Charles Jensen : part five

How does a poem begin?

I usually hear it in my head-voice. It’s hard to explain, but I can tell the difference between the sound of a thought and the sound of a poem. The voice of a poem has a confidence and authority to it that I don’t experience in my usual thinking. It feels organized, if that makes sense. That’s when I know to start writing things down.

Charles Jensen : part four

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

Not in particular, but reading on its own is very important to me. Whenever I finish a manuscript, I go through a period when I don’t remember how to write a poem. I feel very literally like I don’t know what a poem is anymore. I give myself a break, and then I turn to reading to relearn it. Every book I read teaches me, either because it reaches me or because it doesn’t, and I think about why I’ve had that reaction. I also find other forms of storytelling to be just as restorative. Good innovative fiction nourishes me. Formally ambitious essays. Films with strong visuals. Video games with textured worlds. I take all of this in.

Charles Jensen : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

The editing process is the hardest part, and I think it’s partly because it can be endless, and some poems, no matter what you do, just won’t work. They’re mulch for the poems coming later. I love the writing process. I know some poets find it difficult, but I’m very good at shutting off my editor and letting the words get on the page. It’s once they’re there that I struggle to make sense of what the poem wants to be. I think I write so easily because I don’t consider the reader in those moments. I have permission to fail. But in the editing process I have to invite a reader in, and I have make the poem deliver something they want or need. I have never been good at killing my darlings. I want all my darlings to live.

Charles Jensen : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

I think poetry has few limits, and my goal is to keep pushing my understanding of it as far as it will go. Poetry is as broad as prose and contains as many multitudes. I’ve gotten much more interested in how poetry and prose can speak to each other, work together, blur and blend, and hybridize each other. The longer I write, the more faith I put into the story being told and less into the mode in which it is told. I believe each story should be revealed not only in content, but through its form.

Charles Jensen : part one

Charles Jensen is the author of the poetry collection Nanopedia and six chapbooks of poems, including the recent Story Problems and Breakup/ Breakdown. His first collection, The First Risk, was a finalist for the 2010 Lambda Literary Award. He is the recipient of the 2018 Zócalo Poetry Prize, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, the 2007 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award, the Red Mountain Review Chapbook Award, and an Artist’s Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Field, The Journal, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner. He is the founding editor of the online poetry magazine LOCUSPOINT, which explores creative work on a city-by-city basis. He lives in Los Angeles and directs the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, the largest continuing education creative writing program in the nation.

Photo: David Franco

How did you first engage with poetry?

When I was 13, I lived on an island. There were 11 kids in my class. A poet came to do a residency in the school for a week and that was really the first time I started writing poems and learning about craft. The following year, my high school English teacher pulled me aside after class after we did a poetry assignment and encouraged me to keep writing, that she’d work with me outside of class. Those two people changed my life. One was a public school teacher who went above and beyond, and the other was an artist funded by a state arts agency to work with kids.