an interview with traci brimhall
Q: Rookery, your first collection of poetry, is absolutely littered with images and themes involving birds. What draws you to these winged things?
I don't remember exactly when birds began to become one of the central symbols in my poems, but I remember when I left New York City and moved back to the Midwest, I started to notice birds. In New York, 90% of the birds I saw were pigeons, but as soon as I was in that moving truck heading west on I-80, I saw hawks in the trees and red-winged blackbirds on the side of the roads. I saw sparrows, juncos, chickadees. The more I started looking, the more there was to see, and they started sneaking into many of my poems.
Q: What about God? Such a ridiculous question, but there seems to be some strong tension there throughout the book.
I was raised in a very religious household. However, I realized that many of the ideas that I was raised with did not coincide with what I actually believed in. During a part of my childhood, my family also attended a church where people spoke in tongues. I was told that God would choose someone to speak in tongues and someone interpret, and if I was chosen, I would know when the spirit moved me. I was never moved, but I saw it happen to people around me. It was terrifying, both their spiritual rapture and the sense of being personally unchosen by God. It's hard to feel a sense of clarity in my spiritual beliefs yet have people around me believe I am damned, so it doesn't surprise me that some of the religious tension I feel in my life has made its way into my work.
Q: Your diction is really a powerful force in your poems, and your language is precise and trimmed. How much of your writing process includes weeding out the straggler words and replacing the weak ones?
In part, I've been lucky enough to have peers who are the enemies of extraneous articles and the champions of compression. One of my teachers, Tom Lux, used to talk about looking at your poems with different lenses. One time through your poem, you should only look at your verbs. One time, just look at your articles. By picking one element of structure at a time, you can really see how the poem is working and fix it one nut, bolt, and adjective at a time. I also really believe in test driving a draft by reading it out loud. I often notice weak language and lazy rhythm that way. Since my first book came out last fall, I've done a few readings, and the more I read my poems out loud, the more I keep noticing changes I'd still like to make. I've started to make edits in my reading copy when I find a word that could still be better.
Q: Do you ever get a word or set of words stuck in your head, and feel the need to release it through a poem?
Scraps of language often start a poem for me. It's often something I misread or mishear, and I like the way I misunderstood it, but I feel like images are often germs that spark multiple poems for me. In my second book, I'd written three or four poems with a lion in it before I realized the speaker was always trying to put their hand in a lion's mouth or get something out of a lion's mouth. That started generating ideas for me. What was really in the lion's mouth? What danger was I trying to get at? Or what mastery?
Q: Let's switch gears here and discuss your time spent right here in Michigan. How have you liked the writing community here, specifically in Kalamazoo?
I've had the best writing community of my life here in Kalamazoo. Quite a few local poets put Kalamazoo or Western Michigan University in their bios, so when I moved here last year, I looked them up on Facebook and asked them if they'd like to go out for coffee. Many caffeinated drinks, beers, pizzas, and potlucks later, I have an amazing group of friends here who are passionate about their lives and passionate about writing. The only downside is watching some of them leave as they graduate and get jobs elsewhere.
Q: Is there any difference that you've noticed in your writing having moved to Michigan, or even just the Great Lakes region?
Of all the places I've lived, I think I've been happiest in the Midwest. I don't think 'happy' is quite what comes through in my poems, but I think being content helps me write about times in my life that were not as pleasant. Safety makes risk possible, and I'm glad I'm in a place and with people that allow me to take the kinds of risks in my work that I want to take.
Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (forthcoming from W.W. Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review Online, FIELD, Indiana Review and Southern Review. She is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and has received scholarships to the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Disquiet International Literary Program.
She holds degrees from Florida State University and Sarah Lawrence College. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University where she is a doctoral candidate and a King/Chávez/Parks Fellow. She also serves as Poetry Editor for Third Coast and Editor at Large for Loaded Bicycle.
I don't remember exactly when birds began to become one of the central symbols in my poems, but I remember when I left New York City and moved back to the Midwest, I started to notice birds. In New York, 90% of the birds I saw were pigeons, but as soon as I was in that moving truck heading west on I-80, I saw hawks in the trees and red-winged blackbirds on the side of the roads. I saw sparrows, juncos, chickadees. The more I started looking, the more there was to see, and they started sneaking into many of my poems.
Q: What about God? Such a ridiculous question, but there seems to be some strong tension there throughout the book.
I was raised in a very religious household. However, I realized that many of the ideas that I was raised with did not coincide with what I actually believed in. During a part of my childhood, my family also attended a church where people spoke in tongues. I was told that God would choose someone to speak in tongues and someone interpret, and if I was chosen, I would know when the spirit moved me. I was never moved, but I saw it happen to people around me. It was terrifying, both their spiritual rapture and the sense of being personally unchosen by God. It's hard to feel a sense of clarity in my spiritual beliefs yet have people around me believe I am damned, so it doesn't surprise me that some of the religious tension I feel in my life has made its way into my work.
Q: Your diction is really a powerful force in your poems, and your language is precise and trimmed. How much of your writing process includes weeding out the straggler words and replacing the weak ones?
In part, I've been lucky enough to have peers who are the enemies of extraneous articles and the champions of compression. One of my teachers, Tom Lux, used to talk about looking at your poems with different lenses. One time through your poem, you should only look at your verbs. One time, just look at your articles. By picking one element of structure at a time, you can really see how the poem is working and fix it one nut, bolt, and adjective at a time. I also really believe in test driving a draft by reading it out loud. I often notice weak language and lazy rhythm that way. Since my first book came out last fall, I've done a few readings, and the more I read my poems out loud, the more I keep noticing changes I'd still like to make. I've started to make edits in my reading copy when I find a word that could still be better.
Q: Do you ever get a word or set of words stuck in your head, and feel the need to release it through a poem?
Scraps of language often start a poem for me. It's often something I misread or mishear, and I like the way I misunderstood it, but I feel like images are often germs that spark multiple poems for me. In my second book, I'd written three or four poems with a lion in it before I realized the speaker was always trying to put their hand in a lion's mouth or get something out of a lion's mouth. That started generating ideas for me. What was really in the lion's mouth? What danger was I trying to get at? Or what mastery?
Q: Let's switch gears here and discuss your time spent right here in Michigan. How have you liked the writing community here, specifically in Kalamazoo?
