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- Apr 12, 2005
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1. When did you start writing poetry?
From around the time I could clutch a pen and form letters. Dr. Seuss got me fascinated with rhyme by the time I was three. I can’t say my grasp of metaphor was particularly strong at that age, but I was turning out little rhyming verses early on in elementary school.
2. What other writing do you do regularly?
I have a novel in the works, and another on the back burner.
I’ve also done a lot of legal writing (I’m a lawyer), but I’d just as soon forget about that, if you don’t mind.
3. Do you think of yourself primarily as a poet?
Yes, I guess I do, though I don’t introduce myself that way at cocktail parties. But I do think my brain is wired for poetry. I tend to work metaphors into everything. Even my legal briefs sometimes contain them.
4. Why do you write poetry?
All of my poems have some personal relevance for me. Each is a snapshot of an emotion, person, or event – a memoir of where I’ve been at a particular point in time. Even if a poem is not directly about me, it captures something that moved me in some way or riffs off some experience I’ve had.
In addition, writing poetry is therapeutic for me. The act of writing a poem very often helps me work through how I feel about something. I’ll suddenly realize why a metaphor or image is stuck in my brain and won’t let go, which in turn leads me to a better understanding of a situation, another person, or myself.
Finally, I love playing with language. I get deep pleasure from nuances of words and the cadence of lines.
5. How does writing poetry relate with your other writing?
I find myself reaching for some of the same tools and applying the same principles – incorporating metaphors, slicing sentences down to essentials, choosing exactly the right word.
6. Beyond Absolute Write, what is your publication/performance history?
When I was in college, I published a few things in college literary magazines and won a contest. I also edited a small college poetry magazine.
After college, though I continued to write, I gradually got to the point where I didn’t share any of my things with anyone. I no longer had a community around me that cared to read or discuss poetry.
Participating in the AW poetry forum has rekindled my interest in sharing my work. I’ve been considering submitting some of it to poetry journals and perhaps participating in poetry readings.
One of my poems, Hospice, has been incorporated into a training program for hospice staff. That pleases me very much.
7. How often do you write poems?
It depends on what else is going on in my life. I try to work on one every day, but it doesn’t always happen. I go through periods where I turn out quite a bit of work that pleases me and other periods where I produce more scrap paper than poetry.
8. What goals, if any, do you have for your poetry?
Wait -- I’m supposed to have goals?
As I mentioned above, I’m playing with the idea of submitting some of mine to journals. I’ve no expectations of making a dime, but it would be fun to have a publication credit my family could mention in my obituary when they’re groping for nice things to say.
Otherwise, I’m just hoping that a few people out there will connect with my work.
9. Do you set out to write a poem, does it compel you to write it, or something else?
The poem compels me, always. I’ve never sat down and thought, “I’d like to write a poem today. Now then, what will it be about?” I always know when I sit down what I’ll be working on.
I get ideas all the time, far more than I have time to use. I scribble them down in a notebook as they come (or if the notebook isn’t handy, a cocktail napkin, the margin of a book, or whatever happens to be handy). I will certainly die before all of my ideas germinate into poems. The ones that nag at me most persistently get finished.
10. What formal, semantic, or thematic traits do you prefer to use in your poems?
I love language that has levels of meaning. I consider every definition of a word when I choose it. I am fond of writing lines that can be read more than one way, and I generally prefer the meanings to complement one another (as opposed to creating ambiguity).
Generally, my poems will have a fairly obvious surface level that (I hope) most readers can grasp at first read. However, I nearly always try to work in some layers of nuance and metaphor. Perhaps some readers won’t pick up on those layers. But at the very least I hope most walk away with a story, an image, or a line that lingers.
In my opinion, that approach is more inviting than a poem shrouded in obscurity that requires half an hour of head-scratching to make out anything it’s saying. To be honest, while I can “get” those types of poems, I’m generally not all that enthralled by them. I much prefer a poem that hits me with an immediate impression on first read, and then rewards future reads with additional nuances. That being my preference as a reader, it’s also the way I try to write.
