How does a poem begin?
All my poems thus far have been products of a deeply personal urgency. I am not a prolific writer, nor do I aspire to be; I just want to share what I believe to be essential—nothing more, nothing less. Writing, for me, is the place I go when I’ve had a trajectory-altering experience and there’s something about it I feel I must find the language for in order to transmit it or what I learned from it to others, in the hopes it may help them along in their journey.
How important is music to your poetry?
My mentor and advisor Larissa Szporluk taught me to always follow and trust in sound, and when I surrendered to that notion—specifically over saying what I thought needed to be said—I found the doors opening to new directions I never imagined my work might go in. A single word in a line echoing the sound in another has changed the whole trajectory of a poem for me, and by the time I feel the version I have in front of me is solid, I often find that I’m also actually saying what I thought needed to be said anyway, but doing so in a much better way than I would have without having trusted in and followed the sound. So it ends up being a win-win.
Here’s an example: In section four of “Letters Between Medusa and Poseidon,” published by Juke Joint, the word “sea” is later echoed by “seeks” and later “keys” and “keeps,” which opens the door to the word “concede”—which was formerly “surrender” in an earlier draft. The concept of surrendering/conceding is pivotal in this poem, but had I stuck with the word “surrender,” it would’ve slowed the poem down and drawn attention to itself at a critical point where the poison of both the word and the concept must be dulled for Poseidon to succeed in what he’s asking of Medusa. The repetition of sound carried throughout and including “concede” instead enacts the quasi-hypnosis he seeks to put her under and at the same time draws attention away from the individual word’s meaning and its implications—or, at least, that was my intention.
When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
I return to the poem that first inspired me to write poetry, “Mock Orange” by Louise Gluck, all the time, though my favorite book of hers is actually Averno, which came later. There’s also something special for me in James Tate’s “Today I Am Falling”; that last sentence—“Today I am falling, falling, / falling in love, and desire / to leave this place forever.” —is one I’ve connected with ever since I first heard it. And to me, Robert Pinsky’s “Samurai Song” can be considered a mini-manual on how one might approach life, so I revisit it when I need to remind myself that when it feels like something is lacking, it’s time to rethink and re-see how the thing I feel is lacking may actually be available yet, with a little recalibration of belief and of self.
Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?
Focusing strictly on aesthetics, I still find myself drawn to the urgent, gut-punching writing of female poets, for the most part, though I find myself quite curious these days about work that has headed off the well-worn path of how poets are trained to write (presuming they’ve attended writing programs). Unless I’m returning to work that has always resonated with me, I want to be surprised, to feel something or see something unique structurally that I wasn’t expecting to when I read others’ poetry. Put another way, I want to read poems that don’t remind me of all the other poems I’ve read before. Nowadays, more often than not, I’m finding the type of edification I seek in work I simply can’t pin down, work that’s so different from anything I’ve read or written that I find myself wanting to return to it, with the goal or hope of unraveling its mysteries.
What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
There are a couple different angles to this question. For better or worse, there are poets one only knows on the page, and there are poets one knows in real life. And for better or worse, there is the work of poets that can change the way one thinks about writing, and there are the actions of poets that can change the way one thinks about writing. Experiences with particular poets in all these ways—both positive and negative—have made me think differently not only about writing but also about the poets themselves and the writing business in general.
Systemic racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, ageism, etc., poison the world, including the writing sphere. There are people, fellow writers, who actively work to deplatform others, to silence what is perceived as “less than” or “different,” and sometimes even appropriate others’ experiences instead of giving others the platform and space to share their authentic stories. My deepest hope is that every underrepresented writer will persist, despite such people, if one is in a safe enough position to do so.
On the other side of the coin, I’ve had tremendous female poets both in my life and on the page who have guided me toward my voice and ultimately toward the publication of my chapbook, An Animal I Can’t Name, and my forthcoming full-length collection, Head of a Gorgon, with Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. Louise Gluck’s “Mock Orange” was the poem that got me interested in not just reading poetry but actually writing it. Finding a speaker like the one in that poem who was brave enough to say things I had felt but had never articulated myself was one of my earliest and most profound experiences with poetry. From there, I found inspiration and insight in workshops with Mong-Lan, Luci Tapahonso, Dorothy Barresi, and Leilani Hall. And then I had the privilege of Larissa Szporluk’s mentorship in grad school, which was transformational for me not only as a poet but as a person. She encouraged me to write the book I wanted to read, and that’s pretty much when I abandoned the po-biz/academia edicts and did just that.
