With AWP looming and packing not having started, there will not be a full book review today for National Poetry Month. Instead, I've got more of an All-Time EWN post to share. Going into the Way-Back Machine, I've gone back nearly 8 full years to dig up one of my earliest interviews with a poet (yes, some of the questions DO IN FACT make me cringe).
The following is an interview that was conducted for the EWN back on July 1, 2002 with Beth Ann Fennelly. She has since published another couple of excellent books that should be looked for and read.
The following is an interview with Beth Ann Fennelly. She is the author of two collections of
poetry, A DIFFERENT KIND OF HUNGER, winner of the 1997 Texas Review Chapbook
Competition, (2002-031, 4 stars) and OPEN HOUSE, winner of the 2001 Kenyon
Review Prize in poetry (2002-047, 4.5 stars).
She is married to fiction writer Tom Franklin (POACHERS 2001-007, 3.5
stars) and has a daughter, Claire (no known publications to date).
Dan
Hello Beth Ann. Thank
you for breaking away from your work and family to answer a few questions.
Beth Ann
My pleasure.
Dan
What is it about poetry that drew you to it?
Beth Ann
I’m drawn to the primal pleasure of music, of hearing music,
of feeling music in my mouth.
Dan
There are obviously many different forms of poetry. Your collections prove this point. How important is it to you to have a solid
structure behind your poems?
Beth Ann
I’m guessing that by “solid structure”--because I think all
good poems have a solid structure, otherwise they wouldn’t be good--you mean
something like “received form,” or patterned poetry, like a sonnet or
sestina. If I understand your question,
I would say I use a received pattern when the poems seems to call for it. Say the material is very personal--it might
benefit from having the trellis of blank verse to tether itself on, or the
strictures of a syllable count to rein itself in. But I also like to write poems that seem to
demand the creation of a new form, or new to me, at least.
Dan
You write of many different events, people, etc. Are these topics of your poems things that
you have a general interest in, or snippets that you hear of that pique an
interest? Or is it possible that you
have a particular format in mind (say a poem written as a letter) that you are
able to use somebody or an incident from history that fits your need?
Beth Ann
When I first began writing, I would get an idea for a poem
and try the material out in different forms--saying, I wonder how this would
look as a sonnet, I wonder how this would work as a dramatic monologue,
etc. The subject matter would precede
the form. But as I’ve continued writing,
that has changed. Now, when an idea
comes to me, it seems to bring with it its own form, music, even line length,
somehow. If I’m paying attention, it’s all there in the
original impulse.
Dan
Some of the poems that appeared in your chapbook, made it
into Open House. How did you go about
deciding which ones were going to be included?
How did you go about putting a semblance of order into Open House?
Beth Ann
Selecting from the poems I’d written and ordering those
poems was a very difficult job for me.
My manuscript went through many, many different arrangements. I think I found it so hard because I have, as
you mentioned, several kinds of poetry in the book--lyric, narrative, dramatic,
some personal, some concerning characters from history, etc. So, unlike some poets, I couldn’t merely
arrange poems in chronological order to tell the story of my past year or
two. It just couldn’t work that
way. But the house becomes an important
symbol throughout the book, so eventually I began to see the book as a house,
with separate sections functioning as “rooms,” each room having its own
characters and uses, and I arrived at the current organization, which I think
makes sense. I left out some poems from
the chapbook because I didn’t like them as well as my more recent poems, and I
left some others out because they didn’t seem to fit.
Dan
Who are some of your favorite poets, both current and from
the past, and why?
Beth Ann
I adore Shakespeare and John Donne and Elizabeth Bishop and
Marianne Moore. My favorite contemporary
poets change sometimes, but I always am in the mood to read Jack Gilbert and
Alice Fulton. Recent collections by Lynn
Emanuel, Louis Gluck, Stephen Dunn, and Denise Duhamel really inspire me.
Dan
Do you read much fiction, or do you concentrate mainly on
poetry? Does having a fiction writing
husband have much influence on your reading ratio?
Beth Ann
I read fiction constantly.
I always have a book of fiction going, usually a novel. I will say I
read poetry and fiction differently, and at different times of the day. Tommy and I have a one-year-old daughter,
Claire, and he takes her in the mornings.
So that’s my writing time, and I read poetry and write it (or try to
write it) until about 11:30. We eat
lunch as a family, and then Tommy writes in the afternoon while I hang out with
Claire. I find reading poetry more
challenging and tiring then reading fiction, so I read poetry when I’m
freshest. In the afternoon, evening, and
before bed, I read fiction, but more to relax.
I think that’s why I prefer good, old fashioned, traditional fiction,
instead of meta fiction or experimental stuff--because I’m really looking for a
solid beginning, middle, and end.
Something I can get lost in, and stay lost in, for awhile.
I love to
read Tommy’s writing--we’re each other’s first readers, as a matter of fact,
and that’s a wonderful thing to share. I
also read a lot of fiction because we have a lot of friends who write
fiction. That, too, is pretty wonderful.
Dan
I think a misnomer in regards to poetry, is that you
probably finish a poem much faster than say a short story writer completes a
story – based on the lengths involved.
How would you respond to such a claim?
Beth Ann
I think that question would be different for every writer,
and every piece of writing. I’ve
finished poems in twenty minutes, and finished others in six years. There’s a twenty-eight page poem at the
center of Open House that took me a year to write. Writing that poem felt like what I imagine
writing a novel would feel like--in other words, I couldn’t hold it all in my
head at once, and, unlike writing a short poem, I didn’t have a sense of
completion when the day’s work was over, because I knew I was still a ways off
from finishing a draft. I learned that I
really like that feeling of completion that comes from finishing a draft, and I
miss that when I work on longer poems.
