Sometimes You Just Have to Take a Leap of Faith: A Conversation with Sandi Stromberg

Interview by Amanda Sturgeon

Sandi Stromberg has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. She is an editor for The Ekphrastic Review, an online journal dedicated to an increasingly popular way to write poetry. Though a Texas native, she spent two decades in Europe working as a freelance writer, editor, translator, and columnist, and raising her two sons. On returning to the Lone Star State in 1992, she found her intellectual match and soulmate, her late husband, Bill Turner.

I conducted this interview through emails and a recorded phone call. When I spoke with Sandi, she was preparing for a trip to Singapore to celebrate her grandson’s 8th birthday. Due to their nomadic lifestyle as children, Sandi’s sons live abroad. One in Singapore and the other in France. She currently lives in Houston, Texas, in its thriving arts community.

So, to start off, I’d like to get a little background information. I’m a mom of two young boys so when you said that your sons live in Singapore and France due to your nomadic lifestyle, I knew there was a story there. So, do you mind sharing a little bit about how they ended up living abroad?

SS: It started in college where I met my first husband. We both wanted to live abroad. I was a Russian major, and I've always loved learning languages. This was back in the late 60s. We spent two years in Cleveland, during which I got my masters in Slavic languages and literatures. Then we were sent to Geneva, Switzerland where I started to learn French. Then we moved to Spain, so I learned Spanish and then we moved back to Geneva, and our first son was born. We ended up moving 17 times in 21 years. After Geneva the second time, we moved to Minnesota, then London. From London, we went back to Switzerland. In total, we ended up spending nearly 21 years in Europe. Between Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands, and England. So, one of my boys was born in Minnesota, and one was born in Switzerland. They lived the majority of their lives in Europe.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry? Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

SS: My amusing first poem was written when I was in 5th grade, working on a project for class. My mother suggested I write a poem about mushrooms. The teacher loved it, and she turned it into the local weekly newspaper, which published it.

On her bedside table, my mother had a book of poems. And I remember reading the poems in it, but especially Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” I would read it over and over and can still recite parts of it!

After the one about mushrooms, I didn’t write another poem for years! If you look at the Special Thanks at the beginning of my book, Frogs Don’t Sing Red, you’ll see the people to whom I owe the most for my growth as a poet.

While I was a successful magazine feature writer and editor for years, winning several awards, I didn’t start writing poetry, or expressions as I called them then, until 1999. I called them expressions because I was afraid I would kill them. I never thought I was a good enough writer to write poetry. So, when poems started coming, I was afraid they would go away, that they would just fade out. And so, I just tiptoed through the poems and wrote them.

You mentioned your publication position at MD Anderson Cancer Center helped form your relationship with poetry. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like writing for that job?

SS: Yes, I was hired to write about the human-interest side of cancer, and that was extremely rewarding. Being a magazine feature writer had combined well with my husband’s job as an international businessman. But it was my second husband who was so encouraging of the poetry. I became obsessed and took classes and workshops. But mostly I’ve learned by osmosis. Reading lots of poetry, discussing poetry, and writing poetry have helped it soak into my bones.

Since my husband and dear kindred spirit died in September 2021, poetry and art have helped me get out of bed each day.

While reading Frog’s Don’t Sing Red, I noticed a lot of affectionate and tender poems in the third section that I can only imagine were inspired by your husband. I also noticed a change in imagery and emotion as I read through the poems. Do you have any other comments on the way the poems were arranged for publication?

SS: Yes. The first section is really about life with my parents while trying to put distance and gain an understanding of them. And then in the second section, you start to see that there is an arc that has a semi-autobiographical aspect: my first marriage, living abroad with the kids and all. In the third section, there's the poem, “A Checkered Floor,” and that is about the divorce from my first husband.

And then you met Bill Turner?

SS: Yes, we met in 1994. We had a deep caring for each other. We had 25 years together and felt very fortunate. That's why there's that change in the book when you get to that poem, “Daydreaming”, which I think is the third section. We were both so amazed to find each other. What we loved to do on a Saturday night was, if we weren't going to a play or a concert or something, would be to sit in a bookstore that had a coffee shop where we would write in our journals or read, and just feel absolutely fulfilled. And we said we at least kept two other people from being bored to death.

As a native West Texan, just like all over the world, we have our own culture, right? And so, when I read your poem “Night of the Pump Jacks” on Texas Poetry Assignment, I felt at home. I'm wondering what else you might want readers to know about you and your background as it relates to you and your poetry.

SS: I have two poems in the Texas Poetry Assignment, “Time Zones” and a pantoum, “Night of the Pump Jacks.” They are the only two that I’ve submitted. Dr. Musgrove comes up with new topics too often for me to submit as much as I would like! My grandfather on my mother’s side was a ranch hand and cattle driver in the Panhandle. He had seven children who each had big families so I have plenty of relatives spread across West Texas.

You are an editor for The Ekphrastic Review, ekphrastic is a new word for me can you explain it?

SS: Sure, it is something written in response to a piece of visual art. It can be an art event, an installation, a painting, a sculpture from any century or style. It has become an increasingly popular way to write poetry.

I might have misunderstood, but is that how you wrote the poem, “Frogs Don't Sing Red”?

SS: Yes. I was looking at the Max Ernst painting of the same name at the Menil Museum here in Houston. In a strange way, it spoke to me so I wrote the poem to capture those thoughts and memories of childhood. It is a red painting, hanging in a red room, but there were no frogs.

