Author Interview

Poet to Poet: Candelin Wahl and Lisa Ludden

~ Clare L. Martin ~ Leave a comment

Dear Candelin,

I just read your poem “Attending Murmurations Dance or Precarity,” and I thought it was beautiful. I was really interested in how each stanza worked like a sentence, like a complete thought, using the stanza and line breaks as punctuation really.

I was particularly drawn to the opening stanza: “how seamless the dancers lean in, float apart/their near collisions fluid as starlings/and swallows that swoop their way/to evening roost”.

Perhaps we should talk a little bit about what interests us in writing, or what we’re working on, or what we’re concerned with in poetics?

I look forward to talking with you.

Lisa

 

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for reaching out – and for your careful reading of my poem. I’m looking forward to sharing my own responses to your poems, as well as exchanging ideas and process notes

I have a daily journal practice that I’ve been keeping since 2012, and it’s been a godsend for helping me name and follow my creative priorities. I was converted to “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron six years ago and credit her insights for restarting my writing practice.

Best Regards,

Candelin


Dear Candelin,

Ah…daily writing practice. Well, I try. For the past two years, I’ve been working pretty diligently on a poetry manuscript, so, in collecting, writing, and rewriting those poems, I did write almost every day. I think because I had a project in hand, and I had given myself a timeline (to finish the book this summer, and begin submitting it in the fall), I had to write daily. I began working with an editor in January, and once I got the manuscript back, I went through it page by page. I would try to tackle one poem a day. And for the most part, I kept to that schedule, although when I got to poems that needed a complete overhaul, or if I was writing a new poem to address a gap in the book, then those poems would generally take longer. This type of intense revision was new to me, but I found it incredibly useful. I really started to recognize my patterns in writing, the forms I was drawn to (couplets, prose poems), and the types of syntax inversions and line breaks that interest me. I also learned a lot about the stages that my poems go through. For the most part, my poems go through multiple drafts.

Take care and talk soon,

Lisa

Hi Lisa,

I’ve just read your three poems again from MockingHeart Review. I was so struck by the emotional tone, and how the three poems held together as a set. I often have trouble expressing a larger “idea” that comes out of a scene or event in my life. But each of these pieces succeeds at just that. What I notice is how you vary your poetic form to match the mood and rhythm of each poem’s language. Maybe we can dialog a bit about form – how we make the decisions for each poem?

Here are a few of my impressions:

“Tread Water, Please” is so immediate and specific, with many layers of meaning in the conceit of swimming, treading water, and breath. My favorite line is “I don’t feel fit for permanent space.”

“Holding Pattern” spoke to me most strongly. A spare scene in just the first line, followed by a lyrical yet straight-forward lament: “I don’t want to be available.” Judicious use of italics helps readers track the heaviness in your heart. The last line is restorative without being perky or off-handed: “But the regeneration comes in fits and starts if you let it.”

I admire “Gathering” for its brave prose form and haunting language. “…the molten thought becomes something heated, something cooled, something burning and there is nothing holding me to the earth but the salt,…” As someone who grew up on Long Island Sound in Connecticut, I relate to the power of salt water and the healing from swimming in it.

You asked about Burlington Writer’s Workshop (BWW) and its literary journal Mud Season Review. Please check out their website.  I started coming to the weekly BWW workshops in early 2015 and found my creative home and support community. I committed to myself that I would submit once a month, which really helped me write more regularly. I had recently left a corporate marketing career in favor of part-time freelance writing (mostly web content for corporate clients). I had been a blocked creative writer for most of my adult life, so this was a heady, liberating time. I wrote some memoir pieces, a short story or two, part of a children’s musical play, and wrote lyrics to about twenty songs. This was how I discovered that my passion is poetry, and I’ve been immersing myself in that genre for about two years. I’ve attended three all-day Poetry retreats and several workshops led by guest writers, including Baron Wormser, former Poet Laureate of Maine and a gifted instructor.

Last summer, I was accepted as the Mud Season Review Poetry Co-Editor, a volunteer position. This 5-15 hour a week position has been extremely rewarding and has really jump-started my own writing. I’ve been inspired to submit my work widely, and I’ve had a handful of poems published online. Recently I was thrilled when Stone Coast Review in Maine accepted one of my pieces for their Summer 2018 print issue. I’m following the advice of Julia Cameron in “The Artist’s Way,” journaling every day for the past six years, and enjoying the process and journey of my artistic recovery. I tend to lapse on the weekly “Artist Date,” but when I do them, there’s almost always a creative reward in the form of a new poem or song.

Thanks,

Candelin

 

Dear Candelin,

Congratulations on your publication in StoneCoast Review. It’s a great journal.

And thank you for the kind words about my poems. I’m so excited that you homed in on the rhythm and form because that is something I think about quite a bit, especially when focusing on the line itself, as an entity.

A few thoughts about how I make decisions about forms in poems:

I tend to work a lot with prose poems and poems in long lines. One of the draws of the prose poem is how it can really dictate the rhythm of the poem, like the lines are running over the edge, and the reader is forced to keep up. Sometimes this causes a problem in my work, so I find I must be really specific with punctuation, otherwise, it can be difficult to follow the logic of the poem.

This past year, however, I have found myself writing more in couplets. A few months ago, I was working with a small series of prose poems that weren’t quite working, so I tried writing one of them in couplets. After sharing those versions with a friend, she suggested that I rework all of them in couplets. What I find compelling about the couplet is the placement of the line break, what that does to expand the possibilities of meaning in the poem, as well as to propel the poem forward (which is what I like about the prose poem).

How I make craft decisions really depends on the content unless I’m responding to a prompt that dictates a form. I struggle with adhering to strict forms in my writing, so I’ve also been trying to write in form, with constraints, to challenge myself. I’ll usually pick one formal element, to begin with. I worked with the ghazal form with a poem that was in couplets already, and that I wanted to incorporate repetition into, but I didn’t want it to be a poem about repetition. In the end, I took great liberties with the form and used the repeating word in within alternate lines.

Some of my questions for you: How do you determine form for your poems? What is that process like for you? What are you currently working on now, and what formal shape is it taking/or not?

Talk soon,

 

Lisa

 

Hi Lisa,

Your comments inspire me to experiment with a wider variety of forms – thank you! So far, my writing process has been to start out drafting stanzas in free verse. Once I get the language close to what I’m trying to say, I go back and see if there’s another form that could support the lines better. I’m also drawn to couplets – they provide nice breathing room between images and lines, allowing readers to consume a poem in smaller, hopefully, memorable bites. Other forms I admire, which I’ve only dabbled with, and haven’t come close to mastering. But I’m not giving up: prose poems found poems and centos. Mud Season Review recently published a striking portfolio of the latter two forms by a poet named E. Kristen Anderson – lines taken from Anne Rice novels and other popular writers.

A few of my own poems cried out for a more chaotic look and layout. I can’t say I’m at ease with this type of rule-breaking (though all gratitude to e.e. cummings). But it’s fun for me to go a little wild with shape and punctuation or lack thereof. It’s been many years since I studied poetry, so I’m taking it slow as I rebuild my vocabulary and study of the craft.

What I’m working on now: I bounce between writing song lyrics and poetry. I’ve tried to focus on poetry for the last two years. But lately, I’ve been drafting songs and scenes for a musical play. I’m hoping to work with a composer/collaborator. So, any new poems are in the seedling stage. I do have a long-form poem simmering. It will be after a seven-page poem I’ve always loved by Julia Alvarez called “Making Our Beds.” To help keep that moving along, I’m jotting, jotting, jotting: impressions, images, snippets of conversations I hear – the material goes into my phone as a voice memo or into my notebook. I’m on the wait-list for a residency in October, and this poem will be my project. Whether or not I’m accepted at the residency, I’ve blocked out those two weeks for writing. If not, I’ll fashion a DIY retreat of my own, which I’ve done before. I’m thinking of a friend’s (heated) vacation house on Cape Cod…

One fun thing I’ve done this past year is participating in open mic poetry readings. This was at the encouragement of a wonderful guest poet named Partridge Boswell. He led a series of three workshops on “Revision,” which culminated with eleven of us reading at the Monday night “Lit Club at the Lamp Shop”, a local poetry open mic. His belief is that poems are always in some stage of revision and reading poems in public is a great way to “take them out for a test drive.” Since then I’ve read several times and have become much more relaxed about sharing and revising my work. Quite liberating!

So, I’ve introduced another two new topics you might share about: Your thoughts/experiences on participating in public readings & your approach to revisions.

Cheers,

Candelin

 

Dear Candelin,

Thank you for sharing “Trashed” with me. The poem uses the space well. Particularly the space in the line

 

“Which neighbor takes toast ………… with pure Irish butter?”

I know how long to pause here. The whole poem does that, really instructs the pace. Although, with that said, I’d be interested to hear you read it. Perhaps the pace I move at as a reader doesn’t wholly match yours. I think about that often, especially with poems that move across the page in non-traditional ways. I’m not worried about the reader not reading the poem as I would, but more curious about how the reader is reading the poem.

I’ve been working on trying to participate in more public readings over the last few years. It’s funny, I stand up in front of students all day long and at relative ease, but it’s very different standing up and sharing poems. I’m trying to get over that and have found that I’m starting to enjoy reading my work in public more and more. I think the idea “that poems are always in some stage of revision” is true, and I like the idea of the reading being a “test drive.” It puts a little less pressure on the outcome. Thank you for sharing that.

