Five Questions with Dorothea Lasky

Dorothea Lasky is a poet, educator, and Aries. I was lucky enough my senior year at Bennington College to take a class with Dorothea called "Roman Poetry and the Metaphysical I" where we talked about Drake and Catullus, Martial and Nicki MInaj. (You can read a crash-course version of that class here.) She also once gave me some very wise advice on why my relationship with an Aquarius wouldn't work out.

Dottie's poems are as brilliant and fast-paced and wonderfully strange as she is. She is the author of Rome (W.W. Norton, 2014), Thunderbird (Wave Books, 2012), Black Life (Wave Books, 2010), Awe (Wave Books, 2007) and numerous chapbooks. You can read her poems here,  here, here, here and elsewhere.

                                                                                                                     — Laura Creste

1. Describe the most beautiful color.

The most beautiful color to me will always be yellow. Of course, I don't always think this, but 89% of the time I find yellow to be most beautiful because it contains sunshine in it. And because it tastes like lemons and looks good in a kitchen or a bathroom, or if you had yellow sheets and slept on the sun (which I have done--with yellow sheets, that is!), it would just be pleasant. And because as I type this I am typing on a yellow keyboard cover and my Google chrome settings are set to a yellow background. Because my old dining room chairs have yellow seats. And because even if everyone else in the world hates you, yellow likes you. And because when you wear yellow shoes, you just feel right. Also, because yellow is kind of evil. 

2. What was the last thing you hated?

A person who did something especially despicable. 

3. Do you remember your dreams? Would you tell us one?

I had a dream a few months ago, in which I held against my arm a person with a very tiny face. I held this person close to me and talked to him. His eyes actually were quite hollow (with meaning) (behind actual eyes). But I knew him and the fact that he was there made the dream mean something, although I still have yet to figure out what it is. Also, before I met the tiny headed person, I went through a series of emotions that brought me to an emotional understanding I have now, but didn't understand completely completely until the dream. 

4. Favorite myth?

Daphne and Apollo! It's so romantic. Not Apollo's actions, but Daphne's need to always be free. 

5. What ingredients would you put in a love potion?

Menstrual blood, skin, hair, purple glitter, blood pricked from both pinky fingers. Oh yeah, and urine. Maybe a little ice cream and jam (raspberry? grape? it really doesn't matter). Gold powder not made from actual gold. Anything I could capture from a cloud. Coffee. Very cooked onions. And lots of vitamin B12.

altlitgossip.tumblr.com, line taken from Lasky's poem "What Poets Should Do"