After my last post, I had a reader send me an email asking, “What is poetry?” And rather than tackle that question myself, I did what all poets do when they’re stuck, I used an outside source. In this case, I used a lot of outside sources. And by “outside sources” I mean my dear friends and family. So, from philosophers to painters, here are few answers to that age-old, age-weary question of, “What in damnation is poetry in the first place.” Most responses were received in the first 24 hours and on the grounds that they remain anonymous. I’m sure there will be more to come, and I’ll post them as I continue to babble with my fingers on this here machine.

First, as way of introduction, a brief dialog on poetry from last nights dinner with one of my favorite poets in town from Alabama (names have been changed to protect the innocent animals):

Owl & Deer Discuss Poetry: A Short Play

Deer: “Wouldn’t it be nice to take a break from writing.”

Owl: “No.”

Deer: “Yeah, you’re right.”

Owl: “I know that I feel my best when I’m writing. It’s like, I think I want to just give up and then suddenly I’m writing a poem and it’s like, wow, life is awesome! Poets may be the only people in the world who could save themselves by writing their own suicide note.”

Deer: “It’s true, I love the new book I’m working on. I mean, it’s completely incomprehensible and unreadable, but I Iove it.”

Definitions of Poetry by Many Anonymous Outside Sources:

Painter & Caretaker on a Ranch:

It’s whatever a person wants it to be.

Playwright:

Poetry is like chocolate pudding. Chocolate pudding with a tiny bit of vanilla pudding swirled in.

Philosophy Professor:

Whereas philosophy works from the outside-in, poetry works from the inside out — therefore philosophy tells us nothing, and poetry everything.

Managing Editor & Poetry Editor, Independent Literary Press:

I think they identify some Gordian Knot in human nature, and tease apart, as much as possible, the tensions between opposing forces in human character. Good poetry books give us a sense that a solution or resolution is at least imaginable if not sustainable, but the beauty is often in the depiction of the dynamic pull between forces.

Poet & Mechanic:

The bitter answer: Poetry is the box we build for the rest of society to bury the English language in.

Maybe a better answers: The fuse we light to explode ourselves and rejoin the rest of the universe.

Poet & Art Director:

Poetry is one of those giant, clear, plastic bags you can put twenty-five sweaters, or two comforters, or ten winter coats in. Then you zip it up, and suck all the air out and the bag shrinks down to the size of a piece of toast. I.e. the world without all that unnecessary air.

Writer,  The New York Times:

Title: Poetry as Ad Copy

1) Poetry is an essay, exhausted.
2) Poetry is the heart’s essay, exhausted.
3) Poetry is the heart telling the head it’s exhausted.
4) Poetry is the heart telling the head to f*ck off.

Media Services Manager, San Francisco Symphony:

Poetry is: impressionist expression.

VP/Associate Publisher, Travel + Leisure:

Poetry is your heartstrings speaking in code.

Professional Actor:

I say poetry is a map to places in the heart that we have a hard time reaching, need to reach, and sometimes didn’t even know existed.

Poet & Professor of Poetry:

Well, since you’re asking me I’ll say what Thom Gunn said that W. H. Auden said: “memorable speech.”

Sculptor & Off-Track Betting Aficionado:

From OTB: Poetry is something best not left to prose. And it can also read “pros”.

P.S. Got DQed out of a thousand dollar super yesterday. Painful.

Stay tuned for more!

Lisa Fay Coutley wrote “Errata”, a poem we just snapped up. It was published a little while back, so you might want to revisit it before you check out Lisa’s gorgeous answers to my fairly grotesque questions. As a refresher, Lisa Fay Coutley is Associate Poetry Editor for Passages North. She teaches writing at Northern Michigan University, where she is an MFA fellow. Her poetry has appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Pedestal,Terminus, and elsewhere. Now: Onward!

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ASHLEY: How did this poem first occur to you? Where are its origins?

LISA: As with many poems, it started while I was driving. In Marquette, MI, winters are painfully long; spring is certainly a welcome time. I was driving on the first sunny day in months, and the snow runoff welling against the curb looked like a string of diamonds in the right light. That was how it began, with water in a gutter. From there, I imagined ravens in that gutter, and on and on. I was interested in the idea of light striking water in a gutter in an unexpected way, and then the ravens just took over, as ravens are wont to do. Those are its literal origins.

ASHLEY: “Errata” is an intriguing title, meaning – of course – both errors and corrections. How do you see the string of images here: as a list of mistakes or as setting right of what was wrong? Both? How do you see the title interacting with the poem?