My approach to revision…well, when I draft, it’s usually messy pages of notes on a legal pad that I eventually come back to. Then, I will rewrite by hand or type the draft (more often I rewrite first), and work with the poem for a bit. Then usually it sits while I think about what the poem is after. That’s when I go back and really dig into the draft, both in terms of craft and content. The short answer, I suppose, is that my poems sit in the draft stage for a long time. I’m always envious of writers who are willing and able to share their newly penned poems at workshops, where the words and images seem instantly connected. I find that I have to dig more for words. The idea roots in my mind long before I find the page, however, since having children, I have more difficulty holding onto lines in my head, so once they’re there, I must write them down immediately.

…Yes, I would love to keep in touch. I second your comment about how nice it is to talk to another writer.

Lisa

 

###

 

cwahl-headshot

Candelin Wahl is an emerging Vermont poet who explores relationships in all their tangled forms. She is Co-Editor of Mud Season Review. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the 2017 Best of the Burlington Writer’s Workshop, HerStory and Red Wolf Journal.

 

lisa ludden

Lisa Ludden lives, writes, and teaches in Northern California. She is the author of the chapbook Palebound (Flutter Press). Her poems appear in Natural Bridge, the Plath Poetry Project, LUMINA Online, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on her first full-length book of poems.

The Virginia Project

~ Clare L. Martin ~ Leave a comment

Poet and writer Tina Barry recently curated a collaborative art and written word show titled “The Virginia Project” that held its debut in High Falls, New York. The project centers around Marc Chagall’s partner, Virginia Haggard, and their daughter, Jean McNeil, who lived in High Falls for two years. Tina discovered they had lived within blocks of her home when she moved to High Falls herself in 2015. Intrigued, she began researching the story of how they came to live there and the relationships between Chagall, Haggard, and McNeil.  What Tina learned inspired her original poetry and, subsequently, to collaborate with visual artists to create The Virginia Project. Artists who participated include Leslie Bender, Barbara Danin, Jenny Lee Fowler, Jaime Caul, Trish Classe Cianakis, Wendy Hollender, Heige Kim, Ingrid Keppler Lisowski, Kate McGloughlin, Giselle Potter, Adie Russell, Amy Talluto, Anique Sara Taylor, and Lori van Houten. The exhibit debuted at The Wired Gallery in High Falls October 27, 2018, and will open at the galleries in Long Island University the week of January 21, 2019.

MHR’s Charlotte Hamrick recently spoke to Tina about the project.

***

How did you discover the story of Chagall and Haggard in High Falls?

 

In 2014, when my husband and I bought a house in the hamlet of High Falls, NY, I started doing some research about the town and learned that Marc Chagall had lived there from 1946-1948. There was a lot of information about Chagall, but very little about his partner Virginia Haggard, and Haggard’s five-year-old daughter Jean McNeil. I did some digging and found that Haggard, who was 30 years younger than Chagall, was much more than the “maid” or “mistress” she was often referred to in writing about the couple.

 

Haggard, the daughter of an English diplomat, was an unconventional, outspoken woman, who was passionate about art. She was well-educated, spoke several languages, and was an aspiring artist. She married a man her parents despised, and wouldn’t take their financial assistance when her husband’s mental health declined.

She went to work for Chagall as a housekeeper to bring in some money. She was never his mistress. Chagall’s wife died shortly before he met Haggard. I wanted to give Haggard and McNeil voices in their history with Chagall, so the women tell their stories. I now have 60 poems and prose poems, flash and letters. 15 of the pieces appeared in The Virginia Project.

Detail of Lori van Houten’s piece, “White Flannel” white flannel

 

 Was it difficult to find information about Virginia and her accomplishments?

 

Haggard is sometimes mentioned in articles and books about Chagall; in some accounts, she’s left out completely. Journalists and historians seem to have had little interest in Haggard, besides looking pretty in photos, and that she was the mother of Chagall’s only son David.

 

As I researched, I discovered Haggard’s memoir My Life With Chagall: Seven Years of Plenty With the Master as Told by the Woman Who Shared Them. I use a few of the anecdotes and characters as jumping off points, but my work in this series is fiction; most of the writing is imagined.

1

 

2

 

Why did you decide to focus your poetry on the mother-daughter relationship instead of Chagall and Haggards?

 

Well, the mother-daughter relationship is important to the story. As a child, Jean McNeil had no agency. She watched her father’s mental health decline, was witness to the budding love affair between Chagall and Haggard, and then folded into this new family unit. It was a tough, unsettling time for McNeil, and Chagall was focused on Haggard, not this sensitive child who didn’t have a say in what came next. But, the writing in the series is as much about the adults’ relationship as it is about the mother and daughter.

 

3

How many artists participated and what are some of the mediums they used?

 

Finding, meeting and collaborating with the artists was one of the great joys of the project. I chose 14 women artists whose work resonated with me. For The Virginia Project, each of the artists interpreted a different piece of writing. I wanted a mix of styles and mediums, so my words and Haggard’s and McNeil’s lives were looked at and expressed from different angles. A few of the artists work conceptually. Two are illustrators. I have two artists who create cut-paper pieces. A few landscape painters. The artists use paint, clay, wasp nests, fabric, paper, oils and acrylics, photos. I had an idea of what their interpretations would look like, yet I was surprised again and again by what they created. It’s been exhilarating.

Tina graciously provided an example of her poetry and the corresponding cut-paper artwork by Jenny Lee Fowler, below.

1a hand image


Shadow Pictures

Dad used to hold his hands up and make shadow pictures on the wall   He did a rabbit and a dog   Now he only holds his hands up so we don’t see him crying   Dad sits on his chair and rocks like it is a rocking chair but it is not a rocking chair   It goes skritch  skritch   skritch  skritch  Dad is a baby now   Sometimes I ask him  Will you take me to the park  No sound comes out but his lips move like mine did when he was teaching me words   Dad would point and say tree  Then I would say tree  Then he would point and say squirrel   Then I would say squirrel

 

 

 

tina barry
Tina Barry

Tina Barry is a former artist and textile designer. Her writing has appeared in several anthologies including The Best Short Fiction 2016 (Queens Ferry Press), Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse (Lost Horse Press, 2018), and Feckless Cunt: A Feminist Anthology (World Split Open Press, 2018). Her poetry and short fiction can be found in numerous literary magazines including Drunken Boat, Connotation Press, and Blue Fifth Notebook. Tina has two Pushcart Prize nominations and several Best of the Net nods. Tina is the author of Mall Flower: Poems and Short Fiction (Big Table Publishing, 2016). She is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn and Gemini Ink. The Virginia Project is her first effort at curating and her first collaboration.

An Interview with Sam Rasnake

~ Clare L. Martin ~ 7 Comments
MHR‘s Contributing Writer/Social Media Associate Charlotte Hamrick interviews MHR poet, Sam Rasnake.

 

I first “met” Sam Rasnake in the online writing forum Fictionaut. I was new to the site and a little intimidated by sharing my poetry with a group of strangers who weren’t strangers to each other. Sam was one of the first commenters of my work. His comments were always supportive and kind and he was (is) always willing to help me out when I was stuck or unsure of a piece. His own work is a beauty to behold. Sensitive, lyrical, intensely interesting. I’m so happy to be in a position to interview him for MockingHeart Review. Heartfelt thanks to Sam for sharing his time and thoughts.

~Charlotte Hamrick

 

What is your earliest recollection of the desire to write down your own thoughts?

I had a fantastic high school English teacher who turned me on to the deep wells of Bob Dylan, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor. Her class discussions made me try writing in a creative way. She showed me how to want to be a writer.

Do you remember your first poem? What was it about?

I began writing poetry in high school – showing them to no one. I kept them in a Japanese puzzle box. The first one was “Time,” a sonnet-like piece about – wait for it – dying.

Is poetry your primary genre? Do you work in any others?

Poetry has always been my focus in writing – and reading. Over the years, I dabbled in fiction, but the works seemed to morph into prose poems.

When my Father died in 2012, I stopped writing. Actually, I stopped writing about six months before he died when bone cancer began to impact the quality of his life in an extreme way – and I didn’t attempt to write for about a year after he passed. I was teaching college fall of 2013, and a creative writing class in non-fiction helped jump-start my work. I made myself do the class assignments with the students. We were using Michel de Montaigne, the sixteenth-century French writer, philosopher, and creator of the personal essay, as the basis for our works. His “Of” pieces served as models for our “On” works – the subjects ranging from objects to abstractions to family to dreams… from the mundane to the universal to the personal. Writing began to feel comfortable to me again, and the words began to flow. I wrote many successful pieces that term. Nearly all have now been published in various journals. I thanked the students for their help – and gave a nod to Montaigne, one of the most important writers I’ve ever read.

Lately, I’ve been writing flash fiction as well as poetry.

I’m always interested in the writing process. Tell us a little about yours. Do you ponder a poem for a while, keeping it in a draft stage and working on it periodically or do you write it all at once, as the inspiration and words strike you? How much editing do you do on a piece?

I’ve always approached poetry from the Stanley Kunitz method. I had always written this way, but he articulated the method that closely resembled my own. The poet waits for the poem. This requires patience. In other words, I don’t choose the poem – the poem chooses me. I don’t decide my topics. I let the topics find me. I need to be overwhelmed by a subject or focus, and that does happen. Over the years, I’ve learned how to recognize the feeling of a poem coming my way. And it does begin with a feeling and not a thought.