I've had the best writing community of my life here in Kalamazoo. Quite a few local poets put Kalamazoo or Western Michigan University in their bios, so when I moved here last year, I looked them up on Facebook and asked them if they'd like to go out for coffee. Many caffeinated drinks, beers, pizzas, and potlucks later, I have an amazing group of friends here who are passionate about their lives and passionate about writing. The only downside is watching some of them leave as they graduate and get jobs elsewhere.
Q: Is there any difference that you've noticed in your writing having moved to Michigan, or even just the Great Lakes region?
Of all the places I've lived, I think I've been happiest in the Midwest. I don't think 'happy' is quite what comes through in my poems, but I think being content helps me write about times in my life that were not as pleasant. Safety makes risk possible, and I'm glad I'm in a place and with people that allow me to take the kinds of risks in my work that I want to take.
Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (forthcoming from W.W. Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review Online, FIELD, Indiana Review and Southern Review. She is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and has received scholarships to the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Disquiet International Literary Program.
She holds degrees from Florida State University and Sarah Lawrence College. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University where she is a doctoral candidate and a King/Chávez/Parks Fellow. She also serves as Poetry Editor for Third Coast and Editor at Large for Loaded Bicycle.
an interview with justin hamm
Q: Growing up in Illinois, how did the way you saw your surroundings back in your youth inform the way you write about the Midwest today?
I really think that not appreciating or sympathizing with Midwestern culture as much as I should have as a kid caused me to rediscover it with more enthusiasm as an adult. Growing up, I was surrounded by a working class, agricultural environment, by people who led these really difficult lives and found their release or their joy in things I didn't necessarily find interesting. But I soaked in all this stuff and was molded by it without ever really feeling a part of it. So when it finally sunk in for me that this was my culture, too, I had so much to rediscover and I came at it with the intensity of a child -- like somebody who was experiencing all this stuff for the first time.
Q: Did you ever long to leave the area?
I'm not sure I was aware enough to think about regions or escaping a region at that time. But I definitely knew I had to get out of my immediate surroundings, and that was constantly in my mind. Neither of my parents graduated high school. We lived most of my childhood in poverty. There were drug problems, there was violence. Don't get me wrong; there was also intense love and there were stretches of really normal, healthy childhood in there, too. And as I grew up I began to see that everybody was just doing their best with the cards they were dealt. But I knew there were things I had to get away from, and I didn't really care what region I ended up in as long as my everyday environment was more stable.
Q: Do you feel that it is necessary or important for a writer to have strong connections to his/her surroundings?
I don't know if it's necessary -- good writing can come from many impulses, so it feels shortsighted to say anything is necessary -- but I do know that in my case, being interested in and aware of what makes my surroundings particular has led to a lot more and better work. This may simply be because it has made me more observant. I recognize that and try to continue to strengthen my connection to the region by giving myself assignments. I'll go out and try to shoot pictures that represent the Midwest as it exists in my head, for instance, and I'll use those to help create the mood of a poem. Other writers may not get much out of thinking like that.
So I guess I'd say it's necessary for a writer to have strong connections to something, an obsession of some kind. If it happens to be place, great, I love that kind of writing. But it doesn't have to be place.
Q: What about their childhood?
Again, I don't know if it's necessary to be connected with your childhood, but there certainly are a lot of writers who are. And I wonder if that is because most of us get our strongest impressions of the world when we're children. Frank McCourt and Mark Twain come immediately to mind. Here are two greats who were still writing about their childhood in detail through middle age and beyond, so that period must've affected both of them powerfully.
I definitely think my strongest impressions of Illinois come from my childhood, though I didn't realize it when it was happening. As I'm exploring all this over again in my work and in the way I observe the world around me on a daily basis, I'm conscious that I'm obsessed with certain symbolic objects or ideas now because they worked their way into my subconscious a long time ago.
Q: Tell us a little about the creative writing community in your new(ish) Missouri area.
Well, Mexico is about thirty-five minutes from Columbia, and Mizzou has a great reading series and lots of fantastic writers and poets. But it's been tough to get down there and see those events because I'm a public school teacher and a father of a two-year-old who needs lots of attention and the late nights just aren't an option. I made it to see one reading last year and it was excellent, so I hope to make four or five this year. There are other readings that aren't affiliated with the university going on in Columbia, too, and a couple of awesome bookstores, and a chapter of the Missouri Writers Guild. The public library there is the best I've ever been in. Basically, the scene is what you'd expect from a major university town full of literate people.
But it's difficult to be able to get involved down there because of the travel, and with that in mind, I've been trying to grow the community here in my town by putting together a free weekly writing course/workshop. It's a small town, about 12,000 people, and we've had pretty good involvement. We've had up around twenty people in the course on and off, and there are about ten regulars. We also put together an open mic event that was well attended and that we hope will become a regular monthly deal. Basically, the writers here need experience and a forum to improve, and I'm trying to give them that.
I have a lot of ideas about how they can learn more -- we want to try to put together a literary magazine and host author readings at the local fine arts center -- but it's going to take time.
Q: What motivated you to migrate to a neighboring state? Why not move further away?
My wife followed me to Southern Illinois University so I could do my MFA, and we agreed when it came time to move from there that we would go where her job took her. We had friends here and of the jobs she was considering, she liked the one she has now the best. So we moved. We were less concerned with state boundaries than with distance from our families and closest friends.
Q: How do you find a balance between teaching and writing? Does one inform the other? Both?
The balance between teaching and writing isn't that hard. First, I prioritize. After my wife and daughter, teaching is the most important thing, period. I'm a public school teacher and my students rely on me to help them get where they're going in life. I figure The Such-and-Such Review probably isn't going to fail if I don't hurry up and write a new poem to send them.
That said, I find time by not doing what other people do to unwind. I don't watch TV, for example. That right there is probably ten or fifteen hours a week I save. Plus, I jot lines down through the course of my day, as they strike me. And I make sure my breaks from teaching are creatively productive. So, yes, I'm spending time with family on Thanksgiving or over Christmas, but I'm also making sure I spend a couple of hours a day writing.
There are dead periods. I'm about to enter one right now, in fact. During baseball season -- basically all of April and May -- I end up working 60-80 hours a week, and I write almost nothing during that time. But I make up for those down months in the summer, when I write a new poem almost every single day.
It also helps that I'm a poet, and poetry can be drafted and revised in smaller bursts. If I still wrote primarily fiction, I'd never be able to make it work and I'm sure I'd be frustrated.
