Jennifer Hasegawa : part five

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

Poetry requires a lot from its readers. For example, for me, at its best, poetry doesn’t provide answers; it asks questions. The reader must mine the poem for meaning and the meaning resides in the reader. Other forms might provide facts or build out fantastic worlds, but I think poetry questions the facts and asks readers to build their own worlds out of the atoms in a poem. That’s hard work, but that’s also why poetry can start revolutions.

Jennifer Hasegawa : part four

How do you know when a poem is finished?

My poems are never finished. That’s the beauty and the pain of the practice. Ever-questioning, ever-evolving, even after publication, all of my poems are unfinished.

Jennifer Hasegawa : part three

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

I return to Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red. Specifically, the chapter “RED MEAT: FRAGMENTS OF STESICHOROS.” I return to it because it reminds me of two of my favorite things about reading and writing poetry: 

1. Breaking down conventional language to reveal new modes of seeing and feeling

2. Building mythologies out of the everyday

Jennifer Hasegawa : part two

How does a poem begin?

Chance? A hypothesis? Every poem I start is an experiment to find out if something meaningful to me will come of it. Will this feeling, vision, sound from the unconscious, from the primal mind, when explored and unraveled, be able to hook into the web of the world to contribute something, move us toward understanding, grace, or forgiveness?

Jennifer Hasegawa : part one

Jennifer Hasegawa is a poet, photographer, and community archivist. Her manuscript for La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living (Omnidawn 2020) won the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award and the collection was long-listed for The Believer Book Award in Poetry. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bamboo Ridge, Bennington Review, jubilat, Tule Review, and Vallum. Hasegawa was born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and lives in San Francisco.

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

Getting out of the way. Sneaking past my logical mind is the hardest part. Sometimes it takes hours of “preparing to write.” Reading. Listening. Playing. And then an opening will present itself, the logical mind has its back turned, and I might be able to catch a poem coming through.