As the years disappear from me, I find that I writer fewer drafts. I seldom write every day though I’m constantly reading the works of others – poetry, fiction, non-fiction. My poems now tend to come to me in a more complete or finished way. With some – probably the better ones – no words or phrasings are changed. The best ones arrive whole. For this reason, I have few stranded lines or incomplete poems. I should add, however, that I also have fewer finished works. I consider a finished work to be a published work – or at least what I consider publishable.

When I’m ready to begin writing a poem, I go to my journal and write what I’m hearing in my head. A poem is finished when I go to the computer. I seldom edit from a keyboard. The work is, for the most part, already finished.

Some writers advise writing every day, to actually force yourself, that it’s good practice. What do you think about that p.o.v.?

As a writer, I can’t be forced or coaxed. Subjects or topics are the same way. For this reason, I’m more comfortable in a writing group than I am in a writers’ workshop. I either do or do not write.

I do believe that a good writer – or a bad one for that matter – should be reading, and I do that.

Even though I may not be writing, I’m constantly flipping through my journal – I’m on #28 now. A Moleskine notebook, lined pages, with a soft cover is perfect. I’m halfway through 28. The first entry begins with a “finished poem” – “Some Kind of Compass” – printed from my computer, then taped onto the journal’s pages. I’ve included images as well. The poem is an ekphrastic piece based on the film Degalog, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ten-hour masterpiece. The date of my entry is 11 January 2017. The draft of the poem is found in the closing pages of journal #27. I’d been asked by Didi Menendez, editor of Poets Artists magazine, to submit a piece for a themed issue – the male muse. The poem’s subject came to me instantly and was finished quickly – with few changes. Apparently, I wanted to tinker with one stanza before submission, and I did that on 1/13. The poem is submitted on 1/14. My next entry in journal #28 – after a couple of pages of random thoughts or comments about “Some Kind of Compass,” my favorite music recordings, and the poetry of Paul Celan (I must have been reading his works at the time) – is on 22 February. My point is that I don’t write daily in my journal – or maybe I should say I don’t plan on writing daily. Sometimes it happens to be daily, but that is the exception. Normally, days will go by without an entry. On occasion, weeks or even months will pass. I write when I write.

Do you have a favorite place to write that’s particularly conducive to your creativity?

My green chair beside the fireplace is my spot. I love to write there. The window to my left faces the mountains that begin the Cherokee National Forest and the glass doors to my right lead to the trees on the hill behind my house.

Where was the strangest place that inspiration hit you for a poem and how did it turn out?

My cousin worked at a funeral home, and years ago I had to see him at work for some reason – I don’t remember why. He was called away briefly, leaving me alone in the embalming room. A poem began nudging me at once – filling my head with images of Hammer horror films. I didn’t have a pen or paper, but I began writing the poem – “The Dead”. It turned out well. The piece was published and nominated for a Pushcart.

Are there any recurrent themes in your poems? If so, why do you think that is?

My response is more mode than theme, but it does connect with theme. For many years, I’ve been working in an ekphrastic mode, writing pieces that connect to literature, art (in its many forms), music, and cinema. The creative arts have always been important to me. This, no doubt may be due to one of my earliest memories: my Father’s college textbook – Art History of the Western World.

As for a recurring theme, I’m not certain, but my best guess would be loss. For example, my favorite filmmakers – Krzysztof Kieślowski, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Bresson, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Orson Welles – are focused on the theme of loss, and I respond to their works because of it.

Do you have any favorite words?

Highway, window, door, path, road, stream, river, line…

Do you have any tips to share regarding motivation and/or discipline in completing a piece?

Read more – as often as possible. Reading can help a writer find the way into a work. Also, listen to music. View works of art. Watch films. Travel. Soak up the world. Let the world – the individual’s world – find a way to your own work, and let that work reflect the self. The “self” has a unique voice, and for the poem to be exceptional, that voice must be present in the lines. Voice – one that is true – takes an enormous amount of patience to find, but it is what sets the work apart from the numbing, uninspired dullness that language can have. Poetry should inspire, should change us, should serve as a map that leads to a personal truth. My poetry doesn’t have to be for everyone, but it does have to connect with me. For this reason, I do not write for an audience. That’s not to say I don’t want an audience; I do. But, that’s not the reason I write.

There is a burgeoning poetry community online and new lit journals popping up all the time. Some people think it’s just so much “look at me” noise and unworthy of notice while others celebrate more open and diverse opportunities for poets to share their work.  What do you think?

Today, there are more poetic opportunities than ever. We have more access to venues, more access to a myriad of voices. I do celebrate writers, and enjoy, learn from, grow with their works. I read many journals these days – mostly online, and my circle of writer friends continues to grow.

I find it impossible to name one poet who is my favorite – I have several. Who are some of your favorite poets and/or poems?

My favorite poets – the poets I’ve read the most – are Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Jorge Luis Borges, William Stafford, Yosa Buson, Natasha Trethewey, William Blake, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Wisława Szymborska, Jack Gilbert, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jane Hirshfield, Lucille Clifton, Han-Shan, Paul Celan, James Wright, Anne Carson, Jack Gilbert, Joy Harjo, Frank O’Hara, Gary Snyder, Adrienne Rich, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Lynda Hull, Larry Levis, Yusef Komunyakaa…

If I had to pick one poet: Elizabeth Bishop – one book: Geography III – and one poem: “Crusoe in England”. A remarkable writer.

 

sam rasnake

Sam Rasnake‘s works have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He has served as a judge for the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, University of California, Berkeley, and as a musician recorded has recorded with Radio On, the Show Yourself sessions (Aftermath Records). His most recent book is Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press, 2013).

Interview with a Poet: Tom Montag

~ Clare L. Martin ~ Leave a comment

As a new feature, MockingHeart Review will conduct interviews with contributors on a monthly basis. Look for other new content such as reviews of poetry collections, poet-to-poet dialogues, and craft essays.

Thank you for your interest in MockingHeart Review and enjoy our interview with poet/contributor, Tom Montag.

 

Interview with a Poet: Tom Montag

 

MHR: What was the impetus, the first inner suggestion, for you to embark on your legendary tour this summer?

TOM MONTAG: I turn 71 at the end of August this year. I had never seen the Grand Canyon. I had never seen Los Angeles. You don’t ever know how many days, weeks, or years you might have left. I thought: if I don’t do it now, will I ever have the opportunity?

About that point, I read an article that said some artists were hoping to save the community of Bombay Beach on the east side of the Salton Sea. I had never seen the Salton Sea, so I put that on my itinerary.

I had seen some of northern California with my wife in years past, but none of the rest of it. And if I was going to drive the length of California, I might as well visit Portland, Oregon, to see Powell’s Books in this lifetime and to meet some old blogger buddies too.

From Portland, I had hoped to drive up to the Sweetgrass Hills of Montana, along the Canadian border, but cut that out of my journey in favor of an overnight visit with my daughter in Colorado and poetry readings in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska.

I knew at the start that I wanted to visit poet-friends in southern Missouri. I wanted to meet the editor of MockingHeart Review in Louisiana. Then I’d drive across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to get to the Grand Canyon, the Salton Sea, and Los Angeles, then make my way north to Portland.

I put a note up on Facebook sketching an outline of the trip and suggestion people might set up house readings for me along the way. Charlotte Wolfe in Newton, Kansas, responded by asking “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” and offered to host a reading at her quilt store. As a high school and college student in Milwaukee, Charlotte had worked as a typesetter for me in the 1970s when I published Margins, and she had been our older daughter’s babysitter. Yes, I could detour to Kansas.

The editor of MockingHeart Review told me she would not be at home during my Louisiana visit but would be in New Orleans for the weekend instead, along with her friend and fellow poet Bessie Senette; they’d be the featured readers at the Maple Leaf Bar on Sunday afternoon. I thought I could meet them there and read at the open mic afterward. No, they said, you can be a featured reader too. Not too long after that, I received a message that Bessie would be “cooking Cajun” on Saturday, and “could you make it here in time for supper?” Of course, I could!

Charles Alexander of Victoria, Texas, said that if I could make it to south Texas, he would set up a reading for me at the University of Houston-Victoria’s Design Center. My nephew Andrew Montag and his wife Allison would host a house reading in Austin, Texas. My high school classmate, Tim Schmaltz would do the same in Phoenix.

As I would be passing near Santa Fe, New Mexico, I asked poet Lauren Camp if we might have dinner together. Writer Fred Garber, who lives in the Calexico/Mexicali area, suggested that while I was at the Salton Sea, we might meet for a meal. I asked my second cousin, Fr. John Montag, SJ, if I might stay with him a couple days in Los Angeles. He said yes and offered to show me the town. Jessie Lillie Lemon, a former student of mine when I taught Creative Nonfiction at Lakeland College, offered to host a house reading in Seaside, California.

Since I’d be near Fresno, I asked poet and editor Michael Meyerhofer if we might be able to do lunch. Michael had made me a featured poet at Atticus Review a few years ago. He’s also originally from Iowa, as I am, so I figured we’d find plenty to talk about. Erica Goss, formerly the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California, and now of Eugene, Oregon, has been a Facebook friend for some time, and I asked if we might meet for lunch as I passed through town. Haiku poet and artist Carolyn Winkler offered me a place to stay while I was in Portland.

And, of course, Greg Kosmicki and Rex Walton got readings arranged for me in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska, and Fr. John’s sister, Mary Patrice, offered a place to stay in Omaha.

I plotted out the route, logged addresses and phone numbers, and knew where I had to be by when and how to get hold of people if I needed to. All that remained was to calculate other places along the way I might have to overnight: one night in Louisiana on the way to New Orleans; another night in Amarillo, Texas, on the way to Santa Fe; in Winslow, Arizona, on the way to the Grand Canyon; in southern Oregon on the way to Portland; and in Utah, on the way to my daughter’s in Loveland, Colorado.

