Inspirations from Nikky Finney

Don't miss this great interview with Nikky Finney.  She talks about winning the National Book Award and about her activities as judge this year.  She talks about returning home to South Carolina, even though many of the elements that inspired her to leave are still there, "in brighter colors than ever before," as she puts it.

When I heard that she would be joining the faculty at the University of South Carolina, I felt a turmoil of emotions.  Careful readers of this blog may know that I earned my MA and PhD at that school; I was there from 1987 to 1992.  At that time, the most prominent creative writer on staff was James Dickey.  A few other older white men comprised the creative writing faculty, and at that time, poetry was not the focus of the creative writing faculty.  How I wish I could have had the opportunity to study with a poet like Nikky Finney. 

Ah well.  I have opportunities here that I would yearn for if I lived in a different part of the country.  I must keep remembering that.  And I had the opportunity to study with wonderful feminist scholars in other disciplines when I was at USC.  I must keep hold of that knowledge.  And it's important to note that almost all of my professors were encouraging in all sorts of ways.

So while I might not have gotten the creative writing training that I might get now, I did get great lessons in being a scholar, a teacher, an activist, and a member of the community.

But I digress.  Back to Nikky Finney.

She talks about being part of a team of artists put together to celebrate the sesquicentennial of end of the Civil War.  What an intriguing opportunity; I wonder what they'll create.  What would you create?

She talks about the artists who have helped her get to where she is today:  Lucille Clifton and Toni Cade Bambara.  She talks about her need to give back to the community.  And she reads a great poem about Lucille Clifton.

Her advice to aspiring poets:  "Now, I am hopefully urging on another generation, the next generation of young, passionate, risk-taking, truth-telling writers to say, don't be afraid of this, you can do this, just have the resolve to do it, and it'll work itself out."

Good words for all of us.

And here's a great idea and a great metaphor for the artistic endeavor: 

"I have a friend Dorianne Laux - lives in North Carolina. And she's married to poet. And she tell me this great story at the Dodge Poetry Festival this year. She said they bought one of those real estate boxes that the agents put outside the house with the information about the house inside.


So they put it outside their house. Their house was not for sale but they stuffed poems inside the box. And so people would stop and they thought they were taking out, you know, information that would give them the square footage about the house. And they would unfrill the paper and it would be, you know, the square footage of the human heart instead. And they would stand at the window, she said, and watch people reading the poems slowly and how slowly the car might take off. That's what we do as poets."

Leaving National Poetry Month with a Bang, Not a Whimper

April will be over soon, and with it, the end of National Poetry Month.  To paraphrase a famous poet from a different age, let's go out with a bang, not a whimper!

If you're in South Florida, especially on the southeast side of the state, Richard Blanco will be at 2 events today.  At 12:30 at the South Regional Library, which is on the South campus of Broward College, Blanco will participate in a question and answer session.

At 7, he'll do a poetry reading in the big auditorium of the South Campus of Broward College (7200 Pines Blvd. in Pembroke Pines).

If you can't get to a poetry reading, you can still have poetry to keep you company.  This week's episode of the radio show On Being featured the poet Marie Howe.  What a treat!  This link takes you to my favorite poem of the hour, in which Mary Magdalene speaks and tells us about her demons.  Those demons will be familiar to modern readers too.  Be sure to click on the player and have Howe read it to you.

The whole interview is fascinating.  Here are some bits to whet your appetite:

She talks about loving science fiction:  "I adored it. And about the robots were going to take over and the machines were going to take over. And just last week it occurred to me. Well they have. It's just different from what we expected. You know, uh, Joseph Brodsky — it's just different. And one of my teachers at Columbia was Joseph Brodsky, who's a Russian poet, wonderful, amazing poet, who was exiled from the Soviet Union for On Being a poet. And he said look, he said, you Americans, you are so naïve. You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn't come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language. And I was thinking the machines — what do you look at more? What face do you look into more than any other face in your life — the face of my iPhone."

"Well, that poem ["Letter to my sister"]was written to a sister who, uh, you know. in a big house different people experienced different things. And depending on where you are and the age, you know — and one of the things that I grew up understanding was that multiplicity of viewpoints and truths. But that particular poem was to my sister, a sister who I love very much, who was experiencing trauma and trying to speak to how, in our case I think, alcoholism shatters a unity. It can fragment a community so that you are now in separate shards. And as much as you want to be all in the same room, the nature of that illness fragments any unifying understanding, or even experience. So I think that's what those lines were trying to say. One sister is trying to speak to another from that fragmentation, you know, shard to shard."

She talks about a multi-week exercise she has her writing students do:  I ask my students every week to write 10 observations of the actual world. It's very hard for them.  . . . Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines. You know I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth. Uh, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.  . . . just noticing what's around them, which is — we don't do. And not, and again, not to compare it to anything, they're not allowed. And that's very hard for them. And then on the sixth, fifth or sixth week, I say OK, use metaphors. And they don't want to. They don't know how. Why would I? Why would I compare that to anything when it's itself?  . . . so then you think why the necessity of a metaphor? Why, why do you have to use a metaphor now, you know? Not just to do it to avoid it, but to do it to avoid it, but to do it to make it more there, you know. And it's very interesting."

