An Interview with Kevin Simmonds
While opera might not be everyone’s first choice for music/entertainment, for those acquainted with the genre, Leontyne Price is amongst the best that ever lived, and her status as being the first African American soprano to earn international recognition, respect, and praise extends beyond the stage. Kevin Simmonds’ The Monster I Am Today: Leontyne Price and a Life in Verse (Northwestern University Press 2021) centers on both Price’s career and the more intimate aspects of her life, but it also seamlessly combines poetic expression and autobiographical details of Simmonds’ own journey that together create a work that escapes any easy categorization. Simmonds is the author of two previous poetry collections, Mad for Meat and Bend to It, in addition to being the editor of Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion and Spirituality. I spoke with him to discuss poetry, the consequences of everyday prejudices, and how artists can use their mediums to break new ground.
Esteban Rodriguez, Interviews Editor
Esteban Rodriguez: Thank you so much for your time, Kevin. The Monster I Am Today:Leontyne Price and a Life in Verse combines poetry and prose to focus on the life and achievements of Leontyne Price, the first African American soprano to achieve international acclaim, while simultaneously incorporating memoir to explore your own personal narrative. There is a moment toward the end of the book where you are in Japan at a novelty store/bar/cafe, and while watching the bartender, you reflect upon your own journeys throughout the years:
Tsuyoshi’s drying glasses and wondering about me, why I
would bring my body all this way and sit across from him
and the glasses he’s setting down like chess pieces. He’s
wondering why I’d come to live in a small town only to be
misunderstood: the language gathering in my throat like the
sound of dead beetles crunching underfoot.
How have the places you’ve inhabited (New Orleans, San Francisco, Vanderbilt) shaped your voice and modes of expression (writing, books, music)? Does each build upon the other?
Kevin Simmonds: New Orleans is my hometown, where I got my phonemes, the essence of how I sound—aurally and on the page. An upbringing that was almost exclusively Black—family, neighbors, teachers, church (except for the white priests and nuns). Vanderbilt, where I was first exposed to white people en masse and where I began second guessing and diluting my sound, wasn’t a welcoming place for me in 1990. Black and gay as I was. Living in Japan and San Francisco for so many years has helped me return to my first sounds. Japan because it teaches me to be still and deliberate. San Francisco because it’s where I learned to risk.
ER: The racism present at Vanderbilt no doubt shows up on the page, and this sentiment extends to Price’s rise to fame in the book, specifically in what appears to be F.B.I. file statements about her interactions with other prominent African American figures (Langston Hughes, LeRoi Jones, etc.). In much the way judgment was cast on you, society and the government cast its judgment on Price. Can you speak about the inclusion of these pieces and how they interact with the overall essence of the book?
KS: Considering government surveillance adds nuance to Price’s story. As far as I know, she doesn’t appear in any official FBI files, but the fictional pieces are based on actual events or FBI citations of other artists like Langston Hughes. Her absence from the surveillance archive means something. She was never blacklisted like elder Paul Robeson or contemporary Eartha Kitt. Maybe she wasn’t monstrous enough, not enough of an irritant to the system. Could she have been? I mean, she was an opera singer. It’s classical music. Being adventurous is anathema to that bunch. Besides Marian Anderson, I can’t name one singer in the classical music realm who’s really stirred any shit politically (and it was Eleanor Roosevelt, really, who took the Daughters of the American Revolution to task for refusing Anderson the use of Constitution Hall for her recital).
ER: One’s mere presence can be viewed as being an “irritant to the system.” In what ways did Price’s presence contribute to the landscape of opera, during the height of her career and after?
KS: I think she moved a lot of people with her sound, charm and dignity. What they did in response, I don’t know. I can’t say that she changed anything tangible, really. Look at opera today: still white as white can be. Look at who runs the companies, sits on the boards, directs, conducts, casts, sings. I can only attest to what she’s meant to me, which I try to do in the book. Yet a book expresses with words and, no matter how carefully chosen and arranged, words only approximate what the senses sense. And the psyche and soul are other things altogether. She’s done things to me I’ve yet to know, may never know.
ER: Toward the end of the book, you state the following:
I saw in Price how to abdicate the burden of my own life, to correct my
misalignment, to evacuate my child self, my teen self, my young adult
self to safety.
As someone who is a musician and writer, how do artists who break new ground provide you the opportunity to push those mediums further?
KS: If they surprise, exhibit daring, seem singular in their obsession, their deliberateness, then I’m drawn in. They give me permission to be more ambitious or reckless or wayward or devious. Yet, depending on who knows what, I may take that as encouraging, antagonizing, convicting, edifying, mocking, condescending, belittling, inspiring, probing, provoking, gratifying, patronizing—there’s no end to the ways in which I may interpret this “permission.” And the reasons for this are seldom evident to me. Whatever an artist or their work stirs in me leaves traces, residue. And I suppose that’s the material I work from, through, against, alongside. I’m more reactive than initiating. Or maybe not? Ulysses Dove’s male pas de deux from “Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven,” Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” Nina Simone’s “See-Line Woman,” and Simone Leigh’s “Brick House” seem to say to me, “Now, you!”
ER: What “permissions” do you feel this book, and your work in general, are giving others?
KS: I won’t presume to know what my work gives to others. I can tell you that I wrote the book as an act of sharing my current understanding of what Price has meant to me.
ER: The life of a writer can be busy, and carving out time to write can present its own challenges. What does the writing process look like for you?
KS: Thankfully my life isn’t busy. Writing terrifies me because I believe there’s so much at stake. It requires more than I’m willing to give, which is why my output is so small. On the rare occasion that I’m moved to write, usually because of an encounter of some kind, I’m obsessive, turning it over and over until something happens or stops happening. I’m taciturn by nature so imagine how difficult this is for me. Even when I’m “done” with some piece of writing, any feeling of accomplishment fails to give me confidence that I can write again.
ER: How do you feel The Monster I Am Today will relate to your earlier books, Bend to It and Mad for Meat? What relationship do you hope they have with each other?
KS: An artist’s works harmonize with one another. And, like any writer, I want to be read. But I don’t know how my work functions as a whole. That’s for readers, critics and scholars to say. I do, however, hope one poem, one excerpt, one book might lead someone to want to read more.
ER: What do you believe (or rather hope) that Leontyne Price would say about this amazing book?
KS: I’d want her to laugh and say, “I never thought about any of it that way.”
