Kind of Like the Fluff on the Head of a Dandelion: An Interview with Amorak Huey

Leigh Chadwick: I want to start our interview with saying you’re welcome for getting to be a part of my “Mediocre Conversations” series here at Olney Magazine. I know your couple dozen fans are excited to read it. 

Amorak Huey: Couple dozen? You overestimate me, clearly. 

LC: I wanted to try to start on a positive note, but I’m glad you’re being honest. 

I was on Goodreads and saw that you had like 12 ratings/reviews for this book of yours, Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy. (It was on Goodreads where I also discovered that you had more than one book--unless there is another poet named Amorak Huey--which I found surprising because I had never heard of these books before…). Anyway. I figured maybe some other people read it, or tried to, and just forgot to rate or review it.

AH: That’s the beauty of Goodreads, right? Back in the past, poor writers just had to publish something and wonder whether anyone was reading it. Now we can quantify exactly how few people are interested. But I have no one to blame but myself — I did choose to write poetry, which, well, you know. It’s poetry. We’re not talking about something people are actually interested in here. Should I be saying this part out loud?

LC: I don’t see why not. I mean there are famous poets out there: Jewel, Billy Collins, Ocean Vuong, Jewel, me. But we’re the exception. This is not a secret. Your bank account knows. Your publisher definitely knows. Your family. God. The neighbors. 

But then again, just because you write poetry, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be any less famous than a fiction writer. Take Andrew Britannica for example, who I last interviewed for this series. You have almost twice the amount of Twitter followers as him. He, I guess, is a fiction writer.  

AH: I’m starting to wonder if maybe the problem is just writing in general isn’t the path to fame and fortune we were told it was. Unless you’re, like, Jim Morrison or Jewel or Leigh Chadwick. The exceptions, as you say. 

Thank you for noticing how many Twitter followers I have, by the way. I’ve worked hard on that. Maybe harder than I should admit. 

LC: You’re welcome. And yes, I noticed, but I did that just because I wanted to make fun of Andrew. Not everything is about you, Amorak. 

I do appreciate the honesty: I can tell you work hard on your Twitter following. (And maybe you should work a little less on your tweets and more on your poems, but that’s just one person’s opinion.)

Anyway, I say we actually get started with this interview. 

Since most of the people who will read this interview have no idea who you are, I think it’s important to start by asking who you are. So, who are you, and why are you, you? 

Amorak Huey’s fourth book of poems is Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021), Huey teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

AH: I am a dad, a poet, a professor, a husband, an Auburn fan, a soccer fan. I like Jason Isbell’s music and the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers and the poetry of Traci Brimhall. I think I might be answering this question more seriously than you want me to. As for the why, I’m not sure I had a choice about most of these things. Except for the Auburn and Dodgers parts. I could have chosen Alabama and the Yankees, but those choices would have made me evil. 

LC: I totally want you to be serious and to answer the questions honestly. Because when you do, I get to say, so you listed “husband” after “poet” and “professor,” and that will now be here forever because the internet. 

Isn’t Auburn just another version of Alabama? And aren’t the Dodgers the same as the Yankees, just in a different time zone? 

(I will say that I have, on more than one occasion, ugly cried to Isbell’s “Cover Me Up.”) 

I will also say I have no idea who Traci Brimhall is. Is she also a singer/songwriter like Jason Isbell?

You can answer those, or you can answer a more important question or you can answer all of them. 

Amorak, dad, poet, professor, and, finally, husband, what is your favorite Taylor Swift song? 

AH: I sort of tuned out there for most of that. It’s either “the last great american dynasty” or “no body, no crime.”

LC: That is incorrect. I would have accepted “the 1,” “Paper Rings,” “cardigan,” “Out of the Woods,” or all of them. 

I would have also accepted Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.” 

Moving on. You did have a book come out recently? Feel like we should at least pretend someone might be interested in it…

AH: I did, indeed. Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy came out in May, which you might remember was during a pandemic. We live in a pandemic now, I guess. Publishing a book of poems is always an act of faith. Maybe not on the part of the poet, for whom it’s maybe an act of ego or hope or some kind of cry for attention, but on the part of the publisher, who has to do all this work to get these words that someone else wrote into the world in this little package of ink and paper. I’m grateful to Sundress for their faith in these poems. How much interest there is in the book, well, I can’t really control that. So I do my best to let go. Which is hard, because that fame and fortune we were talking about earlier does have its appeal. But, you know. Not up to me. Unless this interview is my breakthrough?