Until recently, teaching and writing were two very separate worlds for me. But I've been doing it nine years now -- three as a graduate instructor and six as a public school teacher -- and as teaching shapes the person I am, making me more patient, for instance, I begin to see those attitudes emerge in my poems. And when certain students know that I'm a writer or a poet, it makes them less self conscious about their own creative impulses. So I get to help talented kids come out of their shells creatively, which is great.
Q: Lastly, what is it about the Midwest that makes it such a great place to write about?
The biggest thing is the people. They're so attuned to where they're located, the land, the weather, everything. They're resilient and hardworking and well-mannered and stubborn as hell. There's a thousand contradicting things they are, and maybe that isn't so different from people in other places, but Midwesterners are what I know, and I find them fascinating.
And then there's the landscape out here. Not just the farms and the fields, which I do love, but these dying little towns that break your heart when you pass through them. You can't help but want to stop and record something on paper or in a picture, or even just soak in the mood and make a poem out of that -- as if by doing so you're helping preserve something that may not be there the next time you pass through.
Originally from the flatlands of central Illinois, Justin Hamm now lives near Mark Twain territory in Missouri. He is the author of the poetry chapbook Illinois, My Apologies (RockSaw Press, 2011). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, The New York Quarterly, Cream City Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and a host of other publications. Recent work has also been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. Justin earned his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2005. His current project is a free course for creative writers living in and around the small community of Mexico, Missouri. Check out his chapbook, Illinois, My Apologies, here.
I really think that not appreciating or sympathizing with Midwestern culture as much as I should have as a kid caused me to rediscover it with more enthusiasm as an adult. Growing up, I was surrounded by a working class, agricultural environment, by people who led these really difficult lives and found their release or their joy in things I didn't necessarily find interesting. But I soaked in all this stuff and was molded by it without ever really feeling a part of it. So when it finally sunk in for me that this was my culture, too, I had so much to rediscover and I came at it with the intensity of a child -- like somebody who was experiencing all this stuff for the first time.
Q: Did you ever long to leave the area?
I'm not sure I was aware enough to think about regions or escaping a region at that time. But I definitely knew I had to get out of my immediate surroundings, and that was constantly in my mind. Neither of my parents graduated high school. We lived most of my childhood in poverty. There were drug problems, there was violence. Don't get me wrong; there was also intense love and there were stretches of really normal, healthy childhood in there, too. And as I grew up I began to see that everybody was just doing their best with the cards they were dealt. But I knew there were things I had to get away from, and I didn't really care what region I ended up in as long as my everyday environment was more stable.
Q: Do you feel that it is necessary or important for a writer to have strong connections to his/her surroundings?
I don't know if it's necessary -- good writing can come from many impulses, so it feels shortsighted to say anything is necessary -- but I do know that in my case, being interested in and aware of what makes my surroundings particular has led to a lot more and better work. This may simply be because it has made me more observant. I recognize that and try to continue to strengthen my connection to the region by giving myself assignments. I'll go out and try to shoot pictures that represent the Midwest as it exists in my head, for instance, and I'll use those to help create the mood of a poem. Other writers may not get much out of thinking like that.
So I guess I'd say it's necessary for a writer to have strong connections to something, an obsession of some kind. If it happens to be place, great, I love that kind of writing. But it doesn't have to be place.
Q: What about their childhood?
Again, I don't know if it's necessary to be connected with your childhood, but there certainly are a lot of writers who are. And I wonder if that is because most of us get our strongest impressions of the world when we're children. Frank McCourt and Mark Twain come immediately to mind. Here are two greats who were still writing about their childhood in detail through middle age and beyond, so that period must've affected both of them powerfully.
I definitely think my strongest impressions of Illinois come from my childhood, though I didn't realize it when it was happening. As I'm exploring all this over again in my work and in the way I observe the world around me on a daily basis, I'm conscious that I'm obsessed with certain symbolic objects or ideas now because they worked their way into my subconscious a long time ago.
Q: Tell us a little about the creative writing community in your new(ish) Missouri area.
Well, Mexico is about thirty-five minutes from Columbia, and Mizzou has a great reading series and lots of fantastic writers and poets. But it's been tough to get down there and see those events because I'm a public school teacher and a father of a two-year-old who needs lots of attention and the late nights just aren't an option. I made it to see one reading last year and it was excellent, so I hope to make four or five this year. There are other readings that aren't affiliated with the university going on in Columbia, too, and a couple of awesome bookstores, and a chapter of the Missouri Writers Guild. The public library there is the best I've ever been in. Basically, the scene is what you'd expect from a major university town full of literate people.
But it's difficult to be able to get involved down there because of the travel, and with that in mind, I've been trying to grow the community here in my town by putting together a free weekly writing course/workshop. It's a small town, about 12,000 people, and we've had pretty good involvement. We've had up around twenty people in the course on and off, and there are about ten regulars. We also put together an open mic event that was well attended and that we hope will become a regular monthly deal. Basically, the writers here need experience and a forum to improve, and I'm trying to give them that.
I have a lot of ideas about how they can learn more -- we want to try to put together a literary magazine and host author readings at the local fine arts center -- but it's going to take time.
Q: What motivated you to migrate to a neighboring state? Why not move further away?
My wife followed me to Southern Illinois University so I could do my MFA, and we agreed when it came time to move from there that we would go where her job took her. We had friends here and of the jobs she was considering, she liked the one she has now the best. So we moved. We were less concerned with state boundaries than with distance from our families and closest friends.
Q: How do you find a balance between teaching and writing? Does one inform the other? Both?
The balance between teaching and writing isn't that hard. First, I prioritize. After my wife and daughter, teaching is the most important thing, period. I'm a public school teacher and my students rely on me to help them get where they're going in life. I figure The Such-and-Such Review probably isn't going to fail if I don't hurry up and write a new poem to send them.
That said, I find time by not doing what other people do to unwind. I don't watch TV, for example. That right there is probably ten or fifteen hours a week I save. Plus, I jot lines down through the course of my day, as they strike me. And I make sure my breaks from teaching are creatively productive. So, yes, I'm spending time with family on Thanksgiving or over Christmas, but I'm also making sure I spend a couple of hours a day writing.
There are dead periods. I'm about to enter one right now, in fact. During baseball season -- basically all of April and May -- I end up working 60-80 hours a week, and I write almost nothing during that time. But I make up for those down months in the summer, when I write a new poem almost every single day.