LISA: Both. The poem begins by trying to correct a longstanding error/misconception about the myth of the raven, but certainly by doing so it’s trying to reveal the blurry nature of errors and corrections (and truth or judgment for that matter). The speaker in this poem is trying to set something straight, and as the poem moves, the errors/corrections become more intimate. It’s important to recognize that this speaker is talking back to some degree, and anytime you see such a speaker hinting at bravado (I won’t strut, etc) there’s the potential for reading vulnerability. I suppose it will suffice to say that just as you can’t have the need for correction without error, you can’t have a strong speaker without weakness. Certainly these binaries are dangerous, but for all intents and purposes, in this poem they are very much applicable and accurate.

ASHLEY: Casting the ravens as a transformative image that represents both “bad omens” and the speaker’s heart is striking, and it puts me in mind of a broken relationship – possibly a death. How did this connection come to you - all at once, or were you as surprised by the ending as I was? What implications did you intend this image to have in regard to the relationship between the “you” and the speaker of the poem?

LISA: Well, the final lines were in place when I first constructed the poem in a very different version/form, and when I reworked it, changing the beginning entirely, the goal was to find my way back to these lines.

Using the raven as a transformative image for the heart stems from my fascination with a particular version of the myth of the raven. According to some sources, Apollo turned the raven’s wings from a silvery-white to black when it delivered news of his lover’s infidelity (or for not pecking out the lover’s eyes). I was intrigued by this idea of punishment, of a bird that’s terribly misunderstood—once white and prized for its clairvoyance and later construed as a dark omen. To reconcile this with the speaker is to both cherish and condemn the heart and the choices and misconceptions therein, which certainly calls back to the “you” of previous lines.

ASHLEY: “Errata” is a lonely poem, and circles what we do when we feel unseen: the man “pocketing two-for-one toothbrushes” and the cashier “hand-perking her breasts / and picking her teeth with a receipt”, the son who the “you” of the poem won’t see. How do you see real or imagined invisibility working in this poem? How much does the presence of the self rely on others in your view?

LISA: The loneliness of the poem circles around the idea that sometimes we condemn ourselves to solitude and misunderstanding by doing what we think is right/asked of us, or acting against what we construe as right/wrong (depending). In many ways, it’s simply about the reconciliation of motivation and action. The self certainly relies on the presence of others who are full of judgment and action/inaction just as she judges and acts or doesn’t act. They definitely serve as backdrops for one another just as they serve to cancel the other out in other instances. I fear that I’ve muddied your question. In short, it is about what we do when we think we aren’t seen as much as it is about the ways we can lose ourselves through perceptions or through preoccupations with the desires that motivate our actions.

ASHLEY: If this poem were a constellation, what would it look like? What would its backstory be?

LISA: Of all the questions you’ve posed, I find this one to be the most intriguing. Yet, I think that any answer I could give would be less poignant than the question itself—this idea that we make connections between random points of light in a sky we don’t understand. Essentially, the poem strives to do something similar.

ASHLEY: Speaking of stars, a complete digression: What’s your sign? Do you read your horoscope? Does it matter or not?

LISA: Really, it’s not a complete digression. As I’ve said, the poem is working within a version of a myth about the raven. I am a Libra, born under the star sign of the raven constellation. Do I put a great deal of stock in my horoscope? Not at all, but as I said, I was intrigued with this story of the raven and internalized it for the purpose of this poem.

ASHLEY: Back to the poem: Abandonment of the self seems integral to this poem, especially as the speaker dissolves into the “you” of the poem: “Your shape in this bed is my shape”. What does the abandonment of the self mean for this relationship? How integral is it? What does this mean to you personally, if anything?

LISA: First of all, I’d just like to say that I’m flattered by how deeply you’ve read the poem—you’ve picked up on some of the nuances that I worried wouldn’t be apparent. I appreciate your attention here.

As for the abandonment of the self, it is definitely an integral part of this poem. One of the many errors this speaker attempts to correct is a loss of self, having allowed the self to be lost in the “you.” It calls back to the loneliness you pointed out. For me, in this world of misconceptions and errors and corrections and relationships, the loneliest feeling is to miss one’s self. At times, we mean to lose ourselves; at others, it’s an unfortunate result of circumstances. In either case, we don’t typically see it coming, and it can take a long time to find the way back. When we do try to trace it back—to piece it all together—it’s every bit as disjointed as this poem may appear to be; yet, in the end, all of these points of light are linked.