I am definitely new to that style of poetry. I am relatively new to most poetry, are there any other styles you could enlighten me on?

SS: Prose interests you so let me let me broaden your horizons even further. There's a whole lot going on now that has blurred the lines between the genres of poetry and prose. There's what we now call prose poetry, micro-fiction, micro nonfiction, flash fiction, and flash nonfiction. They are all short, and they're written in blocks of copy like prose, but they're using a poetic conceits—symbolism, repetition, the sound of words, the internal rhyme. These are a few things happening in the broader poetry world. I'm just mentioning this for you to keep it in mind and that one does not exclude the other.

Are there other experiences in workshops or readings or publications beyond Texas Poetry Assignment you want to share?

SS: I have around 45-50 poems at The Ekphrastic Review (ekphrastic.net) if you search my name on the site. I’ve done several readings from my new book: as the featured poet at Houston’s First Friday event at Inprint House (a real honor to read there), a launch of the book at The Jung Center in Houston, and a Zoom launch with Kelly Ann Ellis via an instructor with whom we’ve studied, David Meischen, one of the duo that runs Dos Gatos Press and published the Texas Poetry Calendar for years.

How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to write a poem and how does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

SS: I don’t necessarily write every day. What spurs a poem? Being in a workshop, being given prompts, reading a poem that touches on something inside me. I absolutely love having a poem going. Revision and editing are so rewarding! I can be a bit like a dog with a bone when I’m in the revision process. Or to mix metaphors, it’s like having dough to knead into something tasty and beautiful.

What topics or issues frequent your poems? Have those changed over time?

SS: One of the poets with whom I worked once told me that my poems were about survival. And I realized she was right. Then, when Bill died, processing grief saved me. Now, I’m finding how rewarding it is to consider the small gifts of being alive.

I have read your poem "Time Zones" on Texas Poetry Assignment. What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page? Shape? Line? Music? Comparison? Balance? Were there any new craft choices you made?

SS: I’ve always loved the idea that the Greeks have two different words for time, while as Americans, we only have one that is so strict and stressful. I speak a couple of other languages and have studied many so words fascinate me.

I wrote “Time Zones” right after I retired when I began to have time without deadlines. It was so liberating. Then, Dr. Musgrove had a call for poems about time, so I pulled it out and really worked on it. It was the first time I wrote a diptych, a poem with two parts. I’ve since done it a few other times.

I was so pleased when “Time Zones” was included in the anthology.

I've noticed your different uses of form for your poetry. I saw a lot of choices in shape and line. Is that something that as you're writing you can kind of tell you want to use, or do you go back and kind of tweak it once you have it all down on the page?

SS: You know that's an interesting question. I meet with a group once a month, and these are questions we still ask ourselves. When I was starting to write poems in the early 2000s, I didn't feel secure about what I was doing. Did I choose the right form? If I break the line here, should I break the stanza here? How should it look on the page? And the thing that's happened over the years is I started to become sure of what works for the poem. How I want someone to read it. And one way to do that is to look at where you leave space because part of poetry is also the silence. It's the white space around what's being said.

Take my poem, “Fourteen Kinds of Loneliness.” I picked out fourteen kinds of loneliness because Wallace Stephens has a famous poem “Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird.” And so, I started out and I thought, OK, fourteen kinds of loneliness. And I got these three and I thought I can't do fourteen kinds. Then I thought these don't go together! But I felt they were together. This was written quite a few years ago. But I took a leap with this poem and allowed myself to know that each part is really about loneliness. I didn’t have to weave them together. I could just make it into three parts. This was a poem where I really took for the first time a leap into having a three-part poem. It was a long time ago, but it was a pivotal poem because it gave me the courage to try new things.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

SS: Love writing poetry and playing with language. Love reading poetry as well as other good writing.

For me, the true joy of poetry is in the writing of it, the shaping, the expressing, the doing. If you’re slogging through it all to get it published, how sad. There are no guarantees about publication. The joy has to be in the doing.

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

SS: Oh dear, I’m not good at recommending poets to others. We all have different tastes. The ones who win the big prizes are already out there. For the rest, there is a huge community of poets in Texas. I enjoy coming across their work at a reading, in a bookshop, referred by a friend.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

SS: Contemporary poetry is less constricted. Rhyming is no longer necessary although internal rhyme is much admired. Form poetry is less interesting for many literary journals unless it’s done very well. Yet, a poem still needs to have rhythm and music, image, and language, and some poetic tropes to lift it off the page.

I read that you have translated works. It sounds like quite the task to translate someone else's poetry. Could you share about that experience?

SS: Yeah, when I lived in the Netherlands, I learned Dutch. I had two Dutch friends who were poets and they translated some of my poems into Dutch and published them in the Netherlands. And I made friends with this woman poet and translated quite a bit of her poetry as well.

And that's an interesting thing to get into—translation. Because when you begin to see what an incredible challenge it is. Poetry is nuanced. You know the words that you choose are nuanced. When you translate it, like when I was translating from Dutch, a word might have three or four different meanings. So, the meaning I take for the translation of a single word may determine the direction the poem is going to go.

So, when you were doing these translations did you read through it and make the determination that everything still kind of flowed the way that it was originally written it?

SS: The one book that got translated was my Dutch teacher’s. He was a well-published poet and novelist. He wrote a book called Linguisticum. He had all these students who spoke different languages. He had me translate these poems into English. Someone else translate them into French and someone else into German. That was published in a four-language format. He would sit with me while we went through the translations and try to give it exactly those five things that Dr. Musgrove talks about, where was the music and the form. Because I knew Dutch from four years of studying it, but not as a mother tongue, there were certain expressions that I didn't know and so we would argue over some translations. It was interesting, but there was a tremendous amount of give and take in in doing that.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet and what would you ask?