It also helps that I'm a poet, and poetry can be drafted and revised in smaller bursts. If I still wrote primarily fiction, I'd never be able to make it work and I'm sure I'd be frustrated.
Until recently, teaching and writing were two very separate worlds for me. But I've been doing it nine years now -- three as a graduate instructor and six as a public school teacher -- and as teaching shapes the person I am, making me more patient, for instance, I begin to see those attitudes emerge in my poems. And when certain students know that I'm a writer or a poet, it makes them less self conscious about their own creative impulses. So I get to help talented kids come out of their shells creatively, which is great.
Q: Lastly, what is it about the Midwest that makes it such a great place to write about?
The biggest thing is the people. They're so attuned to where they're located, the land, the weather, everything. They're resilient and hardworking and well-mannered and stubborn as hell. There's a thousand contradicting things they are, and maybe that isn't so different from people in other places, but Midwesterners are what I know, and I find them fascinating.
And then there's the landscape out here. Not just the farms and the fields, which I do love, but these dying little towns that break your heart when you pass through them. You can't help but want to stop and record something on paper or in a picture, or even just soak in the mood and make a poem out of that -- as if by doing so you're helping preserve something that may not be there the next time you pass through.
Originally from the flatlands of central Illinois, Justin Hamm now lives near Mark Twain territory in Missouri. He is the author of the poetry chapbook Illinois, My Apologies (RockSaw Press, 2011). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, The New York Quarterly, Cream City Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and a host of other publications. Recent work has also been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. Justin earned his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2005. His current project is a free course for creative writers living in and around the small community of Mexico, Missouri. Check out his chapbook, Illinois, My Apologies, here.
an interview with robert fanning
Q: Being a professor and a poet, how do you find time to balance the two? How many cups of coffee does this include?
I am very fortunate to share my love of poetry with students who also love it. I find I'm constantly challenged and inspired by them--and it makes me a better poet--to be constantly in conversation with young poets about this art. In my first few years I've not been very successful at finding a good balance as a poet and teacher, though, frankly. I go weeks, sometimes nearly an entire semester without writing much at all. I'm a bit too obsessive about being the best professor I can be--and my writing is usually on the back burner. That said--I've been quite successful of late during the breaks--last summer I wrote a bunch of poems, and during the winter break the poems are flying out of me faster than I can catch them. It's interesting to see and feel quite palpably that psychic pressure--if the lid's on too tight, it's going to spill over. And I'm cool with that. I'm more of a binge poet anyway. Oh, and as for coffee: I wear one of those beer helmets with a cappuccino coming down the left tube and an americano down the right.
Q: Many of your poems are inspired from bits of news. When did you start using the news as a source of material? Any favorite sources?
Ezra Pound called literature "News that stays news." I've always loved that quote. I think a lot about poetry itself as an alternate source of news--a report of what matters in our world and in our lives, but also what is true, and beautiful and terrible. It's interesting, yes, that bits of news leak into my poems from time to time. Maybe it's an impulse to filter the "news" through the lens of my poems. Usually these incredible, ironic, horrifying, hilarious amazing news stories are quite unsatisfying as presented by the media; however, when strained through the craft of a poem--it produces a much better, heartier juice--we can drink deeper of the story inside the story--questioning it, savoring it, making sense of it.
I don't know when news stories started entering my poems, but it's not surprising. I'm kind of obsessive about the world's news, and I really wish I wasn't. Even in the middle of a poem I'll have a browser open checking Reuters weird news stories, Huffington Post, CNN, etc. I never feel good after reading or watching the news; perhaps it's a form of self-mutilation. Maybe that's another reason to turn some of this news into poems: to purify the story of its sensationalism. Stephen Dobyns said "Subject is only pretext..." which is another statement I agree with--that no matter where a poem comes from: the TV, the news, our life--the subject is only our springboard into the universal. News is just one source
Q: When you give readings, what do you do to prepare?
Often I'll be reading new work--but new or old, I always read the poems the night before, after I've put together a set-list, and I read the entire set before the reading, too--usually while I'm sitting in my car in the parking lot before the reading. I have been to poetry readings where poets torture the audience by flipping through their entire manuscript during the reading trying to decide what to read, or honk their way through unrehearsed notes of their own songs. I want my readings to be an engagement, a conversation, and an experience for the listeners. And whenever possible, I want to be polished and ready. That's part of my responsibility to the audience and to my poems. Lastly, I time the readings. I don't read beyond 20-minutes ever--if I can avoid it--and that's on the outside. It's far better to err on the side of reading too few poems.
Q: How do you go about picking the poems to be read?
This is often quite a challenging experience. Having given dozens of readings the past few years, you'd think it would be easier. It never is. It is exhausting picking poems to read. My wife Denise often bears the brunt of this too, because she has a really great and objective understanding of my work; so I often ask for her help, and we go back and forth--about which poems I want to read and in what order. My work has huge variance of tone--from some pretty giggly poems to some pretty sad stuff. Designing a set is crucial, because it really guides the listeners through the experience emotionally. I have a lot of respect for the audience, because I know it takes a lot of concentration and emotional investment to listen. The reading is its own poem really. I approach a reading like a poem.
Q: Do you ever look at one of your poems and see bits of other poets in it? Who do you see most often?
Honestly, I'm not the best judge of that. I see a really smudged accretion of a bunch of different aspects of the craft I've learned--but less any obvious influences. Tom Lux, my primary mentor, influenced me in the area of subject matter--that a poem should come from every available source, however strange--and that a poem, however personal, ought to aim for the universal. Luckily, though, when I look at my work, I don't see Tom Lux, the way I see him in others of his former students. And that is a danger I feel I've successfully avoided--to learn from a poet whose work you greatly admire but to not write like them. I'm not trying to shirk the question or to suggest that my work is highly original, by any means. Far from it. But I just see a huge melting pot of craft influences rather than obvious direct influences. I read, I digest, I go with my gut. But as I go--the poets and poems I love no doubt seep into my work as water into the earth, and that is holy.
Q: Do you ever find yourself pushing a word into a poem purely out of a love for that word?
Hell yes. The words are the shells we collect along the shore. I have words that for whatever reason become utterly lodged in my head for days, months, years--the way songs do. Lately the word Senator, which I'm even flirting with building an entire book around. And flume. And crumple. And Cardinal. And croon. Over the last week I've begun a new body of work that works with a smaller palette--that keeps using and re-using similar words. Ultimately, I'd rather be buried in a boatful of words than a boatful of poems.