Truly, once I put it out to the universe that I was going to do this trip, things just fell into place as if it were meant to be. The impetus was: see the Grand Canyon, the Salton Sea, and Los Angeles before I die, and the trip turned out to be so much more than that.

MHR: Please tell us the cities you visited.

TOM MONTAG: Most of the cities I visited are indicated in the narrative above.

MHR: Landscape inspires the poet mind. Did you find that seeing the running landscape from the driver’s seat and in your walking about give you keen insight into the areas you visited, and perhaps the people, too? Were you intrigued and given intimations of history as well as life in the present?

TOM MONTAG: Landscape and people, and the mysteries surrounding them, are at the heart of my poetry, I suppose. My most productive time as a poet seems to be when I am traveling. Something about the motion and movement of travel gets my juices flowing. In a court of law, I’d probably have to testify: “No, your honor, I wouldn’t say that I was writing while I was driving; I would say I was driving while I was writing. There’s a difference. No, your honor, I would not recommend this method for any other poet. Yes, your honor, you can only write very short poems in this fashion, and you can’t revise them.” The world going past me on this 6500-mile trek was an intense and ever-present stimulus for the poet in me, and it resulted in 579 poems (or notes for poems) over the 31 days I was traveling.

I’m often called a “nature poet” because I write so much of the world around us; and some people remark on the “mystical” or “spiritual” nature of my work, because the world is a place of wonder, and some of that wonder ends up in my poetry. I think the poet’s first task is to pay attention, and I’ve trained myself to do that, even at 70 m.p.h. What am I seeing and what is it trying to say?

I probably learned the most about the people of an area when we talked before and after my readings. For instance, my half hour reading at Jessie Lillie Lemon’s house in Seaside, California, was followed by one of the most intense two and a half hours of conversation I think I’ve ever had, exchanging ideas with songwriters and composers and artists and even a mathematician, about poetry and art and the architecture of form and so on. It was wonderful. In New Orleans, as you know, we started out talking at 4:30 in the afternoon and didn’t stop until someone noticed, “Oh, it’s ten-thirty.” My lunches and suppers with poets along the way were like that, too, almost as if we are brothers and sisters who were getting back together after some time apart as if we had known each other a long while and were just continuing an old conversation. Partly that might be because they were Facebook friends already, but more importantly, I think it is because the arts tend to create community, and sharing my poetry was like a moment of communion with those I met on this journey.

In terms of “intimations of history as well as life in the present,” I think there were cues everywhere along the way. For instance, there is a big story/history tied up in these few lines I wrote in southern California:

 

Always someone
adjusting where
the water goes.

 

At that moment, someone was adjusting the water. Always there were the people and that canvas of water and plains and mountains and desert unrolling before me, much of it new to me. And I didn’t realize how much I love our trees and the rolling fields of Wisconsin until I got back home from this sojourn into other landscapes.

 

75 degrees
and drizzling in Wisconsin,

as if to say: Welcome home
from that other country,

the hot, dry one.

 

MHR: What would you suggest to other poets wanting to cultivate a community beyond their immediate locale? 

TOM MONTAG: On this trip, in terms of creating community, the first thing to notice is that I reached out to people I already had some connection with, usually on Facebook. So, in a way I was a “known quantity,” and so were they.

The second thing: in most cases, I was asking for “house readings,” meaning small, intimate gatherings along my route. I was not asking to be paid, though, in Victoria, Texas, Charles Alexander put out the basket “to help with gas money,” which garnered enough for three or four tanks. In some cases, I did end up in larger poetry venues, including Crescent Moon Coffee in Lincoln, where the audience must have numbered about 45-50. I am happy to read to three people, to thirteen people, to twenty-three people, or fifty.

Third: I took to calling this my “Johnny Appleseed Tour,” because one goal was to plant my books all along the way, and I did that, giving them to poets and interested attendees wherever I read. I wasn’t trying to sell books, but to share them. In turn, many poets gave me copies of their books and I came home with quite a boxful.

Fourth: I was not asking to couch-surf or find a place to stay in people’s houses. Mostly I stayed in motels, except for Austin, where I stayed with my nephew and his wife; Los Angeles, where I stayed with Fr. John; Portland, where I stayed with fellow poet Carolyn Winkler; Loveland, where I stayed with my daughter; and Omaha, where I stayed with another second cousin, Mary Patrice.

Fifth: allowing time for conversation before and after the readings, over meals, and so on, created the time and place for community to flourish. If I were to do something similar again in the future, I might spend less time focused on the poetry readings and more time on creating the space for conversation. Those conversations were the most invigorating parts of the trip.

MHR: Was New Orleans your favorite stop, when you met me and my friends? Why or why not? (Trick question)

TOM MONTAG: Certainly, there is no better Cajun food than what I had in New Orleans, and the conversation we shared was the equal of any I’ve enjoyed. In fact, when people ask me what was my most favorite part of the trip, I say: “the home-cooked Cajun food in New Orleans.”

MHR: How full was your heart when you arrived home? Does communion with readers and other writers give you sustenance?

TOM MONTAG: By the time I arrived home, I was ready to be home. I was “full,” as I like to say, or maybe even on overload. When I travel, I travel with silence — no radio, no CDs playing, just me and the words bumping around in my head. One can only do that for so long.

In terms of being lifted by those who heard me read and who talked with me along the way, yes, sustenance is the perfect word. I was flying. Generally, I find poetry to be a lonely business, but I was far from lonely on this trip. I felt loved and appreciated at every turn. That’s going to keep me juiced for quite a while.

MHR: You produced over 500 new ideas and/or poems inspired on the road. I’m sure you have work before you for some time. I’m guessing that this out of ordinary adventure kept your mind free to write. What did this trip as opposed to your home-writing discipline do to open your mind and give you those poetic inklings and fully-formed pieces? 

TOM MONTAG: Sometimes, when I travel, I fear I might be setting myself up for disappointment — going out on the road expecting that a poem will appear before me every 11.2 miles or so is a pretty big promise to make. Yet this method has worked for many years and is still working, with poems conjured up out of the world rolling past. I know there are no guarantees, but one must keep on keeping on.

When I am at home, I tend to write somewhat longer and more nuanced poems, I suppose. I wouldn’t say I’m disciplined. These poems occur irregularly, perhaps when I have been reading for a while, and something in what I’ve read gets syllables flying around in my head; or I might hear the train come through town, or a thunderstorm comes rolling in. At home, the stimuli are often less direct and less intense than when I am on the road.

There are always “real” things in my poems, whether written on the road or at home, but those written at home might have a little bit more of quantum mechanics and particle physics in them than those written on the road, where you find it harder to think the big thoughts.

My editorial process with the poems written while on the road is something like this: (1) get the poems/notes typed up; (2) identify which poems are good to go as is and start sending them out; (3) work on those which need more attention. This third step may take a while. I am still at work on poems I wrote during my visit to New Mexico in January 2016. In some cases, I admit, I struggle to recapture what it was I was trying to record, and those attempts fall by the wayside. But by and large, travel always produces poems for me. This trip was my “west of the Mississippi” tour; I wonder if I will live long enough to do a similar “east of the Mississippi” tour. And what kind of poems would that produce?

 

32929770_10215575159122362_6867300690784419840_n

Tom Montag is the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013, This Wrecked World, and The Miles No One Wants. He has been a featured poet at Atticus Review, Contemporary American Voices, Houseboat, Basil O’Flaherty Review, and Blue Heron Review. With David Graham, he is editing an anthology of poetry about small-town America.

New Happenings

~ Clare L. Martin ~ Leave a comment

Hello, friends of MockingHeart Review.

Since September of 2015, we’ve published the work of 175 poets in eight timely issues. With our new editorial, social media, and writing team, (see our masthead), we’re strategically adding more high-quality, relevant-to-poetry content. This includes interviews on a regular basis, with poets who’ve appeared in MHR, reviews of poetry collections four times a year, Poet-to-Poet conversations, Poet Spotlights, and articles on contemporary poetry, process, and subjects of interest to poets (and other humans).

We are gearing up for this expansion which will roll out August 1st, 2018. So, keep an eye here on the Beats blog, where the new happenings will be shared with you.

We’re very excited and hope you are, too.

We especially support the work of poets and writers who invest themselves in community “passion projects” that serve children and adults. Who doesn’t need the life-affirming literary arts to address cultural, political, economic, social, educational, and environmental issues? Interacting in positive ways in our communities through our artistic skills inspires so many. Hey, we’re poets. We’re in the Inspiration Business

And don’t forget, submissions open July 1st.  Access the guidelines from the menu above. 

Thank you for your interest and support of MockingHeart Review.

Clare L. Martin
Editor in Chief, Founder of MHR

An interview with Amber Edmonson

~ Clare L. Martin ~ Leave a comment

lostbirds(1)

MHR: First, l I want to congratulate you on Lost Birds of the Iron Range. The collection is exquisite and the poems are pristine. Can you give us some of the backstories of birds/mines which work to structure the poems?

AE: Thank you so much! This collection started as a love letter to the wild landscape of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where I live. The area has a history of mining and logging that drew large numbers of European immigrants to the area in the 1800s, so the book is also a love letter to migration: the places we are from and the places we go, the things we bring with us, and what we leave behind. And that’s what I imagine the mythological birds to be—the objects of both the old and new lands, one always ceding to the other as cultures arrive and change and merge.