This link takes you to the main page where you can hear the radio broadcast, watch the interview or read the transcript--and there are lots of extras.

Insights from a Billy Collins Interview to Celebrate his Birthday

Today is the birthday of Billy Collins, one of the most popular poets in America, who often reads to standing-room only crowds.  I've witnessed poets who seethe and go into melt-down mode over his popularity.  Why?

I understand that his kind of poetry isn't for everyone.  But why rage over the fact that a significant chunk of the population likes it?

In the interest of full disclosure, let me also confess that I, too, like his work.  I don't find his poetry simplistic, although I don't have to struggle to understand what he means.  I don't have to do extensive research or rely on footnotes, like I do with say, T. S. Eliot.  That's fine with me.  I don't agree with Toni Morrison, who once told an interviewer that she thought that reading literature should be hard work that we shouldn't shirk from.

Go back and read the poems of Billy Collins--see if you aren't surprised over the connections that he makes.  I usually read a Billy Collins poem and come away seeing the world in a different way.  That's the best quality in a poem for me.  That's why I like him.

And my dad likes him, and it's fun to have a poet in common.

I saw Billy Collins give an interview at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival in January.  He was warm and witty.  I took page after page of notes.  In honor of his birthday, let me record some of them here.

He says he writes with a pencil or a pen:  "I get to see the mess I make--I see all the decisions."

"A poet needs an attitude of never quite gotten used to being alive."  Why?  So that we'll have gratitude and we'll have the gift of seeing the world in new ways.

The interviewer quotes Stephen Dunn:  "You always know where you are in a Billy Collins poem, but you never know where you'll end up."

Collins says that as poets, we should welcome distractions as a side road, an escape hatch that takes us from Point A to Point B.  He hopes point B is a place that readers have never been before, a poem that starts in Kansas and ends in Oz.  He's seen too many poems begin in Oz without taking us there.

He talked about putting book length collections together.  He says he never has an over-arching theme, beyond his own brain's explorations.  He encourages us not to worry too much about organization.  He says we should put all our aces up front, in the first pages of the book, because editors are looking for reasons to stop reading, and you want your strongest stuff in the beginning.  And save a few for the end.  He reminds us that no readers will ever read your collection of poems from beginning to end.

For inspiration (if he hasn't written in awhile), he says he goes to an art museum or he looks through one volume of an encyclopedia.

Let me take a side trip here to wonder if anyone still has volumes of encyclopedias.  I remember when I got my first set of encyclopedias on a CD, the wonder of all that knowledge in one light-weight place.  I do remember that joy of opening up an encyclopedia volume and discovering what was there.  I did the same thing with dictionaries.  It's no wonder that I majored in English and stayed in school through a Ph.D. program.

My friend has gotten rid of his encyclopedias, but he can't bring himself to get rid of the yearbooks that he collected year after year.  He goes into rapturous wonder over the amount of information included about a single year.  He can't imagine another delivery system that would bring him the same kind of joy.

Back to Billy Collins:

He made up a word while he was talking:  incredimentia.  It's the inability to realize how freaking old you've gotten.  He said he's promoting the idea that one's 70's are the last decade of middle age.

The best comment he's ever gotten:  when he was Poet Laureate, after a reading, a young boy came up and asked, "How many people would have to die before you became President?"

A poet as president--that will be a fun contemplation today!

Poetry Week Continues! The Palm Beach Poetry Festival

Yesterday, I headed up to Delray Beach for an afternoon at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival.  I often like the craft lectures better than anything else, and so when I saw that Tracy K. Smith was paired with Tony Hoagland for yesterday afternoon's craft lecture, that seemed like a great deal.  Even better:  an interview with Billy Collins that happened right afterwards.  So, I bought tickets last week, and yesterday, I headed out.

Each event cost $15, but it was well worth it.  There's plenty of free parking at Delray Beach around Old School Square, so at least I wouldn't have to pay for parking.

Yesterday, I got there early, because I was afraid of running late; it only takes one wreck on the Interstate to destroy the best-made plans.  Happily, I had no problems.  The Crest Theatre is a lovely place, so I didn't mind having 20 extra minutes. 

I looked at the books, but decided to wait on buying them.  I looked in various rooms that were open:  parlours that functioned as art galleries or libraries.  I looked at one woman and thought, she looks like Tracy K. Smith.  I thought about saying something, but she was reading an iPad, and besides, what would I say?  "I love your work."  I'm sure she hears that a lot.  And what if it was someone else?

Later when Tracy K. Smith took the stage, I realized that the woman in the parlour was indeed Tracy K. Smith.  She gave a beautiful presentation where she talked about her own work and the work of Elizabeth Bishop.  She talked about using poems as a way to cross an uncrossable distance.

Then Tony Hoagland took the stage to talk about the use of imagination vs. the use of information.  He talked about "our American cottage industry:  poems of partially digested therapy."

Hoagland was quite funny in his examples of material from real life that he couldn't have made up in his imagination, like a sign in a forest that informed visitors that every tree in the forest had been cut down to make pilings for the Panama Canal.  He worries that poets, particularly American poets, live too much in their imaginations, that we've lost the sense of scale and proportion that tells us how much of ourselves to leave in--and to leave out.

Then we had a brief break, and Billy Collins took the stage to be interviewed by Ginger Murchison, editor of the Cortland Review.  She asked great questions, and he responded warmly and graciously.  He read several of his poems.