ASHLEY: The “you” seems to be given complete control over the speaker’s presence or absence when the speaker says, “Erase my whole notes from your page.” To me, this passivity impresses a severe longing, a willingness to submit the self entire to another person – almost a helplessness – but it could also be a command, urging the you to let the speaker go, to let the speaker move outside of the “you” and into herself. How do you imagine that line? Does the speaker want to be erased completely – or freed from the control of the ”you” through that act of destruction? Both?

LISA: Again, both. More or less, the answer to this question is in the answer to question 7, but I think that the ambiguity you’re plucking out here is important. Bravado, loneliness, truth, desire—all very murky territory, and the journey back to the truest self, sifting through these emotions, is one of utter confusion. I hoped this would be reflected—that there is a sense of vulnerability and self-doubt in trying to find one’s way back. In this way, it’s as necessary to ask permission of the “you” as it is to make this command. I think it’s what makes the loss of self that much more tragic yet empowering as the self is rediscovered; at times, the speaker might like to be erased, but in the end muscles through in an attempt to be free.

To see this piece in the context of the collection I’m working on (tentatively titled Back-Talk), you’d see a whole slew of speakers who are ultimately tenacious as they struggle through loss. Again, my hope is that their most delicate human traits (i.e.: fear and weakness) will be apparent in their heightened sense of necessity in such endeavors.

ASHLEY: In the last lines of the poem, it’s the speaker whose heart is a bad omen, which implies that the speaker blames herself for the failure between herself and the “you”. How do you see this duality of assertion and surrender working in the poem?

LISA: The speaker sees herself as a bad omen only insofar as others see her heart as a bad omen. Again, this is drawing on the raven’s myth—of what this speaker might have seen/known that caused such wreckage, of what might have been avoided. Perhaps it’s too loose of a connection for the metaphor to fire on all cylinders; either way, it strives to reinforce all that I’ve said about the reconciliation of self and motivation within the poem. She’s bound to blame herself, and part of that would certainly be about “the failure between herself and the ‘you.’” Though that’s not the most important part.

ASHLEY: Transitions between the images in this poem seem to work, but they are also slightly disjunctive. How did this string of images arrive? Was your writing process fluid or jarring?

LISA: As I said earlier, initially, this poem took on quite a different form. In fact, I was working with a sonnet in iambic pentameter couplets, but the rhetoric wasn’t jibing in such a confined space. Once I broke the form, the rhetoric seemed to move itself. Some of the images from the sonnet made their way into this version; others came from other pieces (older pieces). I’m likely to plug in old ideas in new places when they seem to fit, and there was some of that happening here. I’ve found that as I make my way through the poems in this first collection, there’s a great deal of overlap. So when I can rip a line from a poem that I’m sure won’t make it into the book, I do that. This is all to say that it wasn’t necessarily “fluid,” but it didn’t feel “jarring” either, seeing as the images/emotions are of the same vein.

ASHLEY: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I read the relationship between the speaker and the “you” as romantic. What do you think?

LISA: No correction necessary, you aren’t wrong to think that the relationship is romantic, but in the end, the relationship with the self trumps the romance.

ASHLEY: On the topic of romance: Would you ever date a poet? If you had to, but could date any poet, living or dead, who would it be? Why?

LISA: I have dated poets, and I’ve learned that you can’t judge a man by his poems. Therefore, I couldn’t answer this without spending some time with the man, which, of course, rules out all the dead guys. As for the living, not just now.

ASHLEY: Which poet has most influenced your work? How?

LISA: There are many, most of whom are more contemporary than not: Sylvia Plath, Marie Howe, Leslie Adrienne Miller, Rita Dove, John Rybicki. The list goes on…

ASHLEY: Do you like their author’s photo? Why or why not?

LISA: I’m not sure that I’ve necessarily seen a true “author’s photo” for Plath, but I find the contrast between her face and her words/voice most intriguing. I don’t know that I’ve seen any strikingly-unique photos from any of the others.

ASHLEY: What do you think is the best pose for an author’s photo? Most cliche? Is it OK for it to be in black and white – or is that inherently pretentious?

LISA: I think the best pose is the one that best reflects the author. Most often, they seem to be pretty standard—head and shoulders, sometimes black and white (which I didn’t find pretentious before, but I might now). Usually I find them boring. But I did admire a particular photo that poet Sandra Beasley used earlier on in her publications: a photo of her looking away, writing. It felt honest.

ASHLEY: Last one on author’s photos. Promise. Why’s there a bird in your author’s photo? Whose is it? What’s its name? Tell me all about it. I’m wildly curious.