SS: One of my best friends in Houston is Kevin Prufer, a nationally known poet. When I have a question that I want to ask, I have the freedom to ask him.

Thank you for your time. It has been my pleasure to interview you. I'm hoping that maybe one day we'll cross paths, and I'll get you to sign this copy of Frogs Don’t Sing Red for me.

SS: This has been a real pleasure for me too. It is very seldom that someone sits down and reads your book and then pulls out lines and tells you what they love and how it touches them. So, you don't know what an incredible gift it is to me. I just want to say thank you.

Amanda Sturgeon is from San Angelo, Texas, but now lives in Boerne, Texas. After completing her undergraduate degree in business administration, she is completing an advanced degree in English that will allow for more creativity while still expanding her professional capabilities. She would love to combine her passion and skills to work in the entertainment industry as a producer, screenwriter, or editor.

To Hold My Own: An Interview with Betsy Joseph

Interview by Amanda Sanders

Betsy Joseph has accumulated a lifetime of experience in teaching and writing. Throughout her teaching career, she taught various creative writing courses. She has published two collections of poetry, Only So Many Autumns and Relatively Speaking, and her work has been featured in several journals and anthologies. She and her husband Bruce Jordan have also published Benches and Lighthouses, which feature pairings of photographs and haikus. Joseph finds inspiration in still-small moments and embraces the fluidity of life, allowing her changing circumstances to shape her writing. She currently resides in Dallas, Texas.

I have read your bio and poems on Texas Poetry Assignment, and I'm wondering what else you might want readers to know about you and your background as it relates to you and your poetry. Are there other experiences in workshops or readings or publications beyond Texas Poetry Assignment you want to share?

BJ: Since girlhood, I have turned to words for expressing and framing ideas and feelings. My father’s thirty-eight years as a newspaperman were no doubt a tremendous influence because I grew up around words. They floated in my ears and I could taste them on my tongue. In time I learned to be aware of the power of words and the stories they weave. In time I learned to use words to hold my own in the world.

I taught Memoir Writing for college credit to seniors in a retirement community for five years and general Creative writing classes to college students for a number of years during my teaching career. I participated in a writers group that met monthly for ten years and benefited considerably from the feedback. Through the years I have participated in readings at bookstores and writing retreats; these are enjoyable opportunities to meet fellow writers, to share writings, and to hone public speaking skills.

In addition to TPA publications, I’ve written a memoir about my varied teaching career, titled Classrooms and Their Characters; a poetry collection titled Only So Many Autumns; a co-authored collection of poetry titled Relatively Speaking. As well, I have poems published in numerous anthologies.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry? Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

BJ: My earliest memories of poetry hark back to my father reading Eugene Fields’ work to me at bedtime. I particularly liked the poems “Little Boy Blue” and “Wynken, Blyken and Nod.” I don’t recall at what age I received a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, but I was able to read it on my own, and that was a thrill. I recall writing short poems for my mother on Mother’s Day cards while in elementary school and continuing to dabble in poetry throughout high school, but I began writing in earnest during college and graduate school. Early favorite poets were Robert Frost and Walt Whitman because I found their poetry accessible and relatable.

What was your initial goal when you began writing more seriously? Did you ever imagine you would accomplish all that you have with your writing?

BJ: My initial goal was to balance my writing self with my parent self and my teaching self. Not surprisingly, my parent and teaching selves have blessed me by providing good fodder for my writing self. I wrote during my very busy years to remind myself of this other identity I hoped to cultivate more fully upon retirement. I have honestly surprised myself with my output and with the publications of my work.

How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to write a poem and how does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

BJ: I tend to write when I am moved by a particular emotion, incident, or person. I know I am ready to write when lines begin composing themselves in my mind while I am on my yoga mat or taking a long walk. Quiet movement galvanizes me. Sitting down to fully craft an idea, I write (or type) as quickly as I can knowing that the initial draft will undergo several iterations before the poem and I are satisfied. I enjoy both the revising and editing stages since they provide opportunities to let the piece simmer on low while I am considering other possible changes.

Stepping Stones

Much as a bullfrog jumps

from lily pad to lily pad,

so does each brave word in my poems

step lightly onto the first stone

to be followed by other word soldiers

landing securely or perhaps tentatively,

each following the one before it—

a whole string of possibilities—

some in pairs, others clearly loners,

but all intent on the mission at hand.

What topics or issues frequent your poems? Have those changed over time?

BJ: Topics that frequent my poems range from personal memories and experiences to family relationships to contemplations on nature and life to philosophical musings on current events. These topics have changed over time in so far as I have changed over time. I will come across poems I wrote several decades ago and find myself intrigued with the thoughts expressed by my earlier self. Meanwhile, I have moved on, shaped by many experiences I could not possibly have written about in the years before shedding my naivete on so many subjects.

I have read your poem "Palimpsests" on Texas Poetry Assignment. What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page? Shape? Line? Music? Comparison? Balance? Were there any new craft choices you made?

BJ: Inspiration for writing comes in different forms. I became acquainted with the word “palimpsest” in one of my graduate courses. In that particular instance, we were examining a photograph of a manuscript written over an earlier manuscript that had been somewhat erased, yet evidence of the original could still be detected. Skip forward several decades and I am looking in the mirror one morning while washing my face.