What I liked about each of the presentations is that I got to hear each poet read, but I also got to hear their thoughts on other subjects.  I found it much easier to stay alert and present with those formats than I often do during readings.

In the coming days, I will probably write a post or two to say more about what each poet said.  I wrote down too many treasures to keep them to myself.

It was interesting to return to the Festival; I've been there a few times, and I'm always struck by how many of the participants are either quite young (college or MFA students) or much, much older--the far side of midlife to quite elderly but still ambulatory.

Of course, it makes sense in a way.  Middle-aged folks like myself are usually working.  Would I come if I had to use vacation days to do so?  Probably not, since I wouldn't have many of them.  Would I come if I was balancing several jobs to keep my family together?  It wouldn't be possible.

This year, there seemed to be fewer students, but I could be wrong.  Or it could be the function of a Tuesday afternoon.

Each year, I wonder if I should commit to the Festival fully, sign up for the full 4 days of workshops and intense work with the visiting poets.  Each year, I'm deterred by the cost and the time and the driving.  But I'm always impressed by the poets who come, and I'm impressed by the events that I do attend.  For those of you looking for a great poetry experience, put the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, which happens each January, on your radar screen.

Interviews with Writers for Your Sunday Pleasure

You may not be a lover of NPR the way that I am, so you may not have realized how many great interviews with writers have taken place in the past week or two.  For your Sunday listening pleasure, I'm happy to offer these links.

Writer Chris Bohjalian writes compelling books, and he gives a great interview on the Diane Rehm show.  What would you do for your art?  Would you undergo simulated drowning in an airplane?  Bohjalian does, and it's fascinating to hear about.

Margaret Atwood has just put together a book about the art and practice of science fiction that sounds wonderful.  Hear her talk about it here.  When will this woman win the Nobel Prize?  She is one of the greatest, if not THE GREATEST, writers of her generation.

Art Spiegelman talks about Maus and MetaMaus here.  He talks about his father's desire for his son to have a good job, and I laughed out loud when Spiegelman noted that his father didn't realize that there would be no secure jobs in the 21st century.  He talks a bit about the future of animation and eBooks--facets I hadn't really considered before I heard him talk.

I heard this interview with poet Tracy K. Smith over a month ago, but it's worth mentioning again.  What a great interview.  Life on Mars is as fabulous as the interview led me to expect it would be.

A good interview with a writer, whether it's via podcast or magazine article or radio or a bound collection of interviews, a good interview makes me want to head to my computer/notebook/legal pad and start putting words to paper.  These interviews do just that. 

So, let's have virtual brunch:  good coffee, stout tea, scones, coffee cake--whatever your joy.  Let's listen to an interview or two.  Let's write together.

Justin Evans Talks about His New Book "Town for Trees"

During National Poetry Month, I was lucky not only to be able to be one of the first to read Justin Evans' Town for Trees, but to also interview him via e-mail.  What follows is the second of a two part interview; the first part, which focuses on background and more general writing issues, is here.  This second part focuses more specifically about Town for Trees.  Be sure to go here to order your very own copy.  You can read my review here and Sandy Longhorn reviewed the book here.  Justin blogs here, where you can find all sorts of information and links.

I've put my questions in bold type. Justin's answers follow.


1. These poems have magnificent landscapes as backdrop and even as main characters, in a way. Did you purposefully write the landscape as a character? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition of poets who write about landscapes and nature?

Thank you for saying so. Yes, I wanted the town and the landscape to be as important as any other character in the book. It was important to me because I identify so much of who I am as a person, as a human being with Springville, Utah.

It was my dear friend and mentor, Dave Lee, who first made it clear that I was allowed to use landscape in such a way. His book, My Town, had just come out when I arrived at Southern Utah University. That book is narrative, and centered on people, but there are also some amazing connections to the landscape. Not being a narrative poet, I started writing lyric poems about the people I knew and also the places I knew.

I don't know how much of an established tradition there is for poets who write about landscape. First, there is a strong argument to be made that American poets are, for the most part rooted in place as a theme. Certainly you have Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams who are recognized as focusing on place, but I would be a fool to try and insinuate myself into their company. I prefer to name poets like Dave, William Kloefkorn, Ted Kooser, Gary Short, and others. And while I am not anywhere near them in talent, I feel much more comfortable aligning myself with them. Finally, I think there is a lot stronger tradition amongst prose writers who seem to decide on place as a theme. I think with this book, there is a part of me who is trying to respond in kind to the American tradition of identifying with a specific geographic location.

2. Do you think you'd have written the same poems if you had never left the area?

Absolutely not. There is no doubt in my head these poems would not have been written if had never left Springville. I think I would never have started to contextualize Springville in the elegiac tradition without having left it and felt some kind of yearning to return. In my absence, or more correctly Springville's absence from me, I began to idealize the town, the people, the surrounding landscape. Whenever I returned there was always something lacking, as is natural, and that reality began to seed in my mind. It was only a matter of time until the poems started to form from that dissatisfaction.

3. Are you describing a town that still exists? The poems had a sort of tone of elegy about them. I wondered if you were writing about what you see as lost.

