A Great Interview at the 32 Poems Blog

I just read a great interview over at the 32 Poems blog. Serena M. Agusto-Cox interviewed Andrea Hollander Budy, and as with so many interviews, I come away feeling like I've learned a lot. Budy talks about how she's learned to be a poet not from enrolling in an MFA program or reading how-to books, but by reading volumes of poetry, primarily from the 20th and 21st centuries. She's been editing an anthology of contemporary poetry by American women, so she's been quite immersed.

Her description of her study leaves me with a case of envy that borders on covetousness: "I sit on a couch surrounded by windows on three sides. Across the room is a three-sided desk with plenty of surface space and, on one wing of the desk, my computer. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves fill two walls. This room is indeed an ideal writing space."

Of course, I remind myself that my 23 year old self would be staggered with jealousy if she could see the study in which I write now, and she would be beside herself to realize the computing power I now have, which she did not (I wrote on a Smith-Corona Portable Word Processor for all of graduate school. The disks held about 25 pages, and woe to you if you went over the limit without having saved recently).

It's a great interview, which makes me want to know more about her work. Go here for the full interview.