LISA: This tickles me. It’s a very long story, but I’ll try to be brief. During the last summer of my undergrad days, I had a huge writing assignment due and two young sons who wanted to play. Needing time to write, I forced them to go outside. Within five minutes they were back indoors. My oldest (who was 7 or 8 at the time) said, “Mom, do we have parakeets in this area?” I went outside, and there was a parrot in our spruce tree. He wouldn’t leave until I offered him a cage. When no one claimed him, we kept him. My sons named him Einstein. He lived with us for a few years, during which time I was the only person who could handle him. Tragically, in the end, I left my parrot’s and ferret’s cage open when we left for Christmas one year. I assume the ferret chased him around until he died of a heart attack. I buried him in a jewelry box in Lake Superior. Uplifting story, I know.

Of course, the metaphorical implications of something that wanted nothing more than to be caged at a time in my life when I was feeling pretty caged—and that he died as a result of a cage that I left open—has definitely been a source of material for me. In fact, I wrote a poem based on much of this, which is forthcoming in the fall issue of Blackbird.

In any case, the contrast of being caged with wanting to be caged represents me and my current body of work, which is why I use the photo. So much for being brief.

ASHLEY: Why won’t the speaker “strut across town” in ballet slippers?

LISA: Here, bravado meets vulnerability—a refusal to “strut” (which is typically done with confidence) in “ballet slippers” (which have the potential to throw the wearer off balance). Honestly, “slipper” just happened to come out after “blizzard” as a matter of sound, and then I realized its function, as well. I think Richard Hugo might have a thing or two to say about this.

ASHLEY: I’m getting a little out of hand, so I’m going to shut this down in true Linebreak fashion: When was the first time you got cash money for poetry, and how did you spend it? Any advice for those with checks in the mail?

LISA: At this point, we’ve both gotten out of hand. What can we do? First and only cash money for poetry came from The Pedestal Magazine last December. I bought a thirty-dollar bottle of wine. I don’t advise this for everyone, but it can be a nice reward for all the hard work we do. Poetry’s a seriously tough sport.

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Previous Interviews:

An Interview with Carolyn Guinzio

An Interview with Katrina Vandenberg

An Interview with Sally Molini

An Interview with Joe Wilkins

Hello, and thanks for having me. The few times I’ve been asked to guest blog somewhere, I’ve been extremely flattered and extremely petrified. Right now, it’s the petrified part I’ve got in my teeth. But nothing better than a room full of strangers to make you feel comfortable, right? (Hello, again.)

It’s taken me awhile to write this post, a clumsy draft of a poem came out first instead, and then there was dinner to be made, and then an old Dean Martin movie was on, and THEN, you won’t believe this—a brass band, full-outfits and all—went marching down the center of my street. So, of course, I had to go out, listen on the stoop for a while and clap as they marched by. An accidental soundtrack for the muggy Brooklyn night. It was oddly comforting, not the usual adjective for the loud horns clanging open the dark, but it wasn’t just the big sound they made. It was the on-lookers, all the open doors to the street, the families on their stoops. Women in their bathrobes, and little kids waving in t-shirts too big to walk in.

All of this happened in a matter of mere minutes. As if, the entire street was ready for any excuse to come out and cheer somebody on. Now, of course, this is the time of year when there are a lot of celebrations, the local Feast, the local church fundraiser and so forth, but what’s nice is that everyone seems prepared to run outside, at any minute, just as they are and whoop and yell.

It’s not just the surprise of it, but the brevity of it. I love a brass band, but a brass band outside your window for eight hours in the evening might lose its charm as you lose your patience. But they’re just walking by, passing through, you’ve got to quick, run out now, catch ‘em while you can. That’s the joy—the thick silence that surrounds it. The hole it leaves in the sky.

What it reminds me of…is poetry. That quick fix of something brief and powerful. The surprise of something finding you unexpectedly, moving you so much that you’ll run out in your yoga clothes, bare feet, and glasses on, give your neighbor a smile and dance awkwardly but without shame. And long after they’re gone, you can still hear the tuba in your chest, slowly changing your pulse to something livelier. That’s what good poetry does for me. Puts a big sound into the night and then lets silence suck it out so its absence reverberates still.

At least, that’s what I hope for, as a reader, as a writer, as someone just waiting for that first note of a brass band to keep me up just a little bit longer. But for now, good night. Hope a brass band comes your way soon, or at least a poem.

This week’s guest editor is Ada Limón. We first became aware of Limón and her work at this year’s AWP conference. What a lucky find.