Yes and no. The town of Springville, Utah, is quite real, and I am certain if a stranger was to arrive they would see a small town and think it to be quite charming. On the other hand, the town I wrote about is lost in the past, and you would have to have had some prior experience with Springville to be able to match the poems in my book to the real town.

Next, as I implied in my previous answer, you are correct. The book is an elegy of sorts. Structurally speaking, I take my lead from John Milton's "Lycidas," which is elegy and pastoral in nature. I think it only natural that on some level we look back, trying to recapture what has been lost, and failing that, accept there are some things beyond our control.

4. As I was reading your poems, I was thinking of the current younger generation and wondering what kind of poems they'd write in our modern age, when towns (in terms of buildings) are so homogenized--you can find a Super Wal-Mart even in small communities of 6,000 people.

I think the homogeny of suburbia and commercial architecture is mostly fashion and in the end, not something to really be worried about. In thirty years, Wal-Marts will look entirely different. I also think poets find a way to contextualize their surroundings, whether they be rural like mine were, or urban, or even ticky-tacky suburbs. I just hope their poems are good---the subject matter is of less importance to me.

5. I also thought of younger/future poets in our age of global climate upheaval (I was reading in the aftermath of the terrible tornadoes) and wondering if climate change will affect the landscape/nature poems they will write. Any comments? Has global climate change affected the poems that you've been writing as you've gotten older?

As environment becomes more important, there will of course be more poems about that. What is of greater importance is that the poems be genuine, honest. If anything is to be said on this matter, it should be that craft can be learned and honed, but it takes a lot more work to learn how to be honest with yourself and the reader, and a dishonest poem will always fail. By dishonest, I mean a poem which is written by a poet trying to figure out what somebody wants to hear as opposed to writing what needs to be written. I know because I have written far too many of them. No matter the subject, a poet's allegiance should always be to the poem.

As for my own poems, I doubt I will ever really write many poems about global warming. I tend to look back with my poems, trying to avoid current events. Still, I may in the future if I feel compelled enough.

6. On your blog, you've talked about the narrative arc of this book. Obviously, it's not a narrative arc like you'd find in a novel. Any comments about how you put the book together?

I will revert to my blog to answer some of this:

First, a narrative arc is more than a hook upon which to hang your poems. Poetry at its very center must remain, as my friend and mentor Dave Lee has said, a participation sport. It is not, as the Moderns would suggest, art for art’s sake. The audience is not superfluous. Poetry must be shared, and in that sharing, a story is the poet’s best bet.

There must be a reason all of these poems are in one place. To accomplish a successful narrative arc, I advocate the hidden narrative--- the story only the poet knows. Yes, I think the best way to use the narrative arc is to use it during the writing of poems for a manuscript and then destroy it, revealing only that information the poet deems absolutely necessary. My narrative is just for me.  I think this for several specific reasons.

--The reader wants a narrative, but if the poet gives too much information by exposing said narrative, the reader will be able to predict what is going to happen. Where is the surprise in a collection of poems if the reader knows what is coming? The poet should make the reader feel as if each poem was a natural fit after or during the reading, not reveal everything ahead of time.

--By obliquely attacking the subject of the book, we preserve the impact. Every poet knows the best way to kill a poem is to attack the issue head on. Billy Collins discusses this when talking about his poem, “The Death of the Hat,” which is a poem he wrote while trying to come to terms with the death of his father. If he would have written a straight forward elegy, he would risk making the poem come off as weird, overly sentimental. As it is, he was able to use the disappearance of the hat from popular male culture to discuss weightier issues such as the passing of an era, a simpler time, and at the same time, incorporate memories of his father.

--The poet needs to keep his/her options open. Nothing is worse than one poem saying one thing, and another saying something contradictory. By keeping the narrative hidden from the reader, you can move in and out of the boundaries which confine the short story, getting rid of suspension of disbelief while all the time giving the crowd what it wants---a really great story.

This manuscript started much larger than it ended up being because I believe in over-writing and I had written plenty of poems about Springville. I started cutting and re-arranging the poems and I kept going until I felt I had a pretty good manuscript which followed my beliefs. Then I sent it to another poet who told me to cut even more. Some were easy cuts and others were really frightening, but it's what the book needed. After I made about 90% of the cuts and edits which were suggested to me, the book was ready.

7. I love the cover photo. How did you decide on the cover? Did the press ask you to come up with a cover or did you approach them?

Michael Czarnecki at Foothills Publishing asked me to send any photos I had which I would be willing to have as cover art, and since the book had been accepted by another press and dropped, the cover was something I was already thinking about. I sent him several photographs, and he sent back several proof covers which varied the picture and color of cover stock and fonts. The one he bound as a proof copy was the one both me and my wife immediately liked best.

8. I notice lots of rivers, lots of drowning. I'm still puzzling over the meaning. Any comments?

Some, yes. Springville got its name from all of the springs. The original name of the town was Hobble Creek, and it was named that because the first settlers kept waking to find their horses down at the small creek, hobbles and all. Water is a big part of the town I knew as a child. As for the rest, I'd rather let you draw your own conclusions.