Dan
Did you have this past year off from teaching while you and
Tom were in Mississippi (where he is the John Grisham
Writer-in-Residence)? If so, how did it
help your writing? What about teaching did
you miss?
Beth Ann
Yes, I had the year off, and it’s been great. I took an extended maternity leave from my
job at Knox College, in Galesburg, IL.
It was really wonderful to get to spend so much time with Claire. I really just love watching her, holding her,
touching her. I love being a mom. Also, I’ve had a lot of writing time, and
I’ve used that time to write mostly about Claire! I’m pretty well into another book now.
I start
teaching again this fall and, while I’ll miss the big chunks of writing time,
I’m eager to get back in the classroom.
It’s funny, but after 9/11 I started dreaming about my old students, and
I had several dreams in which I was teaching.
I think the classroom is a place where one can still talk about things
that matter; I think teaching well is a moral act. I miss being around students and talking
about poetry. I’ll look forward to being
part of that again.
Dan
Have you done many readings from your work? I know there are some photos of you reading
at the University of Notre Dame at your website (note - no longer a website). What type of crowds have you found?
Beth Ann
Oh, I love to read, I read every opportunity I have. In some ways writing can be very isolating,
so for me, reading is the reward, because it’s so great to share poems with
people if they enjoy them, if they find them moving or funny or provoking, or
anything at all, really.
The number
and quality of audience members varies, of course. I’ve read at a lot of big universities, often
with Tommy. But we’ve also read at some
smaller, unusual places. Probably my
most moving experience giving a reading was with the H.I.V. positive inmates at
the Julia B. Tutweiler prison in Alabama.
Those women listened with everything that had. They took notes. They were amazing.
Dan
How important do you believe it is for poetry to be heard,
or at least read aloud, and not just read silently?
Beth Ann
It is of the utmost importance. I tell that to my students all the time. There’s not a lot that can help them get
better, quicker, than reading poetry aloud, their own and others’, every day.
Dan
For those who have not been to your website, how has the
book been reviewed?
Beth Ann
I’m happy to say Open House has been received well so far,
thank God. It was eight years in the
making, so if it wasn’t being reviewed well, I think I’d be eyeing tall
buildings to jump off of. The
commentaries that have probably meant to most to me were made by poets I greatly admire. First, former poet Laureate Robert Hass read
my long poem while I was in a workshop in Sewanee, and I guess he really liked
it because he offered to write an introduction for it, as it had just been
chosen to be a “New Voices” feature in The Kenyon Review. Also, David Baker blindly chose the
manuscript to win The Kenyon Review Prize for a First Book, and he wrote an
introduction in the front of the book that is incredibly gratifying to me,
thoughtful, and generous.
Dan
Having absolutely no idea, I have to ask, what is considered
a good number, in terms of copies sold, for a book of poetry?
Beth Ann
Did you have to ask?
That’s such a depressing question--poetry is so pathetic, especially
when I compare it with fiction, which is easy to do because I live with
Tommy. The press run for Open House was
2,000, which, believe it or not, is considered good for a first book. I haven’t received any figures on how many
have sold yet. My chapbook, which came
out in 1997, originally had 500 copies printed.
They sold out, and the Texas Review Press published another 500. I understand that second editions are rare
for chapbooks--well, all books of poetry, I suppose--so I was pleased. I hope Open House sells well, too. We’ll see.
My Mom is doing her part; all her bridge club friends get them as
hostess gifts.
Dan
What changes, if any, do you see occurring in poetry as a
genre of writing?
Beth Ann
I think this is a great time to be a poet. There is a lot of freedom right now, a lot of
different styles being practiced and embraced.
Dan
In his introduction, David Baker writes “Beth Ann Fennelly’s
Open House stands out from the poetry of most younger American poets with their
sober self-confessions or, conversely, their sarcastic throw-away wit.” Do you share his opinion that these two poles
exist?
Beth Ann
Yes, I think contemporary poetry’s worst excesses lie in
precisely those two areas. We have a lot
of post-confessional poetry that seems to do exactly what the confessionals
were doing, but without the innovation.
These poems seem to me to get tied up in the poet’s identity--often, the
poet’s identity as a suffering soul--and seem to lack playfulness and
imagination. On the other hand, we have
some poets who’ve run from confessionalism so far that they reject any naked or
sincere emotion in favor of a glibness, a hipper-than-thou attitude that can
entertain but rarely move a reader.
Dan
How has getting married and having a daughter affected your
writing?
Beth Ann
The same way it affects all mothers--by eating up their
writing time! But the truth is, I’ve
never felt like I’ve had more to write about than right now. And being married and having a child does
make me feel more connected to the rest of the human race, more empathetic,
more vulnerable--all of which helps the writing.
Dan
Almost done. If you
were a character in Fahrenheit 451, what work(s) would you pick to memorize
for posterity?
Beth Ann
Well, in grad school I memorized a Shakespeare sonnet a
week, and I loved it and I think it helped my writing. I would pick Shakespeare, and I would also
probably try to tackle Bishop’s Complete Poems.
Dan
Beth Ann, thanks again for taking so much time away from
your schedule to give me another poet’s perspective on writing and the
industry.
Beth Ann
My pleasure, Dan.
Thank you.
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