11. Which usually comes first: Topic/idea, form, words? Other?
The idea, always. Form follows from that.
Nearly every one of my poems starts with the conjunction of an idea and a metaphor – and very often an image and a couple of lines that come along with it -- it is generally a pure burst of inspiration. I figure out where to go from there.
For example, with Unfelled, the image of a lone fir tree as a metaphor for a single woman sprang into my head, together with the last lines of the poem:
and I wonder
sometimes
when I fall
if I will make
.....a sound.
Those lines came to my head in those exact words, in that format, and I was never inclined to tinker with them. The rest of the poem didn’t come quite so easily, but it all sprang from that image/metaphor and those closing lines.
For some reason, I often work that way: backwards. The last lines of my poems are very often the first ones I write, and generally come the easiest for me. I don’t know why, exactly. In some cases, I suspect it’s because so many of mine are based on events in my life. I start with the outcome, and then consider where it started and how it got that way. But I do it with poems that aren’t confessional, too, so perhaps I’m just ass-backward.
That inclination has made writing my current poem-in-progress, Adrift in a Wine-Dark Sea, quite a challenge for me -- the very nature of the poem forces me to work forwards. However, in keeping with my usual habits, I wrote Part XVIII first before moving to the beginning of the poem.
12. Do you revise? Right away, later on? How do you decide when you've finished with a poem?
Whether, when, and to what extent I revise depends completely on the poem. With some, I spend weeks among scraps of scribbled-over paper, only to have the line I’ve been struggling with come to me in the shower. I’ve set drafts of poems aside for literally years, only to pull up the scraps later and know exactly what I want to do with them. (The Last Walk was one of those; so was Requiem for Uncle John.) A blessed few have come to me fairly easily, with little revision. (See, e.g., unto the next generation) So much depends on the poem and my mood.
I’m finished when the poem sings to me. Sometimes I don’t quite get there, but know I’m unlikely to get any closer to my vision; I put down my pen and call it done.
I am always interested in receiving critiques and comments, and if it’s a poem I’m not quite there with, I might incorporate them. But when a finished poem sings to me, I’m very unlikely to change a word. I know it’s done.
13. How did you come to be interested in poetry?
I hate to mention Dr. Seuss again, but it really does go back that far. Though my taste has become somewhat more sophisticated, I can trace the roots back to Green Eggs and Ham.
14. What particular poem or poet first attracted you to poetry?
As I keep mentioning and mentioning (and mentioning), Dr. Seuss had me fascinated with rhyme before I could write. A bit later on in grade school, I was obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe, which continued my love affair with rhyme and introduced me to more sophisticated meter, metaphor, and other poetic devices. My next big step was T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock, which blew me out of the water back in high school. Indeed, it still does. I still like Poe, too. For that matter, I still get a kick out of Dr. Seuss.
It really wasn’t until college that I learned to love (and write) poems that had no rhyme and no regular meter. For a little while after making that discovery, I wrote nothing else. Gradually, though, rhyme and meter crept back into my work.
15. What poems, poets, movements or eras have influenced you as a poet: which do you particularly enjoy, admire, or aspire toward?
I can easily name poets I’ve enjoyed over the years and whom have provided a certain amount of inspiration. Poe, Eliot, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, AW’s own William Haskins, and many, many more -- too many to mention without making out a laundry list.
But as far as styles I aspire towards -- none but my own. Each poem tells me as I’m writing what it wants the form to look like, how the meter should feel, etc. My style has gone through a couple of shifts in the past, and I hope continues to develop. But I do not attempt to emulate any particular style or poet. My work is what it is.
I have a few pet tools I particularly love to work with – metaphor and internal rhyme, for example. I’m fond of playing with line breaks, often using them in place of punctuation. But I can’t, off the top of my head, think of any particular poet or movement that motivated me to start using those tools in the way I use them.