Bare of make-up, pink and fresh-faced, I had a moment of recognizing my younger face in the reflection, fleeting though the moment was. Then I stared into the mirror again and saw the me of today.

I wanted to write of the experience, and suddenly the first lines presented themselves while I was doing something relatively unimportant:

At this stage of life / we are palimpsests–

I knew from there I wanted to continue with this literary conceit to engage the reader with the novelty of considering the connection between human aging and the concept of an actual palimpsest.

My writing will often flow in a stream-of-consciousness fashion with seeming non-sequiturs, but I always aim to leave my reader with something palpable to grasp that is both personal and universal.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

BJ: My advice to young people interested in reading and writing poetry is to study a variety of poets through the ages in order to appreciate how writers respond to the times in which they live and to observe that human experience is generally universal. Young people interested in publishing their work would greatly benefit from creative writing classes in which they are able to showcase their writing and learn from the feedback provided by the instructor and peers. Additionally, they would gain insight from being an audience to styles and subjects different from their own.

You mention that it is important for young poets to study a “variety of poets through the ages” in an effort to more fully understand how poets respond to the times in which they live. Are there any particular poets you might recommend for such a study?

BJ: A handful of poets I would recommend are the following: William Blake, A.E. Housman, Wilfred Owen, e.e. cummings, and Mary Oliver.

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

BJ: While it is difficult to cull only one or two from the many talented TPA poets who contribute regularly, I would surely recommend both Kathryn Jones and Vincent Hostak to other readers. Their styles are distinctly different but both express their attitudes toward subjects in powerful ways.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

BJ: While each generation of writers leaves a distinct imprint on the literary world based on responses to their exterior and interior worlds, my observation is that poetry today follows fewer constraints than poetry from earlier eras. It has been interesting to follow the trajectory of poets’ voices in the past almost quarter century. I embrace William Blake’s assertion that “Poetry fettered, fetters the human race,” yet I cringe at the anger, vulgarity, and animosity that emanate from some of the voices I hear. This language feels gratuitous and detracts from rather than contributes to the perspective and emotions of the writer. At the same time, though, I admire poets who address issues that once were stifled because they were deemed inappropriate. How liberating to acknowledge subjects long considered taboo. Our culture has made significant progress in that regard.

I agree that there has been a definite shift in the types of voices present from earlier poetry to contemporary poetry. How do you think this might affect the teaching of poetry in both reading and writing?

BJ: More than ever, I believe we have come to tread more delicately when we approach discussions that may put some or many out of their "comfort zone." If handled with decorum, though, I don't see the need to refrain from healthy discussions regarding sensitive issues that appear in reading and writing assignments. We learn best when we learn from one another.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet and what would you ask?

BJ: If I could ask a question of any poet I admire, I would choose Billy Collins and my question would be: What is it like to live inside your head? My husband and I had the good fortune to attend “An Evening with Billy Collins” when he came to Dallas seven or eight years ago. I had been reading and teaching his poetry for several years at that time, so I greatly looked forward to that evening. He did not disappoint. I found him to be as droll and laconic in person as in his verse. After thirty or so minutes of listening to him introduce a poem and read, one after another, I wondered what it would be like to be in the head of one such as he. I wished I could stand up and ask that question in a clear, strong voice. But wait a minute. I did not need to ask. I am inside Billy Collins’ head in every poem of his I read because he has invited me in.

Amanda Sanders, a middle school teacher in San Angelo, Texas, holds a master's degree in English and shares her love of language with her husband, two daughters, and students.

Handle Thought with Care: An Interview with Jan Seale

 Interview by Ebony Sago

Awarded the 2012 Texas Poet Laureate designation, Jan Seale has been writing for over 40 years and continues to make waves within the literary community. Seale was born in Pilot Point, Texas. She graduated from Waxahachie High School, attended Baylor University, received a B.A. from The University of Louisville, and an M.A. from North Texas State University in 1969. She has written nine volumes of poetry, two books of short fiction, five books of nonfiction, and several children's books. For 16 years, she was the South Texas editor of Texas Books in Review. Jan has held several workshops all over the country including in New Mexico, Washington, Oregon, and of course, the Lone Star State itself.

Jan Seale’s many accolades include The Yale Review, Texas Monthly, and Newsday and she has received of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing. She is a reminder to budding writers that remaining consistent is the key to achieving anything in this world. Jan Seale teaches several seminars for creative writing and memoirs both nationally and in the Rio Grande Valley, where she currently resides. Seale and her late husband, Carl, are the parents of three sons and grandparents of four grandsons.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry? Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you at the beginning of your writing career?

JS: Very early on, I became acquainted with poetry. I was something of an autodidact, teaching myself because I was sickly as a child with TB and spent a lot of my early childhood on bed rest. I remember a picture book with bird illustrations and accompanying poems. I read the poems over and over and can still recite some of them today. I remember reading one of the poems and saying to myself, “I can do that too,” putting the book down and getting busy composing a poem on my Big Chief tablet. I had a recording of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” which I played over and over until I had memorized the poems there. When I was about 9 years old, I made a booklet of my poems. All my poems had rhyme, and for some reason, I wrote mostly in iambic tetrameter, even though I had no idea what that meant. It was an innate sense of how English poetry was supposed to sound.

My father loved poetry and often quoted whole poems in his role as a public speaker. His father, my grandfather, also loved and quoted poetry. Poetry came with the territory!