LC: Well, I am known as a tastemaker. Also, the fact that I was able to help move copies of Andrew Bertaina’s book, which I think was given a fake award from a fake press that’s housed out of a fake place (what the fuck is an Arkansas?), then this could very well be your breakthrough. 

But to be serious: I understand your sentiments. To a point, anyway. I don’t think my desire to publish my poetry is based on ego, but more of a need, a service for the good of everyone. It is me giving back. I don’t need all the “thank yous” but I will still give the “you’re welcomes.”

But I worry about my publishers and the amount of faith they have and desire and want to put into my books and then the time and effort to send my books out into the world, and the money it costs them to do so, and I worry, often, that I will not sell enough or do enough, and that, in turn, I might hurt the press in a financial way, which will stop them from being able to share other great work with the world. (I mean, at least mine would be out there, but what about after mine, you know?)

OK, back to your Dad Jokes etc etc etc. that came out in May. On the cover of it, there is a blurb from Maggie Smith. The blurb ends with “This is his best book yet.” I am assuming, that you choosing to put the blurb on the cover of the book, that this is something you agree with?

AH: Your book is great, by the way. I fully expect that if this interview doesn’t put me on the map, the blurb I’m writing for your collection will. Unless, you like, bury it inside the book somewhere amid like the million other blurbs you’re collecting. Or it just goes on the publisher’s website and not even anywhere on the book. 

So, Maggie’s blurb. Yeah. I do think it’s my best book yet. I mean, I still like the other ones, but I think this one, I don’t know, I think this one got somewhere the others maybe didn’t quite. Like it’s more ambitious, maybe, or digs a little deeper than the others. 

LC: Regarding your blurb, yeah, no promises. I’m keeping my options open. Worst case scenario is it will go on my website that doesn’t exist. It all depends. I’m waiting to see how many other retweets of mine Matt Bell does, since a retweet counts as a blurb, which I made up and then it became fact. And also, an addition to the retweet rule is that if there are multiple retweets by the same person (Matt Bell), then you can make the name of that person (Matt Bell) bigger than the author’s name, so the goal here would be for Matt Bell’s name to be on the cover of my book, under something he retweeted, who cares what, but his name would be larger than mine, so people will think they’re buying Matt Bell’s book, but then, after buying it from a store, somewhere wherever books are sold, and taking the book home, they’ll open it up and they’ll be surprised, like oh this is written by Leigh Chadwick? And then they’ll be like OH, IT’S WRITTEN BY LEIGH CHADWICK! And then the next thing you know, they’re reading the whole book and they’re like THANK GOD IT’S WRITTEN BY LEIGH CHADWICK. 

Or maybe this Traci Brimhall person you mentioned will blurb my book and then I don’t know, I guess you can tattoo the blurb on your body and walk around promoting my book forever. Regardless, it really is all a win. For me, at least. 

I feel like I had something to say about your book and growth and that if this is the best book, why should anyone read the other books and instead just skip to this one, but I got sidetracked.

Which reminds me, all this talk about Matt Bell, that before we get to the speed question round, I want to ask you some questions I had prepared for Matt Bell, whom I had hoped was going to be doing this interview (but you were my second choice...I swear?), but he declined because of deserts or whatever. 

So, for these next couple questions, I need you to pretend to be Matt Bell. 

Hey, Matt! Thank you so much for being here. I know you’re busy being more famous than writers like Amorak Huey and Jewel, so I appreciate you taking the time to do this interview. I just have a few questions for you. 

My first question is about the photographs you post on your Twitter feed. You take a lot of pictures of the desert during your runs. I am curious about the logistics of these photos. Do you take them while you’re running, before your run, after your run, or do you stop mid run, to snap a photo? 

AH: I usually have my phone in my hand while I’m running so it’s easy just to snap a picture or two. 

Wait. Am I really going to do this? Pretend to be Matt Bell? What makes you think I’m at all qualified to do so? Is it the beard? The Michigan connection? The fact that he once published a poem of mine when he was an editor at The Collagist? 