All that said, I must say that it probably would never have occurred to me to start a narrative poem-in-progress had William not written Thorn Forest. I didn’t read his work and say, “oh, I’m going to do one of those.” But months later, when I started tinkering with a couple of related poems (which later became parts of my narrative) it hit me that my theme could work nicely as a poem-in-progress if I could just get past my tendency to write backwards. The style of Adrift in a Wine-Dark Sea is my own. But the concept of a poem-in-progress I stole shamelessly from William.
16. What single poem of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read your work?
I’d probably choose Unfelled. It’s not necessarily my best poem (though it is among my favorites), but it is a nice example of what I try to do with a poem – i.e., it centers around a metaphor, uses internal rhyme and alliteration in a way that (I hope) is musical without beating the reader over the head, and takes a turn halfway through.
17. What are your thoughts on poetry today: its function, future, direction, relevance?
Oh, what a depressing question. I think very few people really care much about poetry these days, or at least what I consider to be poetry. People always mention song lyrics, but very few qualify as poetry, in my view. Take away the music, and you have “meh,” for the most part. (And yes, there are some exceptions.)
I’m not sure that’s going to change. But I hope there will always be a few of us who write and appreciate poetry.
As I mentioned above, I don’t have anyone in my real life who gives a damn about poetry. I’m very happy to have found some people on AW who do.
18. What, in your view, makes a written/spoken work a poem?
It uses metaphor, imagery, and/or layered, nuanced language to convey an idea in carefully chosen words – the best words in the best order. It need not rhyme, the meter need not be regular, it need not have alliteration, but the language will convey some sort of musicality.
19. What do you like about your own poetry?
It captures particular events, people, emotions, and ideas that have been important to me.
20. What would you say to someone who wants to learn to write poetry well?
Read it. Think about what makes it effective.
Write it. Early attempts are likely to be awkward, but you’ll get better if you consistently work at it.
Put some love in it. Consider every word you use. Each one should work towards your poem and be essential to the whole. Use fresh language, not stale clichés. Simply spewing an emotion or thought onto the page is not poetry, even if it rhymes.
From around the time I could clutch a pen and form letters. Dr. Seuss got me fascinated with rhyme by the time I was three. I can’t say my grasp of metaphor was particularly strong at that age, but I was turning out little rhyming verses early on in elementary school.
2. What other writing do you do regularly?
I have a novel in the works, and another on the back burner.
I’ve also done a lot of legal writing (I’m a lawyer), but I’d just as soon forget about that, if you don’t mind.
3. Do you think of yourself primarily as a poet?
Yes, I guess I do, though I don’t introduce myself that way at cocktail parties. But I do think my brain is wired for poetry. I tend to work metaphors into everything. Even my legal briefs sometimes contain them.
4. Why do you write poetry?
All of my poems have some personal relevance for me. Each is a snapshot of an emotion, person, or event – a memoir of where I’ve been at a particular point in time. Even if a poem is not directly about me, it captures something that moved me in some way or riffs off some experience I’ve had.
In addition, writing poetry is therapeutic for me. The act of writing a poem very often helps me work through how I feel about something. I’ll suddenly realize why a metaphor or image is stuck in my brain and won’t let go, which in turn leads me to a better understanding of a situation, another person, or myself.
Finally, I love playing with language. I get deep pleasure from nuances of words and the cadence of lines.
5. How does writing poetry relate with your other writing?
I find myself reaching for some of the same tools and applying the same principles – incorporating metaphors, slicing sentences down to essentials, choosing exactly the right word.
6. Beyond Absolute Write, what is your publication/performance history?
When I was in college, I published a few things in college literary magazines and won a contest. I also edited a small college poetry magazine.
After college, though I continued to write, I gradually got to the point where I didn’t share any of my things with anyone. I no longer had a community around me that cared to read or discuss poetry.
Participating in the AW poetry forum has rekindled my interest in sharing my work. I’ve been considering submitting some of it to poetry journals and perhaps participating in poetry readings.
One of my poems, Hospice, has been incorporated into a training program for hospice staff. That pleases me very much.