Limón’s first book, lucky wreck, was the winner of the Autumn House Poetry Prize and her second book, This Big Fake World, was the winner of the Pearl Poetry Prize. She’s won the Chicago Literary Award and fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her work has appeared in the Iowa Review, Subtropics, Barrow Street, The New Yorker, and others. She is the Creative Director, Advertising for Travel + Leisure. Her third book of poems Sharks in the Rivers, will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2010. She’s at work on her first novel as well as a book of essays.

It’s been a hot minute since Carolyn Guinzio’s “Shack & Creek” first went live on Linebreak. You have a point. But that just gives you a solid reason to refresh your memory by visiting our archives. Here’s a jump start: Carolyn Guinzio is the author of Quarry (Parlor Press), West Pullman (Bordighera) and the chapbook Untitled Wave (Cannibal Books). Now: Here’s Carolyn!

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ASHLEY: Here’s how we do first questions at Linebreak: What were the origins of “Shack & Creek”? Where did the poem begin?

CAROLYN: Shack & Creek began with an image. I remembered hearing a story of a small house being washed down a river in a flood. The very idea seemed to say something about human beings, permanence and power, about the things we have no power over. Even a house can be uprooted.

ASHLEY: “Shack & Creek” seems to exist in the tension between the comfort of isolation and a simultaneous longing to move outside of the self, that struggle to “let it go back” toward a more natural interaction with the world. What does this tension mean to you personally, if anything?

CAROLYN: A shack on an edge of creek makes me think of a hermitage, so yes, the balance between solitude and connection is meant to be evoked as well.

ASHLEY: I noticed a tension between the organic self – the tree roots – against the constructed self – the shack. How do you feel about this opposition – or is it an opposition in your mind?

CAROLYN: The tension you noticed between, as you nicely put it, the organc self and the constructed self, is something that interests me very much. The idea that we make something real just by looking at it, a version of the watched pot that never boils, is an aspect of one of my favorite things to think about: We humans know just so much, just enough for speculation, presumption and hubris. We undestand just enough to scoff at the certainties of the past.

ASHLEY: In our correspondence with you, we mistakenly referenced the poem as “Shack and Creek” instead of including the ampersand. You corrected us right away, but – knowing you – it seems like that was an important choice rather then poetic posturing. What, to you, is the significance of the ampersand?

CAROLYN: The importance of the ampersand has to do with a project I’d been working on for some time. A symbol that fills the space between things, a symbol for connection between things: the perfect center between two, like the bubble in a level. It also resembles a route on a map, with intersecting points, roads and rivers. I liked it as a visual symbol of connection, a wordless “and.”

ASHLEY: What was the first poem that had an effect on you?

CAROLYN: The first poem that had a effect on me? That’s a tough one, but a very early favorite was “The Emperer of Ice Cream”. I’m fond of beauty, and it has such shape and sparkle, while being utterly bleak at the same time. And it’s in the level bubble between sound and sense, my favorite place.

ASHLEY: At a recent poetry reading in Fayetteville, you mentioned that your chapbook from Cannibal Books was a poetic departure from your previous work. What do you see as your usual poetic stance, and how did this book change that course? Why did you see this as necessary?

CAROLYN: Untitled Wave is quite different from the poems in Quarry, it’s true. It’s a sequence of poems with very long lines and it moves forward only very slowly, like a stalled out storm front. It hovers obessively over its ideas; there is a lot of repetition and circling back. The lines are not economic; they unravel. I think it’s a bridge to the project that followed it. I do think it’s possible for any of us to reach a point where we could continue writing pretty well the same way we’d been writing, but I want to try, at least, to move forward and try something new.

ASHLEY: Now for the traditional final question: What’s the most money you’ve made from poetry, and how did you spend it?

CAROLYN: I have not been particularly lucky making money from poetry. I got a state grant in KY, I think it was $5000, which I probably used for health insurance premiums. But who among us is in it for the money?

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Previous Interviews:

An Interview with Katrina Vandenberg

An Interview with Sally Molini

An Interview with Joe Wilkins

The debut issue of Cerise Press, a new journal edited by Linebreak contributors Karen Rigby and Sally Molini, is now online for your perusal. According to the editors, the journal hopes “to serve as a gathering force where imagination, insight, and conversation express the evolving and shifting forms of human experience.” Rigby and Molini are joined by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, a writer and translator based in Paris.

Seth Abramson’s first book, The Suburban Ecstasies, is now available from Ghost Road Press. Order it here.

But while you’re here, reacquaint yourself with Abramson’s “Cash at Folsom” that first appeared on Linebreak.