9.  The book isn't in sections, and I wondered what led you to that decision.


The book is a tricky thing. Not my book--just the book in general. I know a lot of poets swear by sections, but the truth is, just as the poet owes devotion to the poem, I owed it to the book to remain true to its character, and without a reason, an actual solid argument for sections, I said to myself the book needs to be presented as a single unit. That isn't to say I hold to that for everything. My second manuscript is broken into four sections---two shorter sections, one at each end, and then two longer sections in the middle. The wonderful thing about poetry books is no two should ever be alike

10. For readers who don't know, could you please talk about your process for finding a publisher for this book and the route from manuscript to book?

I submitted to several contests, but I wanted to actually only submit to presses where I thought me and my book would be a good fit. I think that's the really important thing. I researched presses and found those which fit, and sent my manuscript in and waited. There is a lot of waiting.

After a year and a half or so of submitting my manuscript in what was its final form, I submitted to a press I saw via Facebook, and just like that it was accepted. Unfortunately, money got in the way. The editor asked about an electronic book publishing, but I refused. A short while after that I submitted to Foothills Publishing and my book was picked up again.

11. Now you've published 3 chapbooks and one full-size book. What's your next project? Will the publisher of your current book be interested in it or are you starting from scratch?


I've completed another full length manuscript, based in part on the Telemachy, which is the first four books of Homer's Odyssey. The poems in this current new manuscript of mine are entirely different than what is in my book, Town for the Trees. They are so far out from my usual voice and scope I am still wondering if they are any good at all. I also want to write a book of narrative poems about Springville, telling man of the stories I heard as a child but also create narrative poems about the town being settled.

12. There aren't many books of poems that get published without a contest or a reading fee any more. Any comments on the current state of publishing?


It's difficult, for sure. With the economy the way it is, and trends in electronic and self publishing, there are fewer and fewer options for the poet to do things the way they were done even ten years ago. I am old fashioned. I wanted a real book in my hand, not a digital pdf file, and that's why I waited it out. I have seen a few poets self publish and make a success of it, but I am not that kind of poet. I am still a hold out for the traditional system of submit and fail, submit and fail, submit and fail, until you succeed.

There is good news, however. There are a lot more places publishing. There are a lot more micro presses willing to do what they love, and success may be simply a matter of finding the right fit. By the way, the real secret is editors have always published what they like.

Justin Evans Talks about Teaching,Living in the U.S. Southwest, Writing, and More: Part 1

During National Poetry Month, I was lucky not only to be able to be one of the first to read Justin Evans' Town for Trees, but to also interview him via e-mail.  What follows is the first of a two part interview; this part focuses on Justin's unique background and on his approach to writing in general.  The second part will come to you on Friday, when he will talk more specifically about Town for Trees.  Between now and then, be sure to go here to order your very own copy.  You can read my review here and Sandy Longhorn just reviewed the book here.  Justin blogs here, where you can find all sorts of information and links. 

I've put my questions in bold type.  Justin's answers follow.

1. I'm interested in your military experience and how it's shaped you as a writer. While I know lots of writers and I know lots of military folks (like my Air Force dad), I don't know many writers with military experience.

I joined the army a year and a few months after I graduated from high school, when I was 19. I ended up training at Ft. Dix and Ft. Gordon, serving at Ft. Hood, in Germany, Desert Storm, and then Ft. Bragg. I had been trying to write poetry ever since I was fifteen or so, and I wasn't getting much better at it when I was in the army. However, what I was doing was starting to send out my work to editors. I got a lot of hate mail because I was pretentious and my poetry was simply terrible. A lot of people don't believe I got actual hate mail, because they don't want to believe editors do that sort of thing. I did get one friendly response, but for the most part, the feedback was very negative. You hear stories about how certain submission letters are placed in editorial offices to be made fun of by the staff, and I think I was simply too good a target to pass up.

I said all that to say this: The army made me disciplined, and it made me see through failure. Without that discipline, I would not have been able to stick to my goal of becoming a better poet. Without being able to see through failure, to know there is something on the other side of it, I think I would have given up on writing, or at the very least, given up on the idea that I should take seriously the act of writing and all that comes along with that assumption.


2. I know that you write poetry and that you blog. Do you write other genres? Have you ever?

Fiction eludes me. I would love to write a novel. I have the idea, the characters, basic plot, and I can even see the faces of the people in the story, but I cannot ever get past the first chapter, and the writing I do finish is flat and uninteresting. Because of all the education journals I have had to digest as part of my studies and profession, I enjoy writing the occasional satirical educational research paper, and I review books from time to time. However, for the most part, I am a one-trick pony.

3. Your graduate work was in Literacy Studies, another departure from most of the writing world, which gets an MFA or a PhD in literature. Tell us a bit about what literacy studies encompasses. Has your graduate work shaped your writing?

Literacy studies is all about the process of how people learn to read. All the way from phonemes and decoding to inference and critical thinking. I started my program because as a public school teacher, I need to perform professional development, and it also put me further along in the pay scale. It was not my first choice of study, but it was available, and it was inexpensive. I received my degree in 2004 from the University of Nevada, Reno, which is okay by me. I still snuck poetry into my Master's Project, which is what made a lot of it bearable.

My degree in Literacy studies was a different approach to writing, but it did help in tiny little insights. For example, the way native English speakers speak as toddlers is actually very similar to Anglo-Saxon, which suggests certain genetic elements of language are embedded or hard-wired into our brain. This helped me make a connection with what Richard Hugo said of his own writing in his book, The Triggering Town, on the subject of monosyllabic words and the difference of ending in consonant sounds and vowel sounds. It helped with how we form words as readers and speakers, which is always going to be of use to a writer.

