Lennart Lundh : coda

I like to close readings at new venues by quoting from Carl Sandburg's "Notes for a Preface," found in his Collected Poems: "I should like to think that as I go on writing there will be sentences truly alive, with verbs quivering, with nouns giving color and echoes. It could be, in the grace of God, I shall live to be eighty-nine, as did Hokusai, and speaking my farewell to earthly scenes, I might paraphrase: 'If God had let me live five years longer I should have been a writer.'"

Lennart Lundh : part five

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers' group that you work ideas and poems with?

My work meets its public when I read at the wonderful venues available to me in the Chicago area, and/or when it gets published. I don't write collaboratively and won't workshop. By this point, I'm confident in my abilities.

Lennart Lundh : part four

How does a poem begin?

My senses, all or singly, elicit a response from the word-wrangling part of my brain, which sets about herding letters into some semblance of order. I never know when, and I've learned not to force it. There's no quota I'm trying to meet.

Lennart Lundh : part three

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began? 

I started writing poetry in the early 1960s, so, yeah. Of course. Right along with my short fictions. What I think poetry can and should do has changed. My subject matter has changed, my voice and craftsmanship have changed. As have my audiences. In part, to answer the unspoken question of influences, because every author, good or bad, of every poem and story I've read since I got my first library card in 1954 has taught me something about how to write. In part because how the world expresses itself and what it speaks about has changed.

Lennart Lundh : part two

Why is poetry important?

It's our best hope of making teleportation and time travel real. Seriously. I just received a note from a reader, who I'm unlikely to ever meet, in Australia, where I've never been. Here in my 70s, my time is naturally limited, but one day my great-grandchild will open a box holding copies of my books. These events aren't science fiction. They're the magic of creative writing. They're our way of touching other people with questions and observations.

Lennart Lundh : part one

Lennart Lundh is a poet, short-fictionist, historian, and photographer. Since 1965 he's authored seventeen books of poetry and two more of short stories; had his words and images published in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies; and read in front of well over a hundred audiences. Len's books can be found on Amazon and Etsy, while his photography is available from Fine Art America and Redbubble.

Photo credit: Jen Pezzo.

What are you working on?

Right now, I'm doing a 30/30 where folks make a donation to St. Baldrick's and I send them a poem each day of April, along with a book-format pdf and hand-bound chapbook after the month is over. St. Baldrick's is second only to the US government in financing research into cures for childhood cancers, and this is the sixth year I've done Poems Against Cancer. (www.stbaldricks.org)