My teachers were always kind when I showed them a poem, but we were not encouraged to write poetry as part of our classroom work. And sometimes I was teased by classmates and family members because I wrote it. But I had a buddy who liked to write poetry. We would often exchange poems, appreciating each other’s efforts.

As for influential major poets, I would list Robert Frost, Mona Van Duyn, Audrey Lorde, and Maxine Kumin as some of my favorites.

What topics or issues frequent your poems? Have those changed over time? Do you have any favorites?

JS: My topics, issues, and subjects have certainly changed over time. When I was a young adult, I wrote about birthing and then parenting my 3 sons and about being a woman, as one wave of feminism was sweeping our society. The more I taught young people, the more interesting they became to me, and I would often write a poem about a classroom incident or an encounter with a particular student. In recent years, I have turned to nature, particularly the plants and animals of my unique territory—the Rio Grande Valley of Texas—as well as the history of the region and the current immense problem of migration.

Some might wonder why I am not issue-oriented in an age when universal problems seem to be more prevalent and serious than ever. It is not that I think world problems are unimportant. I do think other poets may be more adept at addressing them than I, but I consider my fortes to be story, nature, human nature, spirit, and humor. I like dealing with awesomeness, believing that there is still much virtue and goodness in the world, that the natural world is full of surprising aspects, that serendipity and happenstance are there to remind us we are not alone and that we certainly cannot predict an inevitable future. 

I can really respect your outlook. How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to draft a poem? How does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

JS: I am very practical about my writing process—maybe because I have always been busy with family, teaching, and doing readings and did not have a life where I could “wander lonely as a cloud” (Wordsworth) and dreamily spend hours in poetic composition. I have ideas at odd moments and usually grab a notepad and write a line or two, or just some words that will suggest to me later, when I have time, what it was I thought might work as a poem. (I keep a notepad and pen in every room of the house, in the car, in my purse.) These notes may become part of the poem, or they may simply be triggers to an entirely different idea later.

I keep a folder with the notes of ideas I have made randomly during the day and every now and then I will lay them all out on my desk and realize that I have had preoccupations that repeat themselves and that will go together in a certain way to form the nucleus of a poem. I may have a quote of a person in the grocery store, or a child’s innocent observation, or some funny typo on a pretentious internet utterance. I may have noted a deeply savage incident, a moment of gripping awe and soulfulness, a marvelous action of an animal or plant. These are to be wondered about, perhaps elaborated on, or at least shared with someone out there who might connect with the idea or emotion.

One way I have enjoyed working is determining a major emphasis for a collection of poems. Thinking about a major subject, and then enlarging on it in a group of poems is very satisfying to me. I have done this with several books. My first book, Bonds, was formed with poems on relationships, Sharing the House was filled with poems about parenting, Nape is focused on matters of the Spirit, The Yin of It concentrates on women’s lives, and The Parkinson Poems journaled through my caregiver role for my late husband. And my latest book Particulars: poems of smallness groups poems into subjects about little items such as stamps, keys, insects, seeds, and coins. That was lots of fun to write and has proven a hit in readings, especially with people who say they do not like or understand poetry.

As for the actual writing of poems, some come easily in one sitting; others take years. Most I complete in a few days or weeks. It all depends on the subject matter. Sometimes I only know a thing or two about what I am writing about, and I need to meditate, observe, do research, or question a while before it becomes clear to me why I am trying to write such a poem. Other times, there is a clear call in a magazine, such as “We want poems about stepchildren” or “retribution” or “being old.” TPA is such an opportunity. I have really liked being a part of TPA, especially during the pandemic. These invitations to submit may be the impetus for saying something that the poet might not have thought about otherwise for a poem.

The first draft is just a skeleton of an idea. If I find myself picking at each word and line before I go on to the next thought, I try to stop that, hurry on to see what else the poem needs. This may or may not work, depending on the subject.

I may make 3,4,5 drafts before I feel satisfied that it is the best I can do. Then I will type it, make a printout, look carefully at it again, read it aloud, lay it aside for at least a few days, read it aloud again, and perhaps think of where I might want to send it for the possibility of publication.

I have read your poem "Seasoned Love" on Texas Poetry Assignment, which was simply wonderful. What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page? How did the aspects of shape, line, music, comparison, and balance come into play? Were there any new craft choices you made?

JS: The rationale for writing “Seasoned Love” was directly tied to an event, my second wedding, this time to my childhood friend John Brown. He and I went through our childhood and teenage years together in the same small Texas town. Then we went our separate ways, with marriage to other people and three children each. After our first spouses died from lengthy illnesses—his wife from Alzheimer’s, mine from Parkinson’s Disease—we renewed our friendship and decided to get married. We wanted our wedding to be special, so we invited 105 of our friends to an early evening wedding, with dinner and dancing afterward. “Seasonal Love” was read by my adult grandson as part of the wedding ceremony.

As to its form, I wanted it to be plain, so that everyone at the wedding would have no trouble understanding it from the first hearing. The lines are short, so that there’s space between the thoughts for listeners to take in the ideas. It does not use unusual metaphors, but purposely plain comparisons between “seasoned” (read “older people’s”) love and young love. So, there are gorgeous sunsets (as well as sunrises), full-scented blossoms (not only buds), and morning moon (as well as romantic rising moon).

I wanted it to pose a question at first—What happens when older people fall in love? Then there is the argument or rationale through citing metaphors that defy the cliches of the new moon, rosebuds, sunrises, etc. And finally, I wanted to put a spin on this story by saying what the couple intended to do with their love, that is, pass it on to life around them.

