Before we get started here I want to tell you that Dobby Gibson is reading at 7 p.m. Friday (Jan. 9) at The Loft (Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave) to celebrate the launch of his latest poetry collection Skirmish which comes out today! Gibson, who lives in Minneapolis, has an MFA from Indiana University, been nominated for the Pushcart twice, and received a McKnight Foundation poetry fellowship. Skirmish is his second collection. His first, Polar, was published in 2005. You can learn more about Gibson on his Web site.

What book(s) are you currently reading?
Right now, a book of poems called Meteoric Flowers (Wesleyan University Press) by Elizabeth Willis, and a memoir called The Language of Blood (Graywolf Press) by Jane Jeong Trenka. Trenka spent most of her childhood in Harlow, Minnesota, the self-proclaimed Turkey Capital of the World, before returning to her native Korea as an adult. The book follows this long journey as she uncovers new layers — and some long-hidden layers — in her identity.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? Who?
Miss Nelson in Miss Nelson is Missing — right after I discovered it was she who was the horrible Viola Swamp. Isn’t that book less a moral about appropriate classroom behavior than it is a powerful first lesson in the eerie charms of cognitive dissonance?

If your favorite author came to Minnesota, who would it be and what bar would you take him/her to?
I never have a just a single favorite author, and my rotating cast of literary Super Friends tend to be dead ones. But if I’m going to take, say, Larry Levis or Basho out for a drink, surely Bryant Lake Bowl or the Kitty Cat Klub would have the appropriate restorative concoction.

What was your first favorite book?
Deadline for McGurk by E.W. Hildick. This children’s mystery documented the first in many exciting capers solved by 10-year-old Jack P. McGurk, leader of the McGurk Detective Agency. McGurk was assisted by the olfactory prowess of Willie “The Nose” Sandowskey, among other characters, if memory serves.

Let’s say Fahrenheit 451 comes to life, which book would you become in order to save it from annihilation?
Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara.

What is one book you haven’t read but want to read before you die.
Doctor Zhivago — one of many books I’m embarrassed to admit I haven’t read.

P.S. Make sure to read Dobby’s Largehearted Boy Book Notes essay for Skirmish.

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Interview, MN Authors Basho, Dobby Gibson, E.W. Hildick, elizabeth willis, Frank O'Hara, Harry Allard, jane jeong trenka, Larry Levis