I really do carry my phone when I run, though. But there aren’t as many scenic photo opps in my Midwestern suburb as there are in the desert. 

LC: Oh, Matt! You are too much! Truly a dual threat. How someone can take a picture while running, and the picture come out so clear, no less, perfectly centered and everything. It is truly its own form of art. Not to mention your writing. And I must congratulate you on how much publicity your debut novel, Appleseed, is getting. I have seen so many reviews, including the one in the New York Times -- not that I read the review in the Times, I don’t have a subscription. But still, amazing. 

Speaking of Appleseed. I haven’t read it (I have too many other obligations at the moment: Netflix, petting dogs, responding to fan mail), but I do love the cover. That blue. It’s stunning. I was hoping you could tell me which shade of blue it is, the name of the color, maybe. I was hoping to go to Home Depot and get a gallon or two. I’d like to paint my bathroom that shade of blue. 

AH: Just take the book to Home Depot. They have this fancy machine that can color match right from the cover. You did buy the book, didn’t you?

LC: I was still waiting for your publisher to send me a copy. As a tastemaker and influencer, I feel that I am at the point in my career where books should be showing up at my door by the truckful with the hope that I would like the book and then mention said book on my Twitter, and then, undoubtedly, it’d become a bestseller. 

I’m still waiting. 

OK, Amorak, thank you for playing along with that. You were a much better Matt Bell than Matt Bell. 

Are you good for a quick speed round? 

AH: Man, Matt Bell’s Google alerts are going to go nuts when you publish this. But, yeah, speed round, let’s do it. 

LC: I hope his Google alerts do go nuts. If his book hits the bestseller list, he can write me a nice thank you card. 

First question: Revisions: useless or very useless? (I ask because, from reading a couple of your poems, I assume you don’t do a whole lot of revising.)

AH: Did you know the word revision comes from a combination of “re” and “vision”? I think that says it all. 

LC: That was good. I can’t lie. You win question one. 

Question two: In your poem “Hey, Everybody, We’re Invited to a Cookout!” you have some intense sentences. The ones that really stick with me are “A nice day. A decent meal.” What was your motivation behind those lines? 

AH: I was probably hungry. I’m usually hungry. And maybe it was raining or snowing or something. We like to complain about the weather here in Michigan. So the line is kind of like the fluff on the head of a dandelion, blown hopefully into the wind. 

LC: That effort. I respect it. You went for it there. And I think we have our title: “Kind of Like the Fluff on the Head of a Dandelion: An Interview with Amorak Huey.” 

Question three: Who is the most famous writer you know?  

AH: Besides Matt Bell? I also have a suspicion I’m supposed to say Leigh Chadwick here. But we’ve never met in person. I don’t know. I know lots of writers. But are any of us really famous? I interviewed former Heisman Trophy winner Billy Sims once when I was working in journalism, and he’s pretty famous, or used to be. 

LC: Did Billy Sims write a book? It doesn’t matter. I would’ve accepted Megan Abbott, Leigh Chadwick, or Jewel. 

Question four: I would love for you to give a shout out to a poet you admire who does not yet have a book. Who is a poet whose writing you’re wild about that should have a book coming out tomorrow? Also, feel free to drop a link to something they’ve published.

AH: I’m looking forward to Mitch Nobis’ book when some publisher gets smart and snaps it up. Here’s a link to a couple of his poems in No Contact: https://www.nocontactmag.com/in-the-early-days-turned-turning 

LC: So this interview wasn’t completely useless. We learned a few things: Matt Bell takes pictures while running through the desert, publishers need to stop being dumb and give Mitch Nobis a book, and Amorak Huey is a poet who has written more than one book. 

Let’s end it here. Drop us a link to where we can buy Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy. Also, if you’ve got a link to one of the poems, throw it in as well. 

AH: Thanks for doing this! I think it was … fun? I assume your team of editors will clean it up and make us both look smart. 

You can check out Amorak’s work here:

Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy: https://sundress-publications.square.site/product/dadjokes/146

 “We Were All Odysseus in Those Days”: https://poets.org/poem/we-were-all-odysseus-those-days