The lines alternate in dimeter and trimeter, partly because they read aloud well, and the voice is a rather formal one—because the poem will be used in a formal setting. The use of the third person plural identifies the “two” as in a picture frame presenting their story.

I would have had no idea that story was behind a piece like that! Are there other experiences in workshops or readings or publications beyond Texas Poetry Assignment you want to share?

JS: I have attended many workshops on writing, especially those centering on poetry. A decisive one was in 1978 when I attended the Aspen Writers Conference in Colorado, a group of 50 poets from all over the nation gathered for two weeks. In those two weeks of living, studying, and playing together, we broadened our aspirations and experience. I have also attended poetry workshops in Washington, Oregon, Texas, New Mexico, and North Carolina. In later years, I became an instructor in some of these workshops!

Probably my most valuable workshop experience as an attendee was the seminars in creative writing which I took during the time I was an undergraduate at the University of Louisville.

What were your earlier assumptions regarding publishing and how did those change over time? What is your opinion on self-publishing?

JS: I began to publish a little in my 20's, but surprisingly, it was not poetry so much as magazine articles about baby care! At the time, I had my children, staying home for a couple of years when they were incredibly young, then teaching for a year or two, then having another one, with the cycle starting over. I was just eager to express myself in written words any way I could, and I needed the money from magazine articles, so I wrote and sold such pieces as "All About Diapers" and "Economically Expecting." All that while, I was writing poems, such as I had throughout my time in college at Baylor and the University of Louisville.

After I had my three sons, we went back to graduate school and that is when I saw the possibilities of publishing poetry. Early on, it was advantageous to have many poems in print in magazines and journals before submitting a manuscript to a printing press. That way, when the poet sends a full manuscript to a publishing company, the editors can see immediately that the poet has been vetted by a suitable number of other editors/judges. I used WRITER'S MARKET to identify various markets for the subjects I was writing about, such as music, families, and nature. My first published poetry book was BONDS, from riverSedge Press, a new press at the university where I was teaching. The editor let me have a hand in figuring out which poems for it and I also got to designate a wonderful illustrator for it. Over the years, I have had 4 different publishers for my poetry, and another couple for my prose.

As far as self-publishing is concerned, it is a much bigger enterprise than it used to be. Seems like everybody wants to be "an author." Self-publishing works best on autobiographical "telling your life story" prose. There are some publishing companies offering to "co-operatively" publish you, lots of scams out there. It pays to be careful. Also, other kinds of books--non-fiction, fiction--may be easier to market as self-published than poetry.

One endeavor of self-publishing that my late husband and I really enjoyed doing was a series of children's books and classroom plays on neglected Texas history heroes. We did six, varying the subjects: 2 children, 2 Black, 2 white, men/women. We had 6 easy-read books and a classroom set of plays featuring these individuals, with songs (my poetry, his musical notation) and posters. We sold these books in kits to elementary schools all over Texas for about 10 years.

It is fun to self-publish, in a way, because you have complete control over your writing, i.e., how many copies there are, whether there are illustrations, what the cover will be. Right now, one of my sons and I are self-publishing a book of photographs--his, with my poems written to match. Its title is BORDER BIOME (very regional) and there will be 100 perfect-bound copies, which we will mostly give away to friends and interested people. I have done one other like this, with another son--a professional photographer titled “VALLEY ARK.” We did this one in 2005 and it is about out of print, but we had a fine time with it and sold lots of copies as well as donating some to nature stores, parks, etc.

One other thing...A writer friend told me something long ago that I believe is true, that is, all writing is good for all other kinds of writing. A poet should not be afraid to write prose; it is not going to ruin their poetry-making organ, and many times that prose is what financially sustains the poet in them! I am thinking now of 2 poets who do this switch very well, Wendell Berry and Christian Wiman.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

JS: Read a lot of poetry by different poets. Appreciate the ones from the past that you learn about in school, not discounting them because their language and treatment are so different from modern poets. Then read modern poets. But do not revere them just because they are in print and popular. Read them to see if they are being true, if they are understandable, if they are earnest and wise and humble with their subjects, if they speak to you, move you with their words.

Write a lot but do not feel you must put every poem out there. After a while, spread out your poems and see what is important that comes up over and over. That is what you were meant to write—at least at the time. Certainly, consider whether you will be accepted, read, published, and invited to present but do not write just for those reasons. Write because you must. Write because you are thinking, thinking about a subject that is drawing you to it. Write to challenge yourself with a form, an idea.

Write for the sheer pleasure and excitement of the activity.

As for publishing, although there are some notable exceptions, I would not advise young poets to self-publish whole volumes, or even chapbooks. Start by sending your work to literary magazines that take poetry and other places like anthologies of certain subjects. For poetry journals, first study them to see what their likes are, and above all, follow their rules closely for submitting. Treat submitting to magazines and anthologies as a business, taking time to study their guidelines, then sending your poems in a timely way, and—especially important, keep good records of what you send where and what the outcome is.

What does the range of your publications look like? Have you written/released any individual projects or had your work included in any anthologies that you would like to share?

JS: I have 12 poetry books, 2 short fiction books, 3 essay books, a textbook, 2 biographies, and 8 children's books.