MHR: Can you speak to the imagined historical time that these poems would take place? What land encompasses the Iron Range as you envision it?

AE: The real-life Iron Range spans much of the Upper Peninsula and all along Lake Superior. In the U. P., the peak of modern mining was the mid-1800s, which is when I imagine much of my book’s history to occur. This is the time of the birds and the young woman whose journey we follow.  I have also included poems from the perspective of The Historian and the Historian’s Apprentice, who are from the present, looking back on the past and speculating.

MHR: What are your ideas of why poets are attracted to writing about birds? Do you believe myth plays a part in this? How were you drawn to write these poems?

AE: Oh gosh, birds are so common but also so otherworldly, aren’t they? I know “poets writing about birds” is a cliché, but I also think cultures have been exploring the idea of birds for millennia, so I doubt any of us are giving up soon! (When Nicci Mechler at Porkbelly Press sent me my acceptance for this book, she noted that it was one of several bird collections she had received. Eek!) I hadn’t intended to write a collection initially. It was just one poem (I forget which one, or if that one even made it into the final draft), but after the first poem, they just started flowing, each one inspiring the next.

MHR: Were any of these poems inspired by dreams?

AE: Only the waking dream of living in this place! I am answering these questions half a mile down the road from a place literally called The Yooper Tourist Trap, which boasts a giant chainsaw out front, as tall as a house. The chainsaw’s name is Big Gus. And then there are the ethereally beautiful stretches of wilderness: waterfalls and winding trails through cedars and the untamable shore of Lake Superior. And then there’s the way the wilderness is interrupted by the eerie, terraced mines on the horizon. So, none of the poems were inspired by actual dreams, but there’s something very surreal about living here.

MHR: There is a line in “The Historian’s Apprentice Shares a Secret,” that reads “what is written removed from what is true.” What guides you to remove language to uphold structure and sense in a poem?

AE: Oh, that’s a great question! I often find that I tend toward too many words when my core words aren’t quite right—when they aren’t “what is true.” If my noun is off, or my verb, then I try to nudge them into the right direction with adjectives and adverbs and metaphors. Lately, my goal has been to cut away all of that, to cut down to the barest essence of what I am trying to say. My poems have gotten very small lately, something closer to silence.

MHR: Birds seem to take on mystical qualities in these poems. Did this liberate your language and enable you to be visionary while grounding the work in the various narratives? Did you find that the mystery of birds allowed for the poems to transcend the mundane?

AE: It really did. A few years ago, I read an essay by poet Fleda Brown where she lamented that her poems often stayed too close to the shore, and I wanted to use these poems as an opportunity to explore the more “out-there” waters for myself. The poems let me take more mundane elements—the scent of cardamom found in traditional Finnish bread, for example, or the mending of clothes—and couple them with these mythological birds. It was such a freeing exercise.
MHR: You have two poems, “Motherland I” and “Motherland II” What is the journey to which you allude?

AE: These poems follow a young woman as she leaves Finland with her husband so he can work in the Upper Peninsula’s copper mines. Those were some of the last poems I wrote for the collection (I think I originally had twenty-seven before paring it down for Porkbelly’s micro-chapbook contest), and I hope they helped to ground the themes of migration and home with the experience of one specific character.

MHR: How can someone purchase your chapbook?

AE: Lost Birds of the Iron Range is available through Porkbelly Press: https://porkbellypress.com/catalog/micro-chapbooks/2017-series/edmondson/

MHR: Thank you for taking the time to respond to our questions.

 

Edmondson

Amber Edmondson is a poet and book artist who lives in Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula. Her work has appeared in publications such as Diode
Poetry Journal, Menacing Hedge, and MockingHeart Review. She is the
author of two chapbooks: Darling Girl (dancing girl press 2016) and
Lost Birds of the Iron Range (Porkbelly Press 2017).

 

An interview with Terri Kirby Erickson

~ Clare L. Martin ~ Leave a comment

Becoming the Blue Heron cover 300dpi
Becoming the Blue Heron, Press 53

www.terrikirbyerickson.com

BUY
Becoming the Blue Heron
Press 53     Amazon
MHR: I must say this book was a complete delight and worthy of awe. Your poems are rooted in story which sometimes take on fresh mythologies; incorporating family memories, nature, and myriad sensualities. Combined, this speaks to your skill as you weave these themes into finely wrought narratives. Can you illuminate us to something of your writing process? Do you have a schedule for writing? How do you begin a poem and how do these initial underpinnings become the finished art?

TKE:  Thank you so much for the kind words, Clare.  I admit to having no writing discipline, whatsoever.  I write when something moves me to do so—an image, an idea, a bit of family history that someone passes along to me, my own memories of experiences from childhood and beyond.  I begin a poem with no idea, usually, of where it will end up.  For example, I wrote a poem the other day based on the motion of the tall trees in the churchyard behind our house, how the tips of the branches reminded me of sea anemones as they waved in the wind.  Around that central image, I crafted a poem that took me on a journey from that particular vision to somewhere else entirely.  The finished art happens when I read through the work and feel it says exactly what I wish to say, the way I intended to say it—and most importantly, whatever was said has some universal appeal.  I bear in mind, always, that I’m writing “to” someone and not talking to myself in front of a mirror.  Poetry isn’t an exercise in introspection.  It’s a conversation between the poet, the poem, and potential readers.

 

MHR: These poems are at once exciting and meditative. Do you practice meditation or have a unique prayer process that sometimes leads to the discovery of poems?

TKE:  I believe that I live, for the most part, in a meditative, prayerful state.  I don’t have particular prayer times or go to church on a regular basis, but I am in constant communion with the God of my understanding—mostly expressing gratitude, but sometimes asking for mercy upon myself, the people I love, and the world as a whole.  Life is a difficult, though entirely worthwhile business.  I know myself to be a broken human being to whom grievous and agonizing harm has come again and again, yet I remain ecstatic to be alive on this gorgeous and ever-changing planet of ours.  I am thrilled every morning when I wake up because I know when I open the curtains and blinds in our house, if my eyes are in working order and the world is still with us, I will see the sky, which floors me every day with its beauty!  It is this exquisite feeling of being present in such a glorious setting, privileged to see what God has made for the delight of the creatures He created, that so often leads to poems.

 

MHR: In each of these poems, the voice never falters. There is a refreshing immediacy in the language. This speaks to your skill but it also sparks the idea that you are deeply attuned to life and nature.  Are you writing when you are not writing? Can you speak to this?

TKE:  I spent most of my childhood outdoors, the natural world my playground.  And as long as I can remember, in the midst of seeing what I saw when lying in the grass, climbing trees, and playing games with my friends, metaphors came to me easily and quickly.  I often thought about how “this” was similar to “that,” always looking for comparisons.  For example, I wrote a poem at the age of ten, comparing dirty snow by the side of the road, to old newspapers—the same faded and yellowing “paper,” the dirt like newsprint.  So yes, in some sense I am always and have long been “writing,” even if all the words haven’t yet found their way to paper or to a computer screen, which is where I do most of my composing these days.

 

MHR: Becoming the Blue Heron is your fifth collection. When you read your own work do you sense the development of your poetry? What changes have you noticed in your writing from the first book to this one? Do you have any advice for your younger poet-self?

TKE:  I think my confidence level is the main difference, although I hope, also, that every collection is better than the one before it.  I can’t make that judgment, myself, because I’m too close to the work.  But I never want loyal readers (those who have read and enjoyed my poetry thus far) to say. “Bless her heart.  Maybe TKE needs to find something better to do with her life!”  I definitely want my poems to remain accessible and I believe they are, but perhaps as I’ve grown older and richer in experience and insight, my poems reflect that growth, adding a few more layers of meaning to poetry that is more complex than it might appear at first glance.  If there is anything I would say to my younger poet-self, it would be to live as fearlessly as possible, to never stop feeling everything intensely, even when it hurts.  Then, when the time comes to reflect on our emotions “in tranquility,” as William Wordsworth so eloquently stated, we have so much more material from which to draw.  I’d say the same thing, however, to people who are not writers.  A life well-lived, in my opinion, is one in which we have been completely and willfully present.

 

MHR: Many of these poems work from memory—memories of stories you heard as a child, childhood memories themselves, nostalgic family scenes. In the poem “Zydeco,” (which as a Louisiana poet and publisher, and lifelong resident, I wish I had published), you draw such a complete and insightful picture of a Louisiana Zydeco performance in an Opelousas dancehall. Can you tell me about this poem—how memory infused it so that you were able to capture such an authentic feeling for the experience?

TKE:  Sadly, I’ve never personally experienced an Opelousas dancehall, but when I lived in Louisiana in my early twenties, I heard plenty of Cajun and Zydeco music.  In writing the poem, “Zydeco,” I used a combination of imagination, research, and memories of how those soulful, sensual, and lively songs made me feel, to try and convey to readers the joyful abandon of dancing (for the most part, in my living room!) to these particular melodies and rhythms, and how it might feel to do so in the company of strangers and friends brought together by their love for this life-affirming music.  Music, like poetry, is a powerful unifying force, and I dare anyone to listen to Zydeco and try to feel anything but good!

 

MHR: Light is a motif in this book. What to you is the power of light as it appears in Becoming the Blue Heron?