Q: What's the newest manuscript looking like?
I'm in a really strange place at the moment. I have a large body of lyric poems that is winding down. I'm in the latter stages of that work: shaping, revising, thinking about sections, a title. And it will be a collection, in the old sense of the word--a gathering of very disparate poems. But what has happened--and this happened while finishing my first book too--is that two other manuscript ideas have burst out like bubbles now and have pulled me from finishing the one I arguably ought to be working on. So two more book ideas have burst forth and my creative energy would of course prefer to follow the new scent. Completing my first book, The Seed Thieves, caused a formal shift into a new body of work that became American Prophet. Now, I'm closing in on finishing my third manuscript and a I've sprung into a body of entirely new work--poems that are terrifying, frightening, exhilarating; work that is of an entirely different voice and style. So an interesting creative pattern is emerging. I still hope to "finish" my third manuscript before the summer to begin seeking a publisher, which is its own challenge that I must allow time for. But I'll be deep into a fourth, and hopefully fifth manuscript, in the process.
Q: Lastly, if you could have a beer with any poet, who would it be? Nearly as importantly, what kind of beer would it be?
I like poets and I like beer. But a lot of poets I like are dead and probably didn't drink beer. Dylan Thomas liked whiskey, which I've recently come to like. I would've loved to elbow up to the bar with him and have a whiskey any day. In considering this question for too long now though, I guess I've come to the conclusion that I'm easy. I'd pretty much like to have a beer with ANY poet who wants to talk about poems, and share some of their favorite poems, and who isn't a jerk.
Robert Fanning is the author of American Prophet (Marick Press, 2009), The Seed Thieves (Marick Press, 2006) and Old Bright Wheel (Ledge Press Poetry Award 2003). His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and The Atlanta Review, among others. A professor of Creative Writing at Central Michigan University, Fanning's writing awards include a Creative Artist Grant from ArtServe Michigan, the Inkwell Poetry Award, and the Foley Poetry Award. For more information, visit robertfanning.com.
I am very fortunate to share my love of poetry with students who also love it. I find I'm constantly challenged and inspired by them--and it makes me a better poet--to be constantly in conversation with young poets about this art. In my first few years I've not been very successful at finding a good balance as a poet and teacher, though, frankly. I go weeks, sometimes nearly an entire semester without writing much at all. I'm a bit too obsessive about being the best professor I can be--and my writing is usually on the back burner. That said--I've been quite successful of late during the breaks--last summer I wrote a bunch of poems, and during the winter break the poems are flying out of me faster than I can catch them. It's interesting to see and feel quite palpably that psychic pressure--if the lid's on too tight, it's going to spill over. And I'm cool with that. I'm more of a binge poet anyway. Oh, and as for coffee: I wear one of those beer helmets with a cappuccino coming down the left tube and an americano down the right.
Q: Many of your poems are inspired from bits of news. When did you start using the news as a source of material? Any favorite sources?
Ezra Pound called literature "News that stays news." I've always loved that quote. I think a lot about poetry itself as an alternate source of news--a report of what matters in our world and in our lives, but also what is true, and beautiful and terrible. It's interesting, yes, that bits of news leak into my poems from time to time. Maybe it's an impulse to filter the "news" through the lens of my poems. Usually these incredible, ironic, horrifying, hilarious amazing news stories are quite unsatisfying as presented by the media; however, when strained through the craft of a poem--it produces a much better, heartier juice--we can drink deeper of the story inside the story--questioning it, savoring it, making sense of it.
I don't know when news stories started entering my poems, but it's not surprising. I'm kind of obsessive about the world's news, and I really wish I wasn't. Even in the middle of a poem I'll have a browser open checking Reuters weird news stories, Huffington Post, CNN, etc. I never feel good after reading or watching the news; perhaps it's a form of self-mutilation. Maybe that's another reason to turn some of this news into poems: to purify the story of its sensationalism. Stephen Dobyns said "Subject is only pretext..." which is another statement I agree with--that no matter where a poem comes from: the TV, the news, our life--the subject is only our springboard into the universal. News is just one source
Q: When you give readings, what do you do to prepare?
Often I'll be reading new work--but new or old, I always read the poems the night before, after I've put together a set-list, and I read the entire set before the reading, too--usually while I'm sitting in my car in the parking lot before the reading. I have been to poetry readings where poets torture the audience by flipping through their entire manuscript during the reading trying to decide what to read, or honk their way through unrehearsed notes of their own songs. I want my readings to be an engagement, a conversation, and an experience for the listeners. And whenever possible, I want to be polished and ready. That's part of my responsibility to the audience and to my poems. Lastly, I time the readings. I don't read beyond 20-minutes ever--if I can avoid it--and that's on the outside. It's far better to err on the side of reading too few poems.
Q: How do you go about picking the poems to be read?
This is often quite a challenging experience. Having given dozens of readings the past few years, you'd think it would be easier. It never is. It is exhausting picking poems to read. My wife Denise often bears the brunt of this too, because she has a really great and objective understanding of my work; so I often ask for her help, and we go back and forth--about which poems I want to read and in what order. My work has huge variance of tone--from some pretty giggly poems to some pretty sad stuff. Designing a set is crucial, because it really guides the listeners through the experience emotionally. I have a lot of respect for the audience, because I know it takes a lot of concentration and emotional investment to listen. The reading is its own poem really. I approach a reading like a poem.
Q: Do you ever look at one of your poems and see bits of other poets in it? Who do you see most often?
Honestly, I'm not the best judge of that. I see a really smudged accretion of a bunch of different aspects of the craft I've learned--but less any obvious influences. Tom Lux, my primary mentor, influenced me in the area of subject matter--that a poem should come from every available source, however strange--and that a poem, however personal, ought to aim for the universal. Luckily, though, when I look at my work, I don't see Tom Lux, the way I see him in others of his former students. And that is a danger I feel I've successfully avoided--to learn from a poet whose work you greatly admire but to not write like them. I'm not trying to shirk the question or to suggest that my work is highly original, by any means. Far from it. But I just see a huge melting pot of craft influences rather than obvious direct influences. I read, I digest, I go with my gut. But as I go--the poets and poems I love no doubt seep into my work as water into the earth, and that is holy.
Q: Do you ever find yourself pushing a word into a poem purely out of a love for that word?