7. How often do you write poems?
It depends on what else is going on in my life. I try to work on one every day, but it doesn’t always happen. I go through periods where I turn out quite a bit of work that pleases me and other periods where I produce more scrap paper than poetry.
8. What goals, if any, do you have for your poetry?
Wait -- I’m supposed to have goals?
As I mentioned above, I’m playing with the idea of submitting some of mine to journals. I’ve no expectations of making a dime, but it would be fun to have a publication credit my family could mention in my obituary when they’re groping for nice things to say.
Otherwise, I’m just hoping that a few people out there will connect with my work.
9. Do you set out to write a poem, does it compel you to write it, or something else?
The poem compels me, always. I’ve never sat down and thought, “I’d like to write a poem today. Now then, what will it be about?” I always know when I sit down what I’ll be working on.
I get ideas all the time, far more than I have time to use. I scribble them down in a notebook as they come (or if the notebook isn’t handy, a cocktail napkin, the margin of a book, or whatever happens to be handy). I will certainly die before all of my ideas germinate into poems. The ones that nag at me most persistently get finished.
10. What formal, semantic, or thematic traits do you prefer to use in your poems?
I love language that has levels of meaning. I consider every definition of a word when I choose it. I am fond of writing lines that can be read more than one way, and I generally prefer the meanings to complement one another (as opposed to creating ambiguity).
Generally, my poems will have a fairly obvious surface level that (I hope) most readers can grasp at first read. However, I nearly always try to work in some layers of nuance and metaphor. Perhaps some readers won’t pick up on those layers. But at the very least I hope most walk away with a story, an image, or a line that lingers.
In my opinion, that approach is more inviting than a poem shrouded in obscurity that requires half an hour of head-scratching to make out anything it’s saying. To be honest, while I can “get” those types of poems, I’m generally not all that enthralled by them. I much prefer a poem that hits me with an immediate impression on first read, and then rewards future reads with additional nuances. That being my preference as a reader, it’s also the way I try to write.
11. Which usually comes first: Topic/idea, form, words? Other?
The idea, always. Form follows from that.
Nearly every one of my poems starts with the conjunction of an idea and a metaphor – and very often an image and a couple of lines that come along with it -- it is generally a pure burst of inspiration. I figure out where to go from there.
For example, with Unfelled, the image of a lone fir tree as a metaphor for a single woman sprang into my head, together with the last lines of the poem:
and I wonder
sometimes
when I fall
if I will make
.....a sound.
Those lines came to my head in those exact words, in that format, and I was never inclined to tinker with them. The rest of the poem didn’t come quite so easily, but it all sprang from that image/metaphor and those closing lines.
For some reason, I often work that way: backwards. The last lines of my poems are very often the first ones I write, and generally come the easiest for me. I don’t know why, exactly. In some cases, I suspect it’s because so many of mine are based on events in my life. I start with the outcome, and then consider where it started and how it got that way. But I do it with poems that aren’t confessional, too, so perhaps I’m just ass-backward.
That inclination has made writing my current poem-in-progress, Adrift in a Wine-Dark Sea, quite a challenge for me -- the very nature of the poem forces me to work forwards. However, in keeping with my usual habits, I wrote Part XVIII first before moving to the beginning of the poem.
12. Do you revise? Right away, later on? How do you decide when you've finished with a poem?
Whether, when, and to what extent I revise depends completely on the poem. With some, I spend weeks among scraps of scribbled-over paper, only to have the line I’ve been struggling with come to me in the shower. I’ve set drafts of poems aside for literally years, only to pull up the scraps later and know exactly what I want to do with them. (The Last Walk was one of those; so was Requiem for Uncle John.) A blessed few have come to me fairly easily, with little revision. (See, e.g., unto the next generation) So much depends on the poem and my mood.
I’m finished when the poem sings to me. Sometimes I don’t quite get there, but know I’m unlikely to get any closer to my vision; I put down my pen and call it done.
