Meg Kearney : part five

How does a poem begin?

Every poem has its own origin story. Some begin with a title, some with an image, others with a phrase or even a whole line. Some begin in response to a poem that has come before, or they are born of dreams. I often compare a poem with a trap. The trick, I think, is to lure readers into the trap with the title; then the first line has to capture their attention and lock the door behind them. The poem’s trap needs to be so well constructed that the reader stays “in” it until the last word—if the poem has a weak spot, that’s a potential hole through which a reader might slip out and turn the page or go make a sandwich. And if the trap is good enough, readers—even if they’re not exactly sure what the poem was about—will want to go back to the top and enter the poem again. And again.

Meg Kearney : part four

Why is poetry important? 

The poet Stanley Kunitz used to say that “Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul.” He’d also talk about the fact that if you want to know what it was like to be a human being at any point in history, look to the poems of that time, not to the history books. This to me is one reason why poetry is essential—it’s speaking human truths. This is also why, when a country fall under a dictator, the poets are among the first to be imprisoned. Or shot. But I like to think, too, that poetry creates a path for world peace. It enables readers to realize that, no matter what our culture or background, we human beings have much more in common than not.

Meg Kearney : part three

How important is music to your poetry?

As I draft a poem, I read it aloud. So my first listener, besides myself, is my dog—he’s nonjudgmental and quietly attentive! But I’m mostly crafting with sound and music in mind, so hearing the words as I write them is essential. My mentor, William Matthews, said that the poetic line is like the bar in music, and “one composes by the phrase.” This is often in my thoughts as I work, as is Stanley Kunitz’s complaint that many contemporary poets aren’t “testing” their poems with their ears. “They’re writing for the page,” he said, “and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.”

Meg Kearney : part two

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

We all need community, right? I have two first readers with whom I share poems when they feel ready; one is a poetry lover but not a writer, and the other is a poet I respect very much. Both perspectives are vastly different and invaluable. But I think it’s also vitally important to have a safe space in which to read new work, as there’s nothing like hearing yourself read a poem in public to know if it’s really “finished” yet. For years that audience was at the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire; and now it’s among the students, alumni, and faculty of the Solstice MFA Program, which I direct. 

Meg Kearney : part one

Meg Kearney is author of the poetry collections All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize, which appeared on Small Press Distribution’s poetry bestseller list from April through September 2021; The Ice Storm, a heroic crown of sonnets (2020), is now in its third printing; Home By Now, winner of the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award and a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year; and An Unkindness of Ravens (2001). Meg has also published three novels in verse for teens. Her picture book, Trouper (2013), was illustrated by E.B. Lewis and received the Kentucky Bluegrass Award and the Missouri Show Me Reader’s Award. Her poetry has been featured on Poetry Daily, Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column, and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac.” Former Associate Director of the National Book Foundation in New York, Meg is founding director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program in Massachusetts. For more information: www.megkearney.com.

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

Yes, in such that when I was writing poems in my early 20s, I wrote solely in free verse—formal poetry seemed old-fashioned, something only dead white men wrote. Then, when I was 25, I heard Molly Peacock give a lecture on the “freedom” of form, and how formal structures can provide a sort of safe space to explore difficult or otherwise slippery material. This was a revelation to me, which came at a time when I began reading more widely and my perspective evolved; I realized, for example, that the poets of the Harlem Renaissance employed sonnets as a form of resistance, and that many contemporary poets from various backgrounds were also writing formal verse when the poems called for that sort of structure. Then I went to grad school and took a course with William Matthews on prosody, and have been playing with form in my work on and off ever since.