Hell yes. The words are the shells we collect along the shore. I have words that for whatever reason become utterly lodged in my head for days, months, years--the way songs do. Lately the word Senator, which I'm even flirting with building an entire book around. And flume. And crumple. And Cardinal. And croon. Over the last week I've begun a new body of work that works with a smaller palette--that keeps using and re-using similar words. Ultimately, I'd rather be buried in a boatful of words than a boatful of poems.
Q: What's the newest manuscript looking like?
I'm in a really strange place at the moment. I have a large body of lyric poems that is winding down. I'm in the latter stages of that work: shaping, revising, thinking about sections, a title. And it will be a collection, in the old sense of the word--a gathering of very disparate poems. But what has happened--and this happened while finishing my first book too--is that two other manuscript ideas have burst out like bubbles now and have pulled me from finishing the one I arguably ought to be working on. So two more book ideas have burst forth and my creative energy would of course prefer to follow the new scent. Completing my first book, The Seed Thieves, caused a formal shift into a new body of work that became American Prophet. Now, I'm closing in on finishing my third manuscript and a I've sprung into a body of entirely new work--poems that are terrifying, frightening, exhilarating; work that is of an entirely different voice and style. So an interesting creative pattern is emerging. I still hope to "finish" my third manuscript before the summer to begin seeking a publisher, which is its own challenge that I must allow time for. But I'll be deep into a fourth, and hopefully fifth manuscript, in the process.
Q: Lastly, if you could have a beer with any poet, who would it be? Nearly as importantly, what kind of beer would it be?
I like poets and I like beer. But a lot of poets I like are dead and probably didn't drink beer. Dylan Thomas liked whiskey, which I've recently come to like. I would've loved to elbow up to the bar with him and have a whiskey any day. In considering this question for too long now though, I guess I've come to the conclusion that I'm easy. I'd pretty much like to have a beer with ANY poet who wants to talk about poems, and share some of their favorite poems, and who isn't a jerk.
Robert Fanning is the author of American Prophet (Marick Press, 2009), The Seed Thieves (Marick Press, 2006) and Old Bright Wheel (Ledge Press Poetry Award 2003). His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and The Atlanta Review, among others. A professor of Creative Writing at Central Michigan University, Fanning's writing awards include a Creative Artist Grant from ArtServe Michigan, the Inkwell Poetry Award, and the Foley Poetry Award. For more information, visit robertfanning.com.
an interview with jennifer moss
Q: Many of your poems in Beast, to Be Your Friend involve animals in a variety of ways. How did this element become so prevalent in your poetry?
I’m not absolutely sure why so many of my poems involve animals. The animals just keep showing up. Even when I think I’ve written a poem that is animal-free, I’ll see that there is a spider web or an anthill in it. I’ve sort of given up fighting the animals and let them in. But I have some guesses about the animals in my poems, and why they appear. One guess is that I lived on a farm as a child and spent a lot of time around animals—cows, horses, dogs, cats. There were the usual wild animals too—deer, coyotes, bobcats, snakes, ravens, skunks. I found animals completely fascinating and mysterious, and I still do. They’ve always triggered my imagination. For much of my youth, I was one of those odd kids who like the company of animals more than that of people. That said, I don’t think that most of the animals that show up in my poems are “real” animals; they seem to me to be extensions of the human psyche. I’m interested in the human desire (in the desire I feel within myself, at least) to tame, to still, to possess, to categorize, to project the self onto the animal. It seems to me that most humans exhibit this desire not only in their relationships with animals, but with each other, with their environment, and with themselves. I’ve always felt uncomfortable about having this desire, yet it is there. I think where I address this feeling most obviously is in the poem “In Mammal Hall.” I used to sometimes go to this little musty museum at the University of Iowa called Mammal Hall that had stuffed (taxidermy) animals, and I found it unsettling how looking at these dead, posed animals was so compelling to me. I’m not the only one who finds it compelling, obviously; otherwise we wouldn’t have such places.
Q: The “Beasts Framed the Field” poems are my personal favorite in the book. The interchange is entrancing and mysterious. In your mind, when you wrote the poems, who/what is this beast? Did you originally set out to create a small series or did it just happen?
I see the beast in these poems as the same beast that makes its home in fairy tales—that is, the beast inside of us. I actually felt and saw the image of a red, sharp toothed animal one day when I was trying to do a certain impossible and painful pose in a yoga class I briefly attended. The image stayed with me, and the angry, raw feeling I associated with it, and I used that in these poems. I didn’t set out to create a series; it just evolved that way over time. I rarely set out with anything specific in mind when I start to write a poem. I wish I could; maybe my process wouldn’t take so long.
Q: Refreshing, surprising imagery often pops up in your poems. How long do you dwell on each one before you decide it’s the right one?
It’s different for different poems. Sometimes the images seem right immediately; other times, an image will seem not quite right, even if it’s an image that was essential to the poem getting started. Then I’ll try to find an image that works better.
Q: Walk me through your editing process. Is it quick, is it horrendously long, is it non-existent?
My editing process is usually pretty long; typically I go through draft after draft, and I usually work on a poem for close to a month. I really like tinkering with poems—thinking about them, trying out different words/images/rhythms. It’s probably my favorite part of writing.
Q: Not a lot of famous writers come out of the state of Washington. Tell me a little about the writing community near Seattle.
I’m not very knowledgeable about Seattle’s writing community. I’ve never been good at joining groups, I suppose, and that goes for writing communities too. But my impression is that there is quite a vibrant writing community (or many different ones) in the Seattle area. Wave Books is here now, and they have a lot of interesting authors; Copper Canyon Press is in the area too. In Seattle there is a wonderful bookstore owned by poets John Marshall and Christine Deavel called Open Books, which is one of only two all-poetry bookstores in the United States. This bookstore seems central to the writing community here. And of course there is the MFA program at the University of Washington; Heather McHugh is there, as is Linda Bierds and Richard Kenney and others. There’s also the Richard Hugo House; they offer writing classes and other programs to the community.
Q: Any contemporary poets you recommend to the world?
Sure, some that come to mind immediately: Larissa Szporluk, Geoffrey Nutter, Laura McKee, Ander Monson, Roberty Gregory, Valzhyna Mort, to name a few. These are people I’ve been reading recently, whose work I admire immensely.