TKE:  “Light” is used to symbolize God, faith, and holiness throughout the Christian Bible, with verses such as Psalms 119:105: “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path,” and John 8:12:  “Then spoke Jesus again to them, saying, I am the light of the world…”  As a Christian by faith, everything I write reflects my feelings and impressions of God and His creations, even when faith and God are not mentioned in the work.  Like C.S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”  In Becoming the Blue Heron, specifically, the word “light” is also used as another word for “soul” or the essence of life in every living thing, as well as a symbol for illumination.  I believe we are here to learn and grow in wisdom and love for our brothers and sisters in this world, not only our human companions but the blue herons and honeybees, horses and barn owls.  People speak of moving toward the “light” as we transition away from our lives on earth to our eternal lives with God, but I believe each of us contains what many refer to as the “divine spark,” already, and in my view, we either tend that God-place in ourselves by practicing kindness, compassion, and love, or allow it to be extinguished by hatred and prejudice, fear and indifference.  In my own journey, I strive to keep my tiny portion of light glowing as well as I can and to look for and write about the light in others.

 

MHR: Again, about Louisiana—since MockingHeart Review was born and bred in Louisiana—can you tell me a bit about your life when you lived here? What were some of your best memories?  Did you have a favorite Louisiana meal?

TKE:  Decades ago, I lived in Alexandria, Louisiana, with my ex-husband who was stationed at England Air Force Base.  It was July when I arrived and hot as Satan’s tie clip, the air heavy-laden with humidity.  Naturally, insects abound in that moist environment so we had our share of palmetto bugs, the first I’d ever seen.  They were the size of polo ponies and surprise, surprise, palmetto bugs can fly!  I discovered this important fact while attempting to encourage them (with a broom!) to exit the kitchen of our tiny rental house, where each room was painted a different rainbow color.  For a brief period, I worked as a hostess in a seafood restaurant but soon found a day job as a sales clerk in women’s “fine” apparel at the (now defunct) Wellan’s Department Store.  After four or five months of helping women in their search for wedding dresses, furs, and other finery, I found my “dream” job and worked as a copywriter at KALB Radio/Television station until the day we moved back to NC.  Among my favorite foods were shrimp po’boys, heavy on the cayenne pepper, particularly since they were inexpensive and gourmet meals weren’t in our budget, and my dear friend, the late Narcille Mayeaux’s homemade candy, famous in her hometown of Pineville and beyond.  I remember my time in Alexandria with great affection, and the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of one of our most unique and culturally rich states have made their way into more than one of my poems!

 

MHR: Your poem, “Rail Walking” made me gasp pleasurably. It’s one of many that begins in nostalgia and transcends sentiment to rise to high art. Your great-grandfather in the poem takes on a mythic aura. The poem is rooted in the real but glows with an otherworldliness. Can you give us a bit of insight into how this poem came to be and how the narrative led you to an almost supernatural finish?

TKE:  My great-grandfather, Samuel White, was a Primitive Baptist preacher and a coffin maker, who lived to be 89 years old.  He and my great-grandmother resided with my grandparents from the time my mother was a child, so she and my uncle have many memories of him and his life that they have shared with me over the years.  By the time I was old enough to know him, myself, “Papa” had already had several strokes, so my recollections are of a gentle, kindly old man who never said much and was difficult to understand.  There are photos, however, of a handsome man with black hair and blue eyes who, as told to me by others, could charm birds and squirrels from the trees and I mean this literally!  We have a family photograph of Papa with a squirrel sitting on his shoulders and this, I am told, was not an infrequent occurrence.  Animals loved and trusted him, and people did, too.  So I have a great deal of material from which to draw when it comes to writing about this sweet-natured man, which I tried to put to good use in “Rail Walking.”  This was something my great-grandfather loved to do, according to my uncle–often going on long walks along the railroad tracks. So as I was coming to the close of this poem, in my mind’s eye I could see him there, his long stride, his concentration on and appreciation of the beauty surrounding him, imagining what his innate kindness would look like to someone with eyes to see the light of his good soul, brightly shining…

 

MHR: There is an array of animals in these poems. Do you feel that your relationship to wildlife lends itself to your poetry so well because of their ultimate mystery? I mean, we don’t always know about them because they live apart from us, peeking into our lives as blessings—and they literally don’t speak.

TKE:  Because I was a shy and introverted child, often told (by adults) that I appeared to be older in speech and actions than my years would seem to indicate (I often joke that I was at least 35 when I was born!), I wasn’t all that comfortable with people other than close friends and of course, my family.  I loved animals, however, and we had a number of pets in our house, including turtles, lizards, a parakeet named “Pete,” an incredibly long-lived and beloved cat, and about a zillion goldfish.  And as I said earlier, I spent most of my childhood outdoors when weather permitted, and found a great deal of comfort and peace in the presence of animals, birds, and even insects because they seemed so carefree and happy, and nothing was asked of them but to be their own gorgeous and mysterious selves.  I’m “inside” more than “outside” these days, but I’m still fascinated by and enthralled with our fellow sojourners on this earth–creatures who never speak but have so much to say when it comes to teaching us how to live in the moment.

 

MHR: You have a measured, sensual voice which speaks to skill in your craft. I sense you write for yourself but are ever-aware that your work is a gift to the world and the people in it. Am I accurate in saying so?

TKE:  When I’m writing, I do try to remain conscious that my poems are meant to be read and that writing them is not just some cathartic writing exercise intended for me, alone.  I strive to be real and honest in my interpretation of whatever it is that I’m writing about and to satisfy myself in this regard, but I also want to weave into the “story” or “narrative” of the poem, common threads that are familiar to others.  For example, if I’m writing about my grandmother or any other family member, I hope to stimulate a reader’s memory of a similarly beloved person in their own lives.  And if the subjects are blue herons, blue jays, frogs, red and white tulips, and on and on when it comes to my attempts to celebrate the natural world, I’m doing my best to take the reader along with me into the fields and creeks and woods as if we are friends linking arms and experiencing it all, together.

 

MHR: And lastly, the book ends with the title poem, “Becoming the Blue Heron.” Can you give us some insight into why you placed this poem last in the book?

TKE:  In several weeks, I’ll be 59 years old, which is rather an unbelievable age that will probably leave a few people wondering how many years I intend to be 59!  But I’ve never been reluctant to reveal my age because I feel it is a mark of valor that I’m still here, still speaking in coherent sentences for the most part, and continue to have a sense of humor!  So the poem, “Becoming the Blue Heron,” in my own mind, is about transformative experiences, about stepping out of one’s comfort zone and allowing ourselves to be free from self-doubt, guilt, regret, and the weight of old sorrows, and to “fly” into the unknown (i.e., aging and its ultimate conclusion) with courage, hope, and lightness of spirit–so light, in fact, that flight changes into something we can do, if only in our imaginations.  As a person who has endured a variety of health challenges since birth, it has been difficult to maintain a cordial relationship with a body that continues to “act up.”  So imagining myself stepping out of the confines of a less-than-ideal form was in itself freeing, and seemed like it ought to be the final statement of the collection.  I wanted to end the book by saying let go, let go, of anything that weighs us down, my loves–let go and don’t look back!

 

MHR: Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions.

TKE:  It was a pleasure, Clare.  Thank you for your insightful questions, your sensitivity, your support of other poets and writers, and for your own fine work, which I have long admired!

MHR: Thank you!

DSC00149 - Copy 

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of five full-length collections of award-winning poetry, including her latest book, Becoming the Blue Heron (Press 53, 2017). Her work has appeared in the 2013 Poet’s Market, Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, JAMA, Literary Mama, NASA News & Notes, North Carolina Literary Review, storySouth, The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press), The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, Verse Daily, and many others. Awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award, Atlanta Review International Publication Prize, Gold Medal in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.

 

A Conversation with Devon Balwit

~ Clare L. Martin ~ Leave a comment

balwit2

How The Blessed Travel
(Maverick Duck Press, 2017)

MHR: In a few of the poems, we encounter the heart. There is a great tradition of writing about the heart. What does it signify to you poetically and what is your renewed vision of that metaphor, in a poem like, “squatter?” Also, why the male personification of “heart” in that specific poem?

DB: Let me start with addressing your question about male personification. When I was in my teens, twenties, and thirties, my poetry was relentlessly autobiographical and confessional. When I returned to writing in earnest in my fifties, I was bored with my personal narrative. Over the past year and a half, I’ve thrown myself into exploring alien poetic forms, personae, and source material. As a young adult, I would never have written poems that looked as these do on the page—so full of space and so spare. At that time as well, I would probably have chosen a narrator who was more of a mirror image. Now, in contrast, I am much more curious and much freer as a poet. I don’t want to be bound to my gender or to any other aspects of my identity when I write.

Too, Portland, Oregon has a large community of unhoused people. Most are men. Many are veterans. Every day on my walk to work, I watch their ingenuity in surviving in marginal spaces, admiring their scrappiness and savviness. To me, the heart is like that, a crusty survivor.

Finally, the heart figures prominently in my work because it is so damn insistent—it clenches, thunders, hungers, feigns indifference. As “systole/diastole” says, the heart is “membranous” and “cussed.” It wants what it wants and to hell with the rest.

MHR: Your poem, “how the blessed travel,” opens the chapbook. In it are the lines, “there they go/with a sound/like a piccolo” These lines fit wonderfully with the rhythm of the piece itself. How did this auditory image come to you?

DB: This chapbook contains many mobile and birdlike slight poems. They flit about with their hollow bones. The word piccolo is both visually playful on the page and fun to say.  It captured the image of a tiny little holiness hitching a ride on that perfect emblem of the spirit—the singing bird.

 

MHR: “Sitting on the wall,” is a poem of vibrancy and energy. It is as though a veil is lifted from our eyes to see into burgeoning reality. Do you identify as a prescient or visionary poet?

