Nosy Interview: Kate Lebo

Kate is in A Hidden, Massive Star Cluster Awash with Red Supergiants, © NASA 

The jury is out on whether Kate and I have met in real life, though chances are good that we at least attended some of the same literary events when I lived in Seattle. (Though I regret to report that I have not yet had the chance to taste her award-winning pie.) Kate is a poet and a pie queen, and you can learn more about both roles by visiting her blog, Good Egg, and purchasing her zine, A Commonplace Book of Pie. Read more of Kate's poetry on Ink Node.

 

What do you smell like?

I love this question. Usually it goes the other way--I ask you what I smell like, probably because I’m worried about BO. Asked from this direction, it reminds me of driving through the Peach Arch Gate from Blaine, WA, on the way to some dingy Gastown bar or all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant in Vancouver. The border guards would lean out their little tinted booths and ask me where I was born as if they were curious to know something about me that wouldn’t be apparent unless they asked, the way you do when you’re getting past small talk with a new friend. I knew they were just doing their jobs, and that they didn’t care what I answered as long as I had ID and wasn’t bringing fruit or explosives into the country, but, like your questions, they made me feel like the miscellaneous personal data I’ve collected about myself over the years might have some empirical use after all.

After exercising, I smell like honey. The scent sours as soon as my sweat cools, and since it’s rude to ask someone to smell your armpit after a half hour on the elliptical, no one has ever confirmed that I really do smell like honey. I also like the way my underwear smells during my period, all coppery and briny and organic, which makes me think that as long as the smell comes from me, I’ll like it. Perfumes and lotions all start to make my skin smell like mosquito repellent or dusty potpourri after a half hour, especially on a hot day, so I stay away from them. I’d rather smell me, even if I smell bad. It’s a way to love how my body does its job.

What do you like to smell?

Jason, my partner of five years, wears Old Spice. When I think about what he smells like, I think of the warmth and texture of his t-shirt. Trying to describe that scent is like trying to describe what an orange smells like--the best description is orange, and Jason just smells like Jason. Most of my boyfriends have worn Old Spice, so it’s a scent that feels both safe and dangerous, like nostalgia. A whiff from under their arms as they raised them to hug me made me want to burrow into their chests.  

fall harvest

Kigali kindly provides some relief for my leaf-longing. 

Autumn offerings from talented Nosy Interviewees: 

Jesmyn Ward's memoir, Men We Reaped, is out now, and it's every bit as harrowing, gorgeous, and essential as early rave reviews have suggested. Here's a scent-related fragment from Jesmyn's essay honoring the memory of Trayvon Martin, as well as her brother, Joshua: 

"I don't know if I imagined it or not, but his dog seemed quieter, subdued after my brother died, as if he spent his days wondering where his owner, the tall boy with butter yellow skin who smelled like coconut oil and hay burned fragrant in the sunshine, went."

Frequent collaborators Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney have a new chapbook, The Kind of Beauty That Has Nowhere to Go, available now from Hyacinth Girl Press. Here's one line from a suite of five smart, lovely poems you can read at Nailed:  

Don’t start thinking about how smells smell to anyone else. You’ll only start freaking out about the limitations of knowledge.

Kate Lebo has a very exciting year in store (and, woah, a gorgeous new web site! Perhaps you can meet Kate on her tour in support of A Commonplace Book of Pie) and her poem, Rhubarb, the Green Age will appear in the fall issue of Gastronomica. The first two stanzas: 

          What puckered honey was potted last fall,
          its rootball a muddy peach, split dead 

          center and buried to kindle a pair 
          of pie plants. What bitterleaf 

My nosiness most certainly extends into (perhaps excessive) interest in the contents of people's handbags (and refrigerators and medicine cabinets), so I was delighted to get a peek into Katie Puckrik's purse, and read the accompanying interview, which includes this ringing & tingling endorsement of Safran Troublant (a favorite of my own main squeeze): 

I love turning people onto the off-beat seductive powers of Safran Troublant by L'Artisan Parfumeur. With its saffron, rose, vanilla and sandalwood, Disturbing Saffron is an unusual variation on a gourmand. And sexxxaaaayyyy....hoo boy. Put it this way: in ancient Rome, the expression 'sleeping on a bed of saffron' referred to a long hard night of making whoopee. 

Rebecca Hoogs and Maggie MK Hess have beautiful poems in the Fall 2013 issue of FIELD. What luck that you can read two of these poems online! But FIELD clearly has very good taste in poets, so you may also wish to order the issue. (You'll get a bonus poem by Rebecca!) The first two stanzas of Maggie MK's poem, "Role Play": 

Let's be lesser known suns.
You love me up close and I'll love you
from over here. We'll be ok if our legs 

are strong against the horse. Oh, quick,
quick, he's getting away. Let's rub
our noses until we smell of home.

Not available online, but so worth seeking out, are Britta Ameel's amazing poems in the September/October 2103 issue of The American Poetry Review. Here is the opening of "Self-Portrait with Planet and Hypothetical," one of my favorite poems by Britta (one of my favorite poems, full-stop): 

Yes, my body, my boss, my blood, yes,
my sucking heart. The world radiates
forth in its phosphorescent slump. 

Nosy friends and former interviewees, please let me know if you have something to add to this fall bounty! 

summertime pleasures

Smelling peonies at any opportunity is also recommended.

Nosy Interviewees are an inspiringly productive bunch! If you liked their interviews, here are some new ways you can enjoy their work: 

• Rebecca Hoogs's first full-length book of poems, Self-Storage, was published in April! 
• The paperback of Natalie Bakopoulos's novel, The Green Shore, comes out today! 
• Wilson Diehl's essay, "Yes, I Really Am Bisexual. Deal With It.",  appeared in the New York Times!
• Julie Klausner's new YA novel, Art Girls Are Easy, is out now! 
• The paperback of Alyssa Harad's memoir, Coming to My Senses, will be published one week from today! 
• Kate Lebo released a new zine, The Pie Lady's Manifesto, and it's available here!
• Emily Gould was a recent guest on Other People with Brad Listi. Listen!

Wow! So much summertime entertainment for your nosy brains. Congratulations and a (virtual) bouquet as enormous as the one pictured above (scenting up my parents' whole house last week) to each of you listed here. If you're a Nosy Interviewee with some good news, let me know!