask—and this is important—who is one writer, dead or alive, that you’d want to bang? You know. Like a literary retrobang.

JJ: My God, I don’t know… [thoughtful pause]

(Side note: One week after this interview, I was feasting on homemade kedgeree at Morgan Fisher’s house and asked Joan Anderson, who was also there, what she thought Jeffrey’s response was. She gave me a horrified look and said, “It wasn’t Noam Chomsky’s BRAIN, was it?!”)

But no. At length Jeffrey reaches a decision and announces: “Mary Shelley.” No more information is forthcoming. But why, I pester. He smiles an enormous, private smile. “Her brain.”

As the interview wends its way to a close, I ask Jeffrey if he has any specific hopes or dreams for this work he has offered to the world. It is no minor thing for a writer, and perhaps particularly for a poet, to have nurtured assorted obsessions and adorations, joys and doubts, in a realm of relative seclusion, only to launch them forth to the masses, where the reactions will be myriad and the poems inevitably will take on new forms as they are interpreted. There can be a poignancy to that, but also a sense of loss. What does he hope will come next?

JJ: It’s funny. When I was writing poetry on napkins in bars, I always gave it away to women. I never kept it. I subscribed to this notion of art as being impermanent. I wanted to enact that notion of disposable art. I never thought of collecting them in a book or anything. And now… Well I think you’ve gotta put it—whether it’s your music or your poetry or your stories—I think you’ve gotta put it out for yourself. It’s gotta be… ‘self-shat’, if you will. I simply wanted to do it for myself. And then, if somebody finds value in it, you know, that’s huge. 


Purchase “Conjurers Dream of Voyage” here.
Launch party: 11.20.2021 2 pm @ J’z Bar (details here).