4. You teach in the public school system. In what ways does this teaching enrich you? In what ways does it drain you? What would be your dream job, if you could have anything?

I'd love to give you some fancy answer for this question, but honestly, the greatest benefit for me teaching public school as a writer, is simply the fact that I get to talk about literature most every day. Other than that, it is actually a drain on my energy. Luckily for me I have plenty of other things going on which revitalize me.

5. You've published 3 chapbooks before Town for the Trees. How did your experiences with the chapbooks prepare you for this current publication?

My first chapbook was just that. I knew it was going to be a chapbook, so I made that my goal. My second book was a separate project. I wanted to do what I had done in my first book, but with the town of Springville as the central character. My third chapbook was an exercise in ars poetica. Each book had its challenges, but all three were exercises in the narrative arc. I am a huge believer in what I call the invisible narrative, a hidden story only the poet knows, which serves as the framework of the book. Constructing those books helped me to construct Town for the Trees (which is a marriage between my first two chapbooks) and my recently completed, but as of yet unaccepted second full length manuscript.

6. Have you always lived in the U.S. West? Do you want to continue to do so? Do you worry about dwindling water resources?

I have only been out of the West when I was in the military. I have no real desire to live anywhere else, but not out of any particular loyalty to the West, but because this is where my family is, where the terrain, both physical and emotional, is familiar to me.

I would say I am trying to be environmentally aware, but I am not in a part of the West where water is scarce. There is more water in the desert than people think, it's just not as easily seen as in other places.

7. What advice would you have for poets who are just beginning their careers?

First and foremost, do what I failed to do. Read every day, and by read, I mean do more than decode text. I mean actively engage with that text. Think about what you are reading. Read for at least an hour a day. If you read just one book on your own each month while you are in college, outside what your classes require, you will double your knowledge base. Read what you like. Read what you hear about. Read what someone says is good. 50 books doesn't sound like an appealing way to start, but it is the start you should be looking for. I neglected to read early on, and now I am paying for it in all sorts of ways. Read.

After you have read, read some more. You cannot be a good writer without reading. Read craft books and novels. Read comics, and read journals. Read what your friends write. Read the classics. There is a reason we still read Homer and the Pearl Poet.

8. What advice would you have for people interested in teaching?

Not very much That is a matter for which there is not much valid advice to be given at this time. It is a dangerous time to be an educator, and though I love it dearly, it is not a career to be entered into based solely upon the advice of others. The good news is that no career really is the kind to be entered into lightly.

9. Do you think today's adolescents are more self-centered than previous generations? Do they think too highly of themselves? When you look at the next generation of students whom you're teaching, what do you advice would you give the rest of us?

I just got back from an education conference, so my mind is swimming about this sort of thing right now. I think there are some unrealistic entitlement based expectations in our youth culture today, but I think they are based more in the ease of locating information. Nobody actually has to do any real research. They look it up, and instead of asking whether or not information is correct, those sites are taken at face value with no skepticism. That then translates into a certainty of knowledge. Coupled with the "My darling child is the absolute star of the universe" is unsettling to say the least. It's not universal by any means, but like any phenomenon, there are enough young people out there who are too certain in their knowledge and have no way of coping with failure when they encounter irrefutable evidence their pre-suppositions were wrong.

My advice? Help your child understand that failure is not always a bad thing. No, we do not want a generation of people who think failure is okay or the norm, or who give up, but we need to point out that failure is an essential part of growth, learning, and maturity. Being accountable has gone out of style, and I think it's time we bring sexy back.

10. If you're comfortable talking about your family, I'm sure we'd love to hear about them. Do you wrestle with work/family/creative life balance? Any secrets?

I am married and I have three boys, and I am fortunate that the more busy I am in my everyday life, the more productive I am in my creative life. That has not been absolutely true with my book being so close to coming out and now being released. My pattern is that I have to be completely finished with the various aspects of a project for me to move on and start something new. I wrote an entire manuscript at a point when I believed my current book was going nowhere. October 2008 through February 2010 was an amazingly productive time for me. It was huge.

As soon as I found a publisher for my book, my creativity went down the drain. I needed to finish that. When my book was dropped and then picked up again, my mind went into survival mode and devoted all of its energy into making the book happen. I think it will take me a couple more months of having my book out before I get back into the swing of writing again. I will begin writing new poems and getting my thoughts out there. If I am lucky enough to get my second book picked up, all of that will slow down and eventually stop until I have resolved all of the issues relating to the book.

I am lucky in that I am rarely a prolific poet, so going months at a time without writing any poetry doesn't get to me like it did when I was a younger poet, before I recognized and learned to live with my creative pattern.

Fairy Tales and the 21st Century Poet

Today is the birthday of Jacob Grimm, who, with his little brother Wilhelm, collected hundreds of fairy tales. Most of my students are only familiar with these fairy tales because they've seen the Disney movies; they are often shocked, and sometimes horrified, to read the originals.