I’m not absolutely sure why so many of my poems involve animals. The animals just keep showing up. Even when I think I’ve written a poem that is animal-free, I’ll see that there is a spider web or an anthill in it. I’ve sort of given up fighting the animals and let them in. But I have some guesses about the animals in my poems, and why they appear. One guess is that I lived on a farm as a child and spent a lot of time around animals—cows, horses, dogs, cats. There were the usual wild animals too—deer, coyotes, bobcats, snakes, ravens, skunks. I found animals completely fascinating and mysterious, and I still do. They’ve always triggered my imagination. For much of my youth, I was one of those odd kids who like the company of animals more than that of people. That said, I don’t think that most of the animals that show up in my poems are “real” animals; they seem to me to be extensions of the human psyche. I’m interested in the human desire (in the desire I feel within myself, at least) to tame, to still, to possess, to categorize, to project the self onto the animal. It seems to me that most humans exhibit this desire not only in their relationships with animals, but with each other, with their environment, and with themselves. I’ve always felt uncomfortable about having this desire, yet it is there. I think where I address this feeling most obviously is in the poem “In Mammal Hall.” I used to sometimes go to this little musty museum at the University of Iowa called Mammal Hall that had stuffed (taxidermy) animals, and I found it unsettling how looking at these dead, posed animals was so compelling to me. I’m not the only one who finds it compelling, obviously; otherwise we wouldn’t have such places.
Q: The “Beasts Framed the Field” poems are my personal favorite in the book. The interchange is entrancing and mysterious. In your mind, when you wrote the poems, who/what is this beast? Did you originally set out to create a small series or did it just happen?
I see the beast in these poems as the same beast that makes its home in fairy tales—that is, the beast inside of us. I actually felt and saw the image of a red, sharp toothed animal one day when I was trying to do a certain impossible and painful pose in a yoga class I briefly attended. The image stayed with me, and the angry, raw feeling I associated with it, and I used that in these poems. I didn’t set out to create a series; it just evolved that way over time. I rarely set out with anything specific in mind when I start to write a poem. I wish I could; maybe my process wouldn’t take so long.
Q: Refreshing, surprising imagery often pops up in your poems. How long do you dwell on each one before you decide it’s the right one?
It’s different for different poems. Sometimes the images seem right immediately; other times, an image will seem not quite right, even if it’s an image that was essential to the poem getting started. Then I’ll try to find an image that works better.
Q: Walk me through your editing process. Is it quick, is it horrendously long, is it non-existent?
My editing process is usually pretty long; typically I go through draft after draft, and I usually work on a poem for close to a month. I really like tinkering with poems—thinking about them, trying out different words/images/rhythms. It’s probably my favorite part of writing.
Q: Not a lot of famous writers come out of the state of Washington. Tell me a little about the writing community near Seattle.
I’m not very knowledgeable about Seattle’s writing community. I’ve never been good at joining groups, I suppose, and that goes for writing communities too. But my impression is that there is quite a vibrant writing community (or many different ones) in the Seattle area. Wave Books is here now, and they have a lot of interesting authors; Copper Canyon Press is in the area too. In Seattle there is a wonderful bookstore owned by poets John Marshall and Christine Deavel called Open Books, which is one of only two all-poetry bookstores in the United States. This bookstore seems central to the writing community here. And of course there is the MFA program at the University of Washington; Heather McHugh is there, as is Linda Bierds and Richard Kenney and others. There’s also the Richard Hugo House; they offer writing classes and other programs to the community.
Q: Any contemporary poets you recommend to the world?
Sure, some that come to mind immediately: Larissa Szporluk, Geoffrey Nutter, Laura McKee, Ander Monson, Roberty Gregory, Valzhyna Mort, to name a few. These are people I’ve been reading recently, whose work I admire immensely.
an interview with jack ridl
Q: Throughout Losing Season, you never use any real names, only tags like Coach or Vendor. What made you want to do this?
Well, pretentiously I wanted to suggest a kind of archetypal feel to the collection. I also wanted the kind of distance that leads the reader to connect by "inserting" the name of the equivalent character from their own town/experience. I tried names, but for some reason it created a kind of corny chumminess. The names ironically distanced the characters, maybe because it felt too intimate. "Larry" may not resonate with someone; whereas, "Coach" might and then the person can say, "Yeah, my coach's name was Hank," or "My coach's name was Jane."
Q: How did you feel writing an entire collection of poems with the same characters and the same losing feeling?
I loved writing having the same characters with me all the time. I'd always wanted to know what it was like to be a novelist and this gave me some sense of what it's like to carry around a whole world in your head for a long time. That town and everyone in it went everywhere with me. I knew them. I likely know some of them better than I know most anyone. It was a remarkably enriching experience.
And there were dozens and dozens of characters who didn't make it into the collection.
The losing feeling concerned me. It was relentless and I've had people tell me that they would sure have liked some relief, a poem or two about winning. But growing up as a coach's son, I knew that for those whose lives are invested in this craziness the feeling never lets up. Even a win leads only to the anxiety of losing the next game. So I made the choice to go with the relentless, feeling any break in it was dishonest.
Q: Looking at the book's cover, does that poor guy represent Coach to you? Or the whole team?
He represents the whole town. He represents America's obsessive placement of spirit on this crazy thing called basketball and in a larger sense, all sports. Sports are embedded in the psyche of the U.S. But why??
Q: Are you more influenced by basketball games, sports writing or good old poetry when writing poems like these?
I'm 99.99% influenced by good old poetry. The thing is to write a poem. At the same time, that would go for any subject one is writing about be it trees, childhood, angels, cars. The poetry is in the subject. We have to find it or let it find us. And then we have to take that ineffable whatever-it-is and translate it into the elements that make up a poem.
Q: When you watch basketball games, do you see a poem?
When I watch anything, I see a poem. So yes, I see poems all over the place while watching a game. I was incredibly fortunate that my father had a stunningly aesthetic sense of the game. He taught me HOW to watch. He showed me that the competition, the winning/losing, the score were the least interesting things about the game. I am forever grateful. A team can be ahead or behind by 40 and I'm still fascinated.
Q: Do you see yourself in any of these poems?
Maybe a twitch in Scrub. Mostly what is autobiographical about the collection is the terrible pressure I felt as a kid growing up under the oppression of those who invested in my father's teams and the consequences of that, the cruelty imposed on a family when a team didn't fulfill the misplaced wishes of fans, sports writers, commentators, etc.
