Anna Press : part five

Why is poetry important?

As writers, I think poetry lets us be declarative and explorative without being interrogated while we speak. Personally I find that very important, both as a writing practice and for myself as a human being in the world still trying to figure out how I think and feel. 

An anecdote that feels connected: once on a college trip, I had the opportunity to meet in person the internet friend of my then-boyfriend, who he had never met in person. That friend said, of his practice of writing margin notes while reading, “Reading a book is like having a conversation; if you don’t participate, you’re not contributing to it.” I think poetry lends itself to a conversational practice of reading - which is in part why I opened with how much I value being able to write declaratively and with exploration without being cut off. There is the workshop effect that many people experience in school—feeling pressure to conform their work to the wants or feedback of the workshop or professor—and there is just the pace of information in the world right now, which is overwhelming to me a lot of the time. So perhaps it’s not “interrogated,” as I originally thought, but interrupted. I am not advocating at all for a practice of leaving one’s thoughts unquestioned (I question almost everything I say and do before I say or do it), but rather submitting that the practice of writing poetry gives the writer the time and space to let thoughts unfold fully and completely. 

Poetry is instructive without being didactic, we learn from it, as readers. What language can do is terribly exciting to me on a craft level and I love the practice of naming or noticing craft moves in brilliant work, either to emulate, practice, or just enjoy. Poetry also blows me away with the range of voices and life experiences I get to meet; it makes me feel connected to others in the world. Art doesn’t have to be autobiographical either. Sometimes it’s just important to watch other people play with language and allow yourself to enjoy what happens.

Anna Press : part four

How can you tell when a poem is finished?

I don’t believe art is ever “finished.” You stop where you must or where you can given all manner of variables like time and where you’re at in your life. There is the maxim I believe attributed to Paul Valery, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” I disagree with that semantically because the hope is that it is more “let go” than abandoned, certainly not forgotten. When I was in college I worked at an arts summer camp that I had attended as a teenager (Idyllwild Arts in Southern California) and one year I was able to go into town for the screening of the film students’ shorts. The teacher, Jared Billings (if memory serves), said, “Films are never finished, only released.” I liked that a lot, and I’ve thought about it many times since. As for me, I need a moment of silence for reflection to echo at the end of a poem. It doesn’t always have to be a heavy moment, it can be peaceful or abrupt! It should occupy the page in the blank space with the weight of additional lines. But I can tell my poems are finished enough if I can imagine a reader willing to sit with them for a moment before they turn the page (so to speak). Usually this means I have been successful in shaping the work to include every element I think belongs.

Anna Press : part three

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about sonnets so I must mention Dorothy Chan, who is doing incredible things with sonnets. Her double and triple sonnets blow me away. 

The honest answer to this question is that the way I think about writing changes the more I read, which I think is a beautiful thing! So here is a very incomplete list of additional writers whose work excites me and makes me think (I have not limited this to poets, but most of them are): Linda Gregg, Chen Chen, Aria Aber, Ilya Kaminsky, Danez Smith, Kaveh Akbar, Rebecca Solnit, Virginia Woolf, Jeanette Winterson, Ross Gay, Kathy Fish, Ocean Vuong, Ada Limon, Mary Oliver, Mary Ruefle, CD Wright, and Brendan Constantine (a former teacher of mine who I am now lucky to call a friend).

The first writer who really changed the game for me in terms of what writing could make possible was Anne Carson. I read Autobiography of Red in high school and it completely changed my life; it’s become that book I re-read about once a year, and it was the first book I started setting aside in a place of honor on my bookshelf, where I now collect writing that I learn from or notice something new about every time I return to it. Some of the others in that stack are Carmen Maria Machado’s short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties (In the Dream House would be there too except my husband has claimed our copy for his desk), Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, and Bluets, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (my copy from college, annotated), Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and Edinburgh, and Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness. 

I’m also currently reading Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water, and Mathew Salesses’ Craft in the Real World, both of which will join that collection when I’m done.

Anna Press : part two

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

Knowing the parameters of a poem: what belongs, where it ends, what exists on the periphery that I would like the reader to think about, or what I would like to conceal. The line between the poet and the poem, perhaps. I also find it difficult, while also inviting to find new ways of saying what I want to say. There are words and phrases I like a lot and return to, and I’m a little afraid of inadvertently plagiarizing myself. It also makes me feel limited, or stuck, when that happens. I start to worry: am I just telling the same stories again and again? Do I have nothing new to say? Have I said this the best way I can, and yet, I’m still snagged on it? 

I also struggle with strict forms… so I rarely attempt them. ;) 

Anna Press : part one

Anna Press is a queer writer and high school English teacher. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband (also a writer) and their errant dachshunds. Her work appears in Perhappened, Porcupine Literary, The Hellebore, Daily Drunk Mag, and Emerge Lit Mag, and elsewhere. Talk to her on Twitter @annaepress.

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

I feel like poetry is the genre of possibility. Often when I sit down to write (that makes it sound like I have a structured writing routine, which I certainly do not!), poems begin with a “what if?” kind of thought. I think many people feel freer experimenting with language in poetry than they do in prose. I do. Poetry feels like the most compelling manifestations and variations of language, almost a kind of ekphrasis of life at times. Poems “do” a lot in a relatively short space; that fills me with wonder, and there is no better feeling than being awed by words. Poetry does transformative things with language. Grammar and syntax become tools more so than rules. A teacher I had in high school warned us that poetry isn’t necessarily “about” anything, which I found bewildering at the time, but I think it was an invitation to experiment. What can you do, what can you make, what can you give, when you’re not limited to anything? I think for me personally, right now, those verbs, “do,” “make,” and “give,” get at what I am trying to accomplish with poetry, especially if you allow them to be synonyms for “explore.”