DB: Yes, I do. I feel compelled to write. I wake in the night urgent to begin and often have to fight to stay in bed. My head vibrates all day long with an electricity that’s only released at the keyboard. When I write ekphrastic poems, the story emerges as if whispered, as if the paintings possessed me until I got it right. In the same way that a medium gets caught up in a trance, I disappear into my creative process. I feel most at home there.

“Sitting on the wall” is one of many poems that I have written to deal with my disappointment at rejection. There are days when I receive 5-8 rejection notices. Even though I understand it’s an unavoidable part of the writer’s process, I still feel a welter of sadness, frustration, anger, confusion, isolation, envy, and so on. The way I deal with this is to write more. I imagine scenarios in which someone doesn’t get what they wanted—in love, at work, in the family, and so on. This poem, while ostensibly about a single woman embracing her aloneness at dusk, holds this other pain inside it like a seed.

MHR: In “with the insight of vast differences,” we are brought into a mythic space. The vehicle is not merely a plane, but the poem itself which carries us. In the third section, you make a breathless pronouncement. Can you decode that for us?

DB: My physical world is very small. I live within a couple miles of my work. I spend most days within a couple miles of my home. I walk each day in the same parks. I am largely a creature of habit living on limited means. That said, every day, I find something worth writing about. Every day within the familiar, I locate something new and strange: an encounter, a painting, a quotation in a book, a news story. My poem’s final pronouncement summarizes my life or stands like a legend on my family crest: “we are all of us being born //…into newness //even if the place we have arrived // is the very place from which we only recently departed //”

MHR: Who is the subject of the “Hungry” and how do you know her?

DB: The process of aging in a female body is fraught as, traditionally, women’s bodies have been predominantly sexualized. As a teacher, my physical presence, my sensuality as it were, has been one of many tools to be used in the classroom to attract and maintain attention. Now that I am in my 50s, however, my relationship with my body has changed as has the way others see me in my body. Now I tend to evoke the motherly or grandmotherly. I have entered the crone phase, becoming more like a witch-woman who lives in a shack in the woods and gathers herbs for simples. My identity as a poet superimposes itself on that of the witch, as I collect anything and anyone that I might weave into my craft. The birds and the plants don’t always welcome the crone’s attentions just as my poetic subjects don’t always warm to the analysis they receive at my hand.

MHR: “Luminescence” evokes a deep sensuality. This is repeated effectively in “wild(er)ness.” Does nature lend itself to you for sensual or sexual sensations?

DB: Without a doubt, nature evokes the sensual, and in all seasons: the almost indecent fecundity and horniness, the storms, the maturation, and ripeness. Seeds and blooms mimic genitalia. Nature is profligate and insistent. Too, the natural world can express heartlessness and indifference as do we when consumed by our own hungers.

MHR: You’ve drawn so much out of the natural world. What do you find to be key that prompts you to knit a poem out of dream and dark as in “To the Dark Boundary?”

DB: This poem came to me in the liminal moment between sleep and wakefulness. I was taken by the image of my feet having independent agency from the rest of me as they are, instead, always my servants. I found it charming to follow them for once and go where they wanted to go, to have the dusty, gnarled, stinky part of me in the lead. My feet seemed so much less self-conscious than I usually am—perhaps precisely because they were liberated from my overly-analytical brain.

MHR: “Dutiful” seems to speak of the poet’s curse and blessing to create from experience.   Can you explain your understanding of this poem? Am I off the mark?

DB: Off the mark would be too strong. I’m always delighted to see what people receive from my work. I much prefer being offered an interpretation that is slightly askew to my intentions than just the comment “I don’t get it”(or radio silence) and a pause in which I am expected to explain it.

I love that you saw the poet’s project in this poem. It is that and so much more. As a mother, I have an on-going sense of being pendant on others, a duty to watch out for and encourage. As a teacher, I also have a set of obligations to entertain yet instruct, to hold the large space of the class while making room for all the individual egos within it. As a wife, I have obligations to my spouse. As a daughter, I have yet others to my parents. As a poet, I have a duty to my craft and to my voice. All these roles with their attendant sacrifices are often underappreciated by their recipients. Thus, it falls to me to encourage myself. “What I’m doing seems to be working.” I could abandon my various posts, “I imagine letting go…I could follow as if by plan.” But I can’t. “Steeled by duty,” I carry on. For better or for worse, these are my identities. At the end of the day, it is up to me to garland my own head and say, “well done.”

MHR: Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, Devon.

DB: My pleasure!

Devon Balwit

Devon Balwit is a teacher/poet living in Portland, OR. She has four chapbooks—How the Blessed Travel (Maverick Duck Press), Forms Most Marvelous (forthcoming with dancing girl press), In Front of the Elements, and Where You Were Going Never Was (both forthcoming with Grey Borders Books). Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Non-Binary Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Almagre Review, The Stillwater Review, The Tule Review, Red Earth Review, The Free State Review, Front Porch, Cease Cows, Concis, and Eunoia Review.

MHR Interviews Karen Corinne Herceg

~ Clare L. Martin ~ 1 Comment

Out From Calaboose Cover - Website (1)

MHR: Sensuality is palpable throughout the collection. I am drawn to ask you about “Toulon, 1971.” So much is unsaid of the Spanish lover, and yet we are clear about who he is to the speaker. Can you speak to the idea of capturing a scene/moment/character indirectly rather than by explication?

 

KCH: First, Clare, I want to thank you and MockingHeart Review for publishing my work and for the opportunity of this interview. I think the best writing never explains but engages us through stories that allow us to reach our own insights. Initiation into sex, first love, loss, rejection and the entire spectrum of human sentiments and interactions are, obviously, universal. But it is the specificity of individual experience that allows us to relate on common ground. Most of our stories are amazingly similar. It is authentic emotion in singular instances that allows us to relate to these shared experiences in new, revelatory ways. This is the essential beauty of creative expression.

 

MHR: Do you study Eastern philosophy? I am thinking the poem, “April Note,” in the second section, which is titled “In the Silence of Snow.” In this section, you are able to capture the “tableau” of seasons with a Zen-eye.  Do you feel observation of nature and the seasons affects the poetic mind’s inclination towards contemplative poems?

 

KCH: I see nature as incredibly interactive not as pastoral and impassive as it is often portrayed in poetry. We are an integral part of the natural landscape whether we honor, respect and work within it or whether we try to subjugate and abuse it. I have great reverence for its power. I’ve studied various spiritual paths and, perhaps, there’s a Zen-like influence in my approach. I seek to capture the less expected or pedestrian responses to the natural environment, the nuances that we miss in a busy, noisy world.

 

MHR: I am deeply impressed with your economy of line and the precision of your line breaks.  They are clean almost like breathing. Do you read poems aloud as you are drafting and revising?

 

KCH: Thank you, Clare. That’s lovely. Yes, I do read aloud continually. It is critical to the appropriate rhythm. Ideally, a poem is read and heard. The poet has to be mindful of both aspects—it should work optimally at all levels. I believe one misplaced comma can make a big difference. I learn much about my poems when I hear others read them. Inevitably they will stumble in places where I hesitate myself and am most uncomfortable. It shows me something is off. There must be proper flow. I also review videos of my readings. Often the perceptions we have while reading are quite different when we see them more objectively as an observer.
MHR: Themes that you explore are love, contemporary life, consumerism, history, landscapes and our impact on them. Would you add to this list?

 

KCH: Yes, most definitely. I would say wounds and healing. We are all wounded in various ways. Forgiveness is often misunderstood. It is an organic process that evolves once we face transgressions head on, holding others and ourselves responsible and working through the pain. It is not about absolving people. We are all angry, although it’s not an acceptable form of expression and is confused with violence—that is not acceptable or necessary if one processes anger properly. Acknowledging we are all perpetrators and victims to one extent or another allows for compassion that is more genuine than forgiveness. There is no secret ingredient, magic thought process or sacred ritual that achieves this; only hard work and brutal honesty about others and ourselves. People confuse peace and truth. If you seek peace you cannot always accept truth because you compromise. If you always strive for truth, your peace will grow from that. As the saying goes, we are only as sick as our secrets. This is why I write as honestly as I can about working through maternal incest and childhood abuse and how abuses such as these can permeate all of our relationships and interactions in life.

 

MHR: I sense in your style that you are adept at making poems fold in on themselves. Can you give us insight into your poem-writing process? You can speak of craft, language, and poetic vision.

 

KCH: I believe the poem should startle, create an “aha” moment, even a twist at the end. It should lead us away from conditioned responses. Further, if it creates an epiphany or catharsis of some kind, that’s a great bonus. Poems that just describe or dictate are not enlightening. We want to take the familiar and make it fresh. After all, we go to a poem to discover some new insight about the world and ourselves. Craft is, of course, essential. Choice of form, finding the right language, and correct structure. “Poetic vision” sounds so elevated but, actually, it’s true. Often lines pop into my head, in dreams, upon waking or through observations. In truth, the best work is not conjured or forced but comes through us as a vessel. You can call it the muse, the divine, God, but it all amounts to the same thing. There is a universal, communal force we can tap into if we are open and available to it.

 

MHR: How was the sequencing determined in this collection? What made you decide to divide the book into segments?

 

KCH: Initially there were no segments. These developed organically as I began to organize how I would sequence the poems in the book. Some were more relevant to relationships, some to political, social and ecological concerns, some to personal healing and others to resolutions. But I see them as all connected in one sense or another. The epigraphs and quotes I included were discovered along the way and just felt appropriate.