The subject of fairy tales and the actual fairy tales can lead to all sorts of interesting questions (which could lead to interesting essays in the Composition or the Intro to Lit classes). I begin with one of the most obvious questions: Would you read these to your child? And then it's easy to move to this fruitful question: what's the message here for children? Of course, we think we would do no such abusive thing like read dark fairy tales to our own children, which can lead to the next writing prompt: where do we see similar darkness in today's popular culture for children? And then there can be the fun writing; students could write their own fairy tales--and if you're an ambitious teacher, have them write analytical essays that deconstruct their own fairy tales.

I've been thinking about writing prompts for me. I submitted a proposal for the College English Association, which is being held right in my backyard this year (well, not right in my backyard, but 5 hours away in St. Petersburg)--it was accepted! My paper will look at the way that women poets of the mid-20th century used fairy tales and compare to the way that women poets are using fairly tales now. My thesis will likely be that while women poets have used fairy tales to explore what it means to be a woman in society, 2oth century women poets didn't focus on issues of work the way that 21st century women are. There's also the issue of technology, which might have shifted (Cyborgia, a volume I first heard about from Kathleen Kirk's blog post, is currently on its way to me!).

If you think of any poems based on fairy tales that I absolutely must see, let me know. Any and all suggestions welcome.

I've also been thinking about interviewing some poets who are using fairy tales in their work. At first, I thought I wanted these interviews for my academic paper. Now I'm thinking that it might make an interesting series for the blog. I'm also thinking it would make a great book, particularly if I broadened the focus so that I'm not just focusing on fairy tales. If you're a poet using fairy tales (and/or other types of popular culture) and would be open to an e-mail interview, I'd love to hear from you.

Full disclosure: I've never interviewed anyone in quite this way. It would be a new art form for me. But I've spent my life from adolescence onward avidly devouring these kinds of interviews. So, if we should write in genres that we love, perhaps it's time for me to explore the idea of interviewing authors and other creative types.

Author Interviews that Should Not Be Missed

Our niece is visiting, and we're racing from South Florida attraction to South Florida attraction. Yesterday, Everglades National Park, today the Keys!

For several weeks, I've been meaning to recommend the interviews that Serena Agusto-Cox has done over at the 32 Poems website. Often I read her interviews and discover a new poet. In late June, she interviewed 2 poets whose work I already love: Jeannine Hall Gailey and Steve Schroeder. She also interviewed Alexandra Teague and H. L. Hix. Go here for the list that will get you to each one. She also interviewed Rosemary Winslow here.

I think a good interview has a lot to teach us: about the writer, about our own writing lives, about the larger community of writers. I'm never disappointed when I read the interviews that Serena does.

Recent Interviews with Denise Duhamel

My writing time is short today, so I thought I'd point everyone to some interviews with Denise Duhamel you might have missed. For those of you who live in the South Florida area, Duhamel will be reading at Books and Books in Miami (the Coral Gables location) this Saturday, April 11, at 6:00 p.m. (not 7:00 p.m., as The Miami Herald reported). In January, I saw her read from Ka-Ching, and it was a real treat. For my review of the book, go here.

Nin Andrews interviews Duhamel here. Lots of interesting information about her family.

Robert Lee Brewer interviews Duhamel here. Lots of interesting information about her writing process and publishing process, plus a sestina-like poem about Sean Penn.

Magic Tricks and Interviews

On her blog, Leslie Pietrzyk writes about a trick that kept her writing when she came to a stuck place in her novel writing: "So I told myself to come up with three things that could happen, just really quickly: “You don’t have to use them,” I assured myself. “Just type three things really fast even if they sound ridiculous. Then you can go off to lunch.”

And it worked! Go here to read more.

And Deborah Ager reports here that it's a trick that works for writing poetry too.

While you're at the 32 Poems blogsite, scroll down for a great interview with Mary Biddinger (or go here directly, if you don't like scrolling. I love her discussion of wearing her administrator hat and her poetry hat, hats which struggle to control my own life on a daily basis (I worry I might end up wearing the hat of the nearest insane asylum on some days! oh, it's probably not politically correct to call them that anymore, is it?). She also talks about her ideal writing space, which might involve a wrinkle in the universe. The interview, conducted by Serena Agusto-Cox, is full of gems.

I think I've posted about other interviews conducted on the 32 Poems blogsite, and I suspect my favorites have been done by Serena Agusto-Cox. I've established in earlier blogposts on my site (based on my very unscientific survey of my bookshelves), there are very few book-length collections of interviews with poets, when compared to interviews with other types of artists. If Agusto-Cox ever collects all her interviews that she's conducted into one single volume (or 2 or 3), I hope she'll let me know!

"Fourteen on Form"

I've been waiting a long time to read Fourteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, edited by William Baer. I would have bought it in 2004, when the University Press of Mississippi first published it, but it cost in the neighborhood of $50--that's a lot of money for 250 pages. I decided to wait for the cheaper version. And I've been waiting.

Finally, I ordered it through Interlibrary Loan. I wanted to read it because I was interested in the fact that all these poets were chosen because they work in form. However, that part of the conversation wasn't as interesting to me as I thought it would be. I thought I'd make note here of some of the tidbits I've picked up.