Q: What was it like growing up with a famous basketball coach? Other than the obvious love of sports, how else did he influence your writing?
I owe crucial things to my father.
Discipline: You don't screw around with what it takes to play ball, to compose a poem. You work and you work and you work. And you learn to like it!
Practice: Nothing like having to dribble with your left hand for an hour to lead one to internalize a love of practice. I have never been frustrated with the combination of discipline and practice. I work for hours and hours on a poem and it's fun. I love moving lines, shifting line breaks, trying this, trying that. It's all practice, practice, practice.
Know your stuff: If you don't know how to play ball, know all the moves, then you're just playing HORSE. HORSE is fine, but it's not the real game. Same for poetry: know your stuff. Then bring it all to bear on the poem.
It's always the next game: You never learn to play ball. You never learn to write poetry. You have to learn how to play the next team. You have to learn how to write the next poem
Uncertainty: The ball is tossed up and you don't know what the outcome will be. Same with a poem. Pick up the pen but you don't know what the outcome will be.
Accepting all these and becoming comfortable with them
Thanks, Dad.
Q: On an off note, what is your method for getting into your writing mode?
I don't have one. I trust. I let anything affect me, be a trigger, be a prompt. I don't want to have any needs. I simply try to be open to what's coming in and what's then showing up on the page. I knew early on that I wouldn't have the opportunity to have extended time and peace and quiet and a mountain. I better be able to write any ole time. And I can write any ole time. That's doesn't mean the poems will be successful, not at all. Most aren't. But I love where I am when I'm writing. Writing is a place, a place to be and to discover and to realize and to be surprised.
Q: Lastly, how much do your own father and the character of Coach have in common?
They have hardly anything in common. My father was very modest, humble, gentle, low key.
Sports Illustrated described him as "a coach who grows geraniums in his basement, wears a hat, and says 'Oh my' a lot." About the only things they have in common are wistful reflectiveness and a relentless desire to overcome whatever is going wrong.
Well, pretentiously I wanted to suggest a kind of archetypal feel to the collection. I also wanted the kind of distance that leads the reader to connect by "inserting" the name of the equivalent character from their own town/experience. I tried names, but for some reason it created a kind of corny chumminess. The names ironically distanced the characters, maybe because it felt too intimate. "Larry" may not resonate with someone; whereas, "Coach" might and then the person can say, "Yeah, my coach's name was Hank," or "My coach's name was Jane."
Q: How did you feel writing an entire collection of poems with the same characters and the same losing feeling?
I loved writing having the same characters with me all the time. I'd always wanted to know what it was like to be a novelist and this gave me some sense of what it's like to carry around a whole world in your head for a long time. That town and everyone in it went everywhere with me. I knew them. I likely know some of them better than I know most anyone. It was a remarkably enriching experience.
And there were dozens and dozens of characters who didn't make it into the collection.
The losing feeling concerned me. It was relentless and I've had people tell me that they would sure have liked some relief, a poem or two about winning. But growing up as a coach's son, I knew that for those whose lives are invested in this craziness the feeling never lets up. Even a win leads only to the anxiety of losing the next game. So I made the choice to go with the relentless, feeling any break in it was dishonest.
Q: Looking at the book's cover, does that poor guy represent Coach to you? Or the whole team?
He represents the whole town. He represents America's obsessive placement of spirit on this crazy thing called basketball and in a larger sense, all sports. Sports are embedded in the psyche of the U.S. But why??
Q: Are you more influenced by basketball games, sports writing or good old poetry when writing poems like these?
I'm 99.99% influenced by good old poetry. The thing is to write a poem. At the same time, that would go for any subject one is writing about be it trees, childhood, angels, cars. The poetry is in the subject. We have to find it or let it find us. And then we have to take that ineffable whatever-it-is and translate it into the elements that make up a poem.
Q: When you watch basketball games, do you see a poem?
When I watch anything, I see a poem. So yes, I see poems all over the place while watching a game. I was incredibly fortunate that my father had a stunningly aesthetic sense of the game. He taught me HOW to watch. He showed me that the competition, the winning/losing, the score were the least interesting things about the game. I am forever grateful. A team can be ahead or behind by 40 and I'm still fascinated.
Q: Do you see yourself in any of these poems?
Maybe a twitch in Scrub. Mostly what is autobiographical about the collection is the terrible pressure I felt as a kid growing up under the oppression of those who invested in my father's teams and the consequences of that, the cruelty imposed on a family when a team didn't fulfill the misplaced wishes of fans, sports writers, commentators, etc.
Q: What was it like growing up with a famous basketball coach? Other than the obvious love of sports, how else did he influence your writing?
I owe crucial things to my father.
Discipline: You don't screw around with what it takes to play ball, to compose a poem. You work and you work and you work. And you learn to like it!
Practice: Nothing like having to dribble with your left hand for an hour to lead one to internalize a love of practice. I have never been frustrated with the combination of discipline and practice. I work for hours and hours on a poem and it's fun. I love moving lines, shifting line breaks, trying this, trying that. It's all practice, practice, practice.
Know your stuff: If you don't know how to play ball, know all the moves, then you're just playing HORSE. HORSE is fine, but it's not the real game. Same for poetry: know your stuff. Then bring it all to bear on the poem.
It's always the next game: You never learn to play ball. You never learn to write poetry. You have to learn how to play the next team. You have to learn how to write the next poem
Uncertainty: The ball is tossed up and you don't know what the outcome will be. Same with a poem. Pick up the pen but you don't know what the outcome will be.
Accepting all these and becoming comfortable with them
Thanks, Dad.
Q: On an off note, what is your method for getting into your writing mode?
I don't have one. I trust. I let anything affect me, be a trigger, be a prompt. I don't want to have any needs. I simply try to be open to what's coming in and what's then showing up on the page. I knew early on that I wouldn't have the opportunity to have extended time and peace and quiet and a mountain. I better be able to write any ole time. And I can write any ole time. That's doesn't mean the poems will be successful, not at all. Most aren't. But I love where I am when I'm writing. Writing is a place, a place to be and to discover and to realize and to be surprised.
Q: Lastly, how much do your own father and the character of Coach have in common?
They have hardly anything in common. My father was very modest, humble, gentle, low key.
Sports Illustrated described him as "a coach who grows geraniums in his basement, wears a hat, and says 'Oh my' a lot." About the only things they have in common are wistful reflectiveness and a relentless desire to overcome whatever is going wrong.