I am always interested in receiving critiques and comments, and if it’s a poem I’m not quite there with, I might incorporate them. But when a finished poem sings to me, I’m very unlikely to change a word. I know it’s done.
13. How did you come to be interested in poetry?
I hate to mention Dr. Seuss again, but it really does go back that far. Though my taste has become somewhat more sophisticated, I can trace the roots back to Green Eggs and Ham.
14. What particular poem or poet first attracted you to poetry?
As I keep mentioning and mentioning (and mentioning), Dr. Seuss had me fascinated with rhyme before I could write. A bit later on in grade school, I was obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe, which continued my love affair with rhyme and introduced me to more sophisticated meter, metaphor, and other poetic devices. My next big step was T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock, which blew me out of the water back in high school. Indeed, it still does. I still like Poe, too. For that matter, I still get a kick out of Dr. Seuss.
It really wasn’t until college that I learned to love (and write) poems that had no rhyme and no regular meter. For a little while after making that discovery, I wrote nothing else. Gradually, though, rhyme and meter crept back into my work.
15. What poems, poets, movements or eras have influenced you as a poet: which do you particularly enjoy, admire, or aspire toward?
I can easily name poets I’ve enjoyed over the years and whom have provided a certain amount of inspiration. Poe, Eliot, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, AW’s own William Haskins, and many, many more -- too many to mention without making out a laundry list.
But as far as styles I aspire towards -- none but my own. Each poem tells me as I’m writing what it wants the form to look like, how the meter should feel, etc. My style has gone through a couple of shifts in the past, and I hope continues to develop. But I do not attempt to emulate any particular style or poet. My work is what it is.
I have a few pet tools I particularly love to work with – metaphor and internal rhyme, for example. I’m fond of playing with line breaks, often using them in place of punctuation. But I can’t, off the top of my head, think of any particular poet or movement that motivated me to start using those tools in the way I use them.
All that said, I must say that it probably would never have occurred to me to start a narrative poem-in-progress had William not written Thorn Forest. I didn’t read his work and say, “oh, I’m going to do one of those.” But months later, when I started tinkering with a couple of related poems (which later became parts of my narrative) it hit me that my theme could work nicely as a poem-in-progress if I could just get past my tendency to write backwards. The style of Adrift in a Wine-Dark Sea is my own. But the concept of a poem-in-progress I stole shamelessly from William.
16. What single poem of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read your work?
I’d probably choose Unfelled. It’s not necessarily my best poem (though it is among my favorites), but it is a nice example of what I try to do with a poem – i.e., it centers around a metaphor, uses internal rhyme and alliteration in a way that (I hope) is musical without beating the reader over the head, and takes a turn halfway through.
17. What are your thoughts on poetry today: its function, future, direction, relevance?
Oh, what a depressing question. I think very few people really care much about poetry these days, or at least what I consider to be poetry. People always mention song lyrics, but very few qualify as poetry, in my view. Take away the music, and you have “meh,” for the most part. (And yes, there are some exceptions.)
I’m not sure that’s going to change. But I hope there will always be a few of us who write and appreciate poetry.
As I mentioned above, I don’t have anyone in my real life who gives a damn about poetry. I’m very happy to have found some people on AW who do.
18. What, in your view, makes a written/spoken work a poem?
It uses metaphor, imagery, and/or layered, nuanced language to convey an idea in carefully chosen words – the best words in the best order. It need not rhyme, the meter need not be regular, it need not have alliteration, but the language will convey some sort of musicality.
19. What do you like about your own poetry?
It captures particular events, people, emotions, and ideas that have been important to me.
20. What would you say to someone who wants to learn to write poetry well?
Read it. Think about what makes it effective.
Write it. Early attempts are likely to be awkward, but you’ll get better if you consistently work at it.
Put some love in it. Consider every word you use. Each one should work towards your poem and be essential to the whole. Use fresh language, not stale clichés. Simply spewing an emotion or thought onto the page is not poetry, even if it rhymes.