10 Questions for Lucas Jorgensen

- By Marissa Perez

I hide from people. I have a big nose & don’t brush
my teeth. My silhouette is long, splattered
with lumps, bulging. This is to say: I’m ugly,
I want to be unique. Since I was little,
I’ve loved goblin sharks, their trapdoor jaws
—from “Self-Portrait as Goblin Shark,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first piece I wrote was a sort of ode to the streetlamps outside the dorm I stayed at in my first year at Florida State. I was taking an intro to poetry class and we were reading the early modernists, so it had all that high brow poetry voice stuff. I believe the first line was “Core of hot yellow, shine out!”

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
This is always a tough one. I have a friend who tells me I’m sort of like a chameleon where a lot of the things I write seem like they could be written by a different person. And when I’m aware of my own influences in a poem, I can usually point to three different people, with very little overlap poem to poem. I will say that for the last six months I’ve been really inspired by Chessy Normile and her book Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party. I’ve never read poems like hers before, what she pulls in, how she moves idea to idea.

What other professions have you worked in?
A bunch. Currently I’m working as a grader for Pearson, reading essays from standardized tests all around the country. In the past I’ve been a theatre camp instructor, a tech/tv crew worker (filming high school sports games and running lightboards, stuff like that), a Walmart stocker, a transcriptionist, etc etc.

What did you want to be when you were young?
I had a couple things I wanted to be. First, I wanted to be a rockstar. I reckon that didn’t work out because I’m too shy. Then I wanted to be a marine biologist because I love sharks and used to get this big book about marine biology from my school’s library and look through it. That’s actually where I first heard about goblin sharks. Later, I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon because I used to obsessively play these little simulator games at school where you would give someone a hip transplant. Unfortunately for the latter two, I was not gifted in the sciences. Though now that I put all three of these together, being a poet seems to be the point at which they all meet, or as close of a point between a rockstar, surgeon, and marine biologist as there can be.

What inspired you to write this piece?
I had an assignment to write a nature poem, and I had just been going through a breakup at the time. So at first I tried to talk about how the year prior, my ex took me to the Holden Arboretum for my birthday. That wasn’t happening, and I was getting frustrated, and in my frustration, I wrote out “Self-Portrait as Goblin Shark” and the lines “I hide from people and I don’t brush my teeth. I’m ugly, but I want to be unique.” Then the rest came. I didn’t think it was much of anything at first; I thought people weren’t going to like it or think it was too self-pitying. I’ve since learned that when I have that feeling it’s because there’s some risk and the piece is probably worth playing with more.

Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
I’m from the Cleveland area and I imagine it’s always there. So is just about every other place I’ve lived: Tallahassee, Florida, New York City. NYC has been there especially in recent times since I’ve been out here. I’m working on my first manuscript right now and it’s sort of a hodgepodge in that way. The East River shows up next to Lake Erie shows up next to an orange grove.

Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
Not so much. Generally speaking, I need total quiet to write or edit. I like to read my work aloud, and music interferes with that. I write about music I like from time to time though. Slint, Snoop Dogg, David Berman, Rachmaninoff. They all show up in poems.

If you could work in another art form what would it be?
I’ve dabbled (read: failed) in a number of different arts: film, theatre, music. I could get the hang of it, but was never quite as committed as I was to poetry, and thereby not as good. The art form I simply cannot grasp is painting. That’s why I wish I could be a painter; what they do is beautiful, and I have no idea how they do it. I love that O’Hara poem “Why I Am Not a Painter.” He says it better than I could.

What are you working on currently?
Right now I’m polishing up my first manuscript (in which my goblin shark poem appears!) to send out for the first time. I’m also starting what appears to be my second manuscript. There might be a few more yet-unwritten poems in the first, but for the most part I’m editing the first and generating new work for the second.

What are you reading right now?
I’m reading frank: sonnets by Dianne Seuss, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem (research for my second manuscript), and Poetic Closure by Barbara Herrnstein Smith.


LUCAS JORGENSEN is a poet and educator from Cleveland. He holds a BS from Florida State University and studies in the MFA program at New York University, where he is a Goldwater Fellow and assistant poetry editor for Washington Square Review. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Fugue, New Limestone Review, ellipses . . . literature & art, and others.