I have lots of poems (and a few essays and short stories) in anthologies. Publishing in anthologies is very satisfying. For one thing, anthologies are about something in particular--a place, a habit, a common emotion, an aspect of nature, a literary movement, etc. Anthologies often have wider circulation and better backing by their presses than single-author books. If you can write a successful poem on the advertised subject, it is quite possible for it to be published in an anthology. And these credits look good when you approach a publisher about a total book of your poems.  There are lots of listings of desired poems for anthologies in Poets and Writers magazine.   Every month I go through the classifieds and mark pertinent markets that I want to target with my work.  It is an absolute must with me. Additionally, online mags are now a huge market for poets.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

JS: It seems to me that some, not all, of modern poetry is purposely difficult to understand. It can be pretentious, scattered, and posturing so much that it loses all relevance to an audience. And so, it really does not have an audience, only that of other poets who read it for some accidental novelty it might be transmitting, or so that they may see if they can do better.

Some of this scattershot of modern poetry stems from the ease of printing and distributing the printed word. For example, I do not know what the answer is to such nonsense as single unrelated-in-meaning words spread out on a page and called a poem. Most of us are not willing to take the time to get inside the head of the stranger who writes this with the notion that there is a great idea, thought, mood, or endeavor here that is worth lingering over. If anything, it might just be drug-induced.

It is surprising that the rhyming of earlier poetry, so wonderful to the ear and brain, has been adopted by modern hip-hop performers who depend on it for cheap, shocking, often vulgar, and nonsensical utterances. Free verse, of course, has a noble history and will continue to shape much of modern poetry. Our language is rich and there for the taking. And there is still a compelling argument for forms like sestinas and villanelles, as well as places to publish such. I wish some modern poetry would not tease, and presume the intelligence of the audience by making itself so abstract, subjective, and dysfunctional, as to be a turn-off to ordinary readers and hearers. These are the folks whom we leave behind, to poetry’s detriment.

I would hope that novice poets will be daring but not silly, experimental but not purposely puzzling. Be true to yourself and respectful of one’s audience. Handle thought with care.

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

JS: I think I will forego this question. I have enjoyed poems from many of them over the past years we have been doing this. I have private favorites, but all are friends, and I admire each one who has chosen to participate.

Lastly, if you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet and what would you ask?

JS: I would like to ask Ogden Nash how he responded personally to the criticism that he was not “a serious poet.”  

Ebony Sago is a poet, writer, and graduate student at Angelo State University. She currently resides in the Central Texas area and is a lover of any and all literature. Ebony has self-published two collections of poetry and is presently working on a novel. 

Passionate Pursuit: An Interview with Chip Dameron

Interview by McKenzie Jones

Chip Dameron has been in the industry working as a writer, as an editor, and in the collegiate education system for more than forty years. In that time, he has composed over ten books of poems. Now, as a full-time writer, he serves as a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and as a board member of the Writers’ League of Texas. He is also a contributor to the Texas Poetry Assignment.

How did you come to be a part of the Texas Poetry Assignment? How has being a part of the organization shaped your career/poetry?

CD: I’ve known Dr. Musgrove for a number of years, and when I heard of this project I was glad to respond to various of the topics. He had established a community of poets, both through the website and through the periodic readings, and I’m pleased to participate in both. I’ve known many of the participants, whom I enjoy connecting with again, as well as meeting other poets who are doing fine work. It helps keep me active, and I give thanks to all the good work that Dr. M does for all of us. I’m pleased he’s gotten you and your classmates involved in these interviews and in reading submissions to the anthology.

I have read your bio and poems on Texas Poetry Assignment, and I'm wondering what else you might want readers to know about you and your background as it relates to you and your poetry. Are there other experiences in workshops, readings, or publications beyond Texas Poetry Assignment you want to share?

CD: Over the years, I’ve participated in more than a hundred readings, and I’ve found it to be valuable to deliver the poems verbally in a public environment. It’s another way to share the poems: for others to read the poems is one thing, but hearing them, with the pauses and emphases that the poet brings to a reading, is its own experience.

Also, I’ve enjoyed being involved in editing literary magazines, which I’ve done three times over the years. It’s a challenge to judge the poetry and fiction that comes in, and it’s a pleasure to interact with contemporary writers through this process.

Over the 40 years you have been writing poetry, how has your perspective changed on craft? Dr. Musgrove teaches about poetic consciousness and how reading and writing poetry can reflect how we see the world. Would you say that you have developed a good poetic conscience? If so, how does it affect your view of the world?

CD: I experimented with rhyme in my early poetry, particularly slant rhyme, but I eventually chose to work in forms involving syllable count and/or stanza patterns (two lines, three lines, etc.). As far as poetic consciousness goes, I’ve found that my poems can be about whatever interests me, large or small. They can address important world matters as well as the bird I see perched on my feeder outside. I try to be open to all I see, read, experience, think about.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry?  Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

CD: The lyrics of the early rock and roll music of the 1960s were essentially poems set to music, and they sank deep into my consciousness. Then, in college, reading the great American poets in a survey course inspired me to write. I was especially influenced by Dickinson, Whitman, and Frost, as well as the Irishman, W.B. Yeats. Later, in graduate school, I met and became friends with Dennis Brutus, a controversial poet forced to leave South Africa who spent several years as a visiting faculty member at U.T. Austin. His vivid poetry and personal history were inspirational.

You mentioned rock and roll. Do you still find any of those artists influencing you today? Has their work ever inspired any of your poetry?

CD: I haven’t consciously written poems that are influenced by musical artists, but I’m sure that Bob Dylan’s songs of social consciousness have been influential. And Van Morrison’s mystical love lyrics no doubt have influenced love poems I’ve written. I don’t think that music currently has much influence on my work.

