Andrew McSorley : part five

Why is poetry important?

For me, it’s important because there’s nothing else I know how to do that I can give to the world. I always wanted to draw or to paint, but those weren’t skills I had naturally, and I had difficulty finding ways to cultivate them when I was younger. So, at some point I started to write. It’s a way for me to give back something beautiful to the world (I hope) and rename and recapture things and stories that I need to tell. For others, it’s a mode of expression that doesn’t exist in anything else. Poetry can be an act of resistance, an act of decolonization. It’s something beautiful, yes, but it’s ultimately powerful, and that’s why we need to see it thrive, and put poetry in the hands and mouths of as many people as can hold it.

Andrew McSorley : part four

How important is music to your poetry?

Extremely important, even when it might seem it’s not. Very often, the sound of something is how a poem begins for me. I often start out with a rhythm, a pitter patter of lines in my head. Sometimes the words make sense, but sometimes it’s just a melody trying to get out. Once I get that on the page I can start writing something with true intention, but, often, that’s the place for me to begin: a series of sounds. 

Andrew McSorley : part three

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

The answer is different depending on what I need at the time. When I need to be rejuvenated to the act of writing itself, and pressure myself along to keep doing the work, I can come back to “Song” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, and be reminded of what a poem should strive to do. When I need to be rejuvenated to the absurd, to allow myself to take more risks and do things in a poem I normally might feel uncomfortable with, I can go back to James Tate and Tomas Transtromer to find the unexpected.

Andrew McSorley : part two

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

I’m not actually sure that there’s a form that can’t capture the same things a poem can. But, a poem’s mission is different from other forms. Anne Carson said, “If prose is a house, poetry is a man on fire running quite fast through it.” I think that metaphor captures the essence of poetry’s “otherness.” It’s more often allowed to be tangential, microscopic, or verbose, than a short story, piece of flash fiction, or a novel or play. If those forms try to do what poetry often does (say, capture the meaning in a seemingly meaningless or ephemeral moment) we often think of those works as “avant-garde.” For a poem, that’s just another day at the office.

Andrew McSorley : part one

Andrew McSorley is the author of What Spirits Return (Kelsay Books, 2019). A graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at Southern Illinois University, his poetry has previously appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as The Minnesota Review, UCity Review, HAD, Birmingham Arts Journal, and many others. You can find him on twitter @andrew_myron, and on the web at www.andrewmcsorleypoetry.com He lives and works in Appleton, Wisconsin. 

Photo credit: Holly Tuyls

What are you working on?

For the last couple of months I have been taking up much more prose poetry than usual. I’m finding that the freedom of enjambment and the line allows me to focus more on narrative, which is something my poetry always wanted to focus on. But, the desire to be lyrical and melodic is too strong for me in the envelope of a form like, say, a sonnet. I love how brief I can be in a prose poem, but how much room I have to explore and jump around naturally, too.