MHR: Some of the poems seem confessional. How do you balance the personal when made public in your poems? Do you think it is necessary for the poet to designate the speaker as “I” in poems for a personal processing of the emotional impetus that sparked them?

 

KCH: In a sense, some of the poems in Out From Calaboose are confessional in their details and references. Using “I” as the speaker is not essential to the point or impact of a poem. However, I find that using the personal references creates a greater connection with my audience. People will come up to me and say they were immensely touched by my personal revelations and it sparked reactions based on their own experiences, even though those situations may not be exactly the same. The most important element is the genuine emotion behind the words. In the poem “A Thin Season” I pay homage to a teenager beheaded by terrorists for listening to pop tunes in his father’s grocery store. A true story. It’s not my story but properly told it can stir our emotions and create an empathetic heart.

 

MHR: What are some highlights of your process? Do you prescribe times to write or do you write on the go? Both?

 

KCH: I would say both, although I do a lot of my work in the morning hours when I’m alone at my desk before the household gets moving. The most critical aspect of writing is to authentically recreate from real life experiences at a very visceral level. It’s also important to write consistently. If there’s a block, do some journaling about the block! There’s much to be said for discipline, for showing up, as they say. Then review, edit, rewrite and do it all again and again. It is also important to work in community with other writers and poets. Read, read, read as much as possible and listen to others. It’s not only informative but sparks inspiration. Recently, I’ve been writing a lot of reviews and am so pleased to be published by the American Book Review, Compulsive Reader and others. I also befriend the media, social and local, and have gotten newspaper, magazine and radio interviews. We need to build a solid, genuine platform and then ask! I work hard to keep my website exciting and updated.

 

MHR: How many years was this book in the making? Can you tell me about the Nirala Series?

 

KCH: In all, the poems cover three decades. I published individual pieces during that time, as noted in the acknowledgments. But the time had to be right to pull it all together. It’s wonderful that there are so many opportunities to publish in today’s world. But it’s a slippery slope regarding quality. I’d rather put out one book occasionally than many I feel are less than what I expect from myself. A representative from Nirala, the wonderful poet Yuyutsu Sharma, met me at a book launch for a poet they had just published, whose work I had edited. I read during the event and he approached me afterward. From there I forwarded a manuscript that was accepted, and we worked on it for over six months to bring it to fruition. Nirala is wonderful to work with and did a beautiful job on the book. They’re global publishers based in New Delhi, India but have a large series of authors from around the world. I also had the input of bestselling author Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton, who made editing suggestions. We share similar backgrounds and family dynamics, and I greatly appreciate her input and friendship. Poet Roberta Gould, who just published her eleventh book of poems and is a great friend, wrote the Foreword. And I was blessed to receive many great blurbs and reviews. Robert Milby, just named Poet Laureate of Orange County, NY where I reside, is another great friend and has been instrumental in supporting me with readings and events. I also host a monthly poetry salon in my home that focuses on strong feedback and critical analysis of our work.

 

MHR: You have a poem titled, “Out from Calaboose.” Why did you choose this as the title of the collection?

 

KCH: A calaboose is a small, local jail that, to me, represents self-imprisonment from wounds we carry with us that require healing. So much work I’ve done over the years has led me to the door of my calaboose. But stepping over that threshold is a daily process, moment by moment, and we must remain ever vigilant. The poems are an impetus to that vigilance.

 

Out from Calaboose can be purchased via Amazon or at Karen’s website: www.karencorinneherceg.com

Karen Herceg

Karen Corinne Herceg graduated from Columbia University and has graduate credits in editing, revision, and psychology.  A recipient of N.Y. State grants, she has featured at major venues such as The New York Public Library, The Queens Museum, The Provincetown Playhouse, St. John’s University, Binghamton Community Poets, Calling All Poets Series and many others with such renowned poets as Pulitzer Prize winners John Ashbery and Philip Schultz and poet William Packard, founder of The New York Quarterly.

 

Her first volume of poems was Inner Sanctions. Nirala Publications released her second book, Out From Calaboose: New Poems, in November 2016. She publishes poetry, prose, essays and reviews in a variety of magazines and literary journals here and abroad including the prestigious American Book Review. Her work is read on various radio broadcasts. Karen has been working with Khalilah Ali, writing her memoirs as the former wife of the legendary Muhammad Ali.

 

Karen is listed with Poets & Writers and is a member of The Academy of American Poets, PEN America, The Poetry Society of America, The Woodstock Poetry Society and CAPS. Her website is: www.karencorinneherceg.com and you can also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Conversation with Anne Elezabeth Pluto

~ Clare L. Martin ~ 1 Comment

BenignProtection_Pluto
MHR: Your chapbook, Benign Protection, (Cervena Barva Press), is dedicated to your deceased parents. How were these poems beneficial to your grief process?

AEP: Writing the poems was the grieving process.  My father died at 91 in 2004; my mother at 92 in 2012.  When I was a teenager my mother and I made a pact; whoever died first would let the other know what death was like.  I imagined that she would appear to me in a dream shortly after her death; she didn’t.  The poems became the dream.

 

MHR: The chapbook opens with the poem” The River Styx.” On this journey you set upon, we are with you. You take us into myriad griefs. Can you tell us about the process of sequencing which lends itself very well to the reading experience of these poems?

AEP: The first part of the book is about my mother – the second part about my father. I wanted to play with their life-times and insert those poems into the liturgical calendar, but make the movement circular and not linear.  The reader crosses over in the first poem – into the memory of life in Brooklyn – then into the Virgin Birth – and the journey into Christmas/Epiphany/Lent/Easter – leaving that for the secular – back to memory – lost family members (“Matryushka” is for my maternal great-grandmother – whose name is long forgotten) and leads to the supreme dream – “I have been to Samarqand.”  “Fog,” the last poem is the reprise – it is gentle – we cross over in the first poem; we roll over with the world in the last one.

 

MHR: The poem “Without Form” is a poet’s eye, looking always to the unknowable. Can you speak to the mystery and mysticism in which you ground the dish, plate, brush, house, and kitchen so well? Maybe a few words of how the ordinary is essential when writing the extraordinary.

AEP: The ordinary is always extraordinary.  I wrote the poem a few months after my mother died – it was summer – it was very hot – I was alone in my house looking at items I had taken from her apartment – things she had touched, used, loved.  My house is haunted.  The ghosts were noisy that day.  It was a perfect storm.

 

MHR: We embrace the experience of your longing in a poem like “East 16th Street.” The business of the aftermath of death is its own heartache. Can you speak to the way you weave the “necessary business” experience into a poem, which holds emotional impact?

AEP: I like to play with line breaks – read the poems out loud to see how they move – this poem came easier than others.  I was in Brooklyn – staying with friends who live 2 blocks away from East 16th Street.  I walked to the supermarket – bought some item my mother would have had and then walked back down East 16th Street – hoping to see her ghost.  It was a powerful moment – spring – beautiful fragrant April – no one was walking there but me.  I wanted to capture that experience of profound aloneness in the poem.

 

MHR: Seasons and religious seasons are knitted into the shape of the book. Are you personally oriented by these seasons?

AEP: Yes – I live in New England where we have 4 seasons – the religious seasons naturally follow.

 

MHR: Your family’s complex Russian culture is deftly described throughout. Can you speak to some of the held beliefs about death in your personal heritage and upbringing that many readers may not be familiar with, limited to the scope of this book?

AEP: I have to answer this outside of the church.  My parents were spiritual – they believed in God – were Orthodox Christians – but they did not attend church.  My mother was allergic to perfume and the Russian Orthodox Church uses incense in their service.  My father had escaped death several times during WW II – he believed God had spared his life.  My father also believed that after he died, my mother needed to wait 7 years (as she was 7 years younger) before she died so they would be the same age when they met again.  She died 2 months after her 92nd birthday.  I wouldn’t be surprised if their ghosts were living in apt. 2E.  They believed in a deep rich life of the soul – the eternal Easter.

 

MHR: On a personal note, do you have a sense, a prescience perhaps, that envisions your departed beloveds?

AEP: Yes, and that prescience ties into the life of the soul, but sometimes I think my parents have come back as my two parakeets, Fin and Gertrude, and their cage is apartment 2E.  We laugh about that in my house.

 

MHR: What is the period that these poems were written? Can you speak about how the chapbook came to be?

AEP: From 2012 – 2015; there were more, but I edited them out to make the book tighter.  I sent them to Gloria Mindock and was very happy when she agreed to publish them.

 

MHR: Thank you for indulging our questions. How can someone buy your chapbook?

AEP: Thank you! I have copies available. Readers can contact me at: aepluto@gmail.com
Or, from:
Cervena Barva Press
http://www.thelostbookshelf.com/p.html

 

Anne Pluto
Anne Elezabeth Pluto is Professor of Literature and Theatre at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA where she is the artistic director and one of the founders of the Oxford Street Players, the university’s Shakespeare troupe. She is an alumna of Shakespeare & Company, and has been a member of the Worcester Shakespeare Company since 2011. She was a member of the Boston small press scene in the late 1980s and is one of the founders and editors at Nixes Mate Review.  Her chapbook, The Frog Princess, was published by White Pine Press (1985), her eBook Lubbock Electric, by Argotist ebooks (2012), and her chapbook Benign Protection by Cervana Barva Press (2016). Recent publications include: The Buffalo Evening News, Unlikely Stories: Episode IV, Mat Hat Lit, Pirene’s Fountain, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Mockingheart Review, Yellow Chair Review, Levure Litteraire – numero 12, The Naugatuck River Review, and Tuesday, An Art Project.