I was most interested to read that Donald Justice isn't always a fan of revision. On page 90, he says, "As time goes by, you change your attitudes and beliefs--your aesthetic beliefs. At one time, you might prefer this version, and the next time you might prefer another version because your ideas have changed at least somewhat--always taking seriously what is said in a poem and how it is done as well. Nevertheless, I think a lot of revision is a waste of time, a sort of solitaire."

I felt a sense of relief as I read that. I don't spend much time on revision, the way that some poets say that they do. I may change a word here or there or tinker with stanzas. But if I take a free verse poem, and change it radically, say turn it into a villanelle--in many ways, it feels like a completely different poem to me, not just a different version.

The interviewer asks Anthony Hecht about Derek Walcott's practice of having his students pick "a notable poet from the tradition and [write] in imitation of his work" (70). Hecht thinks it's a good idea and also suggests that memorization is a good idea. It's hard for me to imagine my students accomplishing these tasks, but some part of me wonders . . .

John Hollander talks about how we learn about rhyme. He blames it on popular music. He mentions serving on a committee with Steven Sondheim and lamenting the fact that so many people can't rhyme. Sondheim said, "That's right, they all come from rock music. Anyone whose background is in musical theater knows what rhyme is" (page 223). He also talks about church music, which once upon a time would have been some of the earliest poetry we all learned by heart: "Hymnody is very important, and look what's happened to that! How it's totally fallen apart. The churches are full of 28th-rate rock groups singing smarmy tunes, and they've thrown away all the great traditional hymns. It's terrible" (223). Amen!

I found this book fascinating, but not fascinating enough to shell out $50 for it. Why hasn't this press put out a more affordable version?

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.

Books of Interviews with Poets

I've looked at my bookshelf, and I'm amazed at how few of my books of interviews with writers focus on poets. In fact, I only have 4:

1. Conversations with South Carolina Poets by Gayle R. Swanson and William B. Thesing. 1986.

When I was an undergraduate at Newberry College, one of my favorite professors, Dr. Swanson, put together this book, after having the idea during an on-campus poetry festival several years earlier. That poetry festival happened my freshman year, I think, and I was just in awe of these poets, and I knew that I wanted to be part of that community. When this book came out, there was a follow-up poetry festival on campus. Many of the poets in this book signed my book. Did they have any idea how much it meant to me?

The interviews hold up well, 22 years (gulp!) after the book was published. There are interesting discussions of whether or not Southern poetry is different from poetry written in other parts of the country, questions about race and gender, questions about writing process, questions about art, and how to live as an artist, while not neglecting other responsibilities.

2. The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets by Bill Moyers. 1995.

3. Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and their Craft by Bill Moyers. 1999.

I got The Language of Life through some kind of Book-of-the-Month club deal. It's a huge book, by books of interviews standards. Fooling with Words (how I hate that title!) is much smaller, but just as compelling.

I like that the books include complete poems. It would have taken me much longer to discover some of those poets on my own, if I hadn't had these books to help me. The interview questions are thoughtful and the interviews show a depth that's often lacking in interviews that appear in journals and magazines (no need to be concise in terms of the space concerns that so often constrain journalist interviewers).

I think that both books began life as a PBS special. I saw Fooling with Words, and I remember thinking, I can't wait to read the book. It was clear that we were seeing snippets of interviews, which made me want to see what had been left out.

4. The Verse Book of Interviews: 27 Poets on Language, Craft, and Culture edited by Brian Henry and Andrew Zawacki. 2005.

Another book that introduced me to many poets I hadn't heard of before. My copy of this book is underlined more than the other three. Lots of great interviewing about the topics covered in the other books (being an artist, making a living, balancing work and art and family life, being affected by nationality, race, gender, and class), plus some interesting discussions about the state of modern poetry and the academy and the future. In addition, this book includes poets of diverse nationalities, so there are some interesting discussions about translation and native languages.

I've just asked the library to get me Fourteen on Form. I fully intended to buy it, but so far, the University Press of Mississippi hasn't put it out in an affordable form; $50 for a book that's 265 pages?!!! Ridiculous.

Interviews with Poets

I've been looking at my bookshelf, looking to see which books of interviews with writers focus exclusively on poets--there aren't many (and in the next few days, I'm still planning on writing about the few that I have).

Luckily, we have more resources on the Internet than most of us will ever be able to have time enough to read. Today, I discovered another great source of interviews with poets here.

If you're a poet, the whole blogsite is a wonderful resource, full of writing prompts and places to submit your work and musings on poetry.

Interviews with Writers

I just read a great interview with the wonderful poet, Barbara Crooker. It's posted in the latest edition of Umbrella, a great journal.

I got to the interview through the blog of Rachel Dacus, who conducted the interview. In this posting, she talks about the value of interviews with poets.

I'm amazed by how many of my books on writing and creativity are books of interviews. I love discovering how other people write and order their creative lives. The interview is one of my favorite literary forms, I think. I certainly like the interview much better than the scholarly essay. Give me the words of the writer/artist directly.

When I was younger, I was hungry for a road map. How did these other creative people find success? Now I read those interviews in a quest for community. I don't want to spend the money that an MFA would require, but I do envy MFA students their possibility for community. I'm finding that the blogosphere offers a bit of that. Before I had the blogosphere, I had books of interviews.

Speaking of interviews, I also find Kate Greenstreet's first book interviews endlessly fascinating. Go here for the complete list and have fun reading!