How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to write a poem, and how does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

CD: Sometimes I have an idea for a poem and that gets it launched. Other times I sit down and see what occurs to me at that moment: what do I think about, and how do I begin writing about it. Early on, in either process, I begin to get a feel for its form: what line length does it seem best suited for? Do I want to work with a fixed number of lines per stanza? Most of my poems are relatively short, generally fitting on one printed page. So I may get a first draft down in one sitting, or it might take several sittings. As I move from line to line, I also reread what I’ve provisionally written. So I generally am doing editing as I’m continuing to write the poem. Once I’ve got what feels like a completed draft, I’ll go over it for a few days, tinkering as needed. At some point, then, when it satisfies me as finished, I’ll likely be done tinkering.

You mentioned earlier that you work more with stanzas and syllables. Do you ever feel confined by this in your writing?

CD: More often than not, I’m shaping poems using a stanza pattern, which gives me room to work the lines without focusing on a syllable count. But other times, working with a set number of syllables feels right.

Do you ever find yourself wanting to keep poems for yourself? How do you know if it is a poem for publication or personal archive?

CD: I have a few poems that are finished but don’t seem to be satisfying enough to me to try to publish them. Better to then just move on to new impulses, new poems. I’ve written some “occasional” poems to specific people—my wife, some friends—that aren’t intended for others. But I’m willing and interested in sharing most of my poems with readers.

What topics or issues frequent your poems?  Have those changed over time? How did the pandemic affect your poetry?

CD: I’m not consciously aware of having particular topics or issues that I write about. That said, I can look back over my poems and see that many are about the places I’m living in: the landscape, the people, the animals. I love to travel, and many poems are about experiences I’ve had in travels in Europe, in China, in Mexico.

Ah, the pandemic. Actually, I found myself in April 2020 pulling out a children’s story I’d written 25 years earlier (never published), and I revised it radically and then over the next year wrote two more stories as part of that series. I wrote only a small number of poems, as my creative energies drew me to these stories. Unfortunately, I’ve sent dozens of queries to agents and have had no takers. On a brighter note, I decided at the beginning of 2023 to write daily haiku poems. So on December 31 of this past year, I completed #365, and my goal is to get them published as a book of haiku.

I have read your poem "Letter to a Child Never Born" on Texas Poetry Assignment. What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page? Shape? Line? Music? Comparison? Balance? Were there any new craft choices you made?

CD: The poem is based on a very sad situation. A young woman in my extended family became pregnant, and she and her husband were excited about welcoming a first child. Unfortunately, it became evident that the fetus had multiple, very serious birth defects and would die soon after birth if it even lived to be born. The couple made the painful decision to end the pregnancy. Which means, if you live in Texas, you must leave the state for an abortion elsewhere, which they did. 

I chose not to use stanzas, but I did use an eight-syllable line for its form. I wanted to include as much specific detail about the fetus’s condition as there was. I have no idea what happens after death, but if there is some sort of existence, I wanted to express our human love for the being that would never be. And no, no new craft choices.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

CD: Read widely, and then hone in on what you connect with best. Write as regularly as you can, and recognize that if you are beginning, your poems will inevitably have shortcomings. But you learn as you go, and if you persist you will write poems that are worthy of your efforts. That is when you should send them out to live in the world. You will get rejections, perhaps mostly rejections, but if you persist you will succeed in placing poems that others will read. Always remember this: you are the poem’s most important reader!

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

CD: Jerry Bradley and Betsy Joseph.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

CD: In the late twentieth century, many poets moved away from rhyme, which can often feel forced and lead to sentence constructions that don’t sound like the way people actually speak. The focus then became reliance on metaphor, imagery, and clarity.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet, and what would you ask?

CD: While I admire many poets greatly, I have no questions for any of them. I let their poems say everything that needs to be said.

I’d like to shift into a discussion on publishing. Dr. Musgrove teaches a lot about reading relationships between the text and the reader. There is also a lot to say about the relationship between the author and the reader, though. How would you describe your relationship with your readers?

CD: While every reader is different, you know, as a poet, that something has brought them to your poem or poems. I want my poems to get their attention and hold it, through my word choice and imagery. Be clear, be vivid where called for, be authentic. As with fiction, but typically in a much-compressed way, I hope to take readers through an experience that leads to an insight on some aspect of the world we all share. Do so with respect for readers but with confidence that the way I word the poem will be worth their reading it. That is my goal. Since I do not know who these readers may be, I am and must be honest, to being the first reader. I must be satisfied with my experience with a poem, and then I can share it with whoever reads it afterward.

How would you describe your view of writing pre and post-publication? How did your expectations change once you experienced the publishing world? On the spectrum of small publishing houses to corporate publishing, how has your perspective of the literary world been shaped? What were your experiences as a newly published poet? What processes did you go through in publication, and do you wish you had done anything differently? How does this all differ from how you go about publishing as a previously published poet?

At the beginning of my publishing experience, I hoped that editors would like my poems and accept them because of their quality. As I began collecting rejection letters, I realized that some of my poems needed further work. I also realized that without previous publishing credits, editors were likely to reject my work and look for poems by poets who had already established themselves. So instead of sending poems off to major publications, like The New Yorker and Poetry magazine, I began to focus my submissions on literary magazines and journals in my region. And that made all the difference. I also talked with fellow poets, and through those conversations, I found out about small publications that weren’t overwhelmed by submissions and might publish a poet who didn’t already have an impressive resume.

These days, I do send off to a variety of publications that aren’t regional, and my previous publications likely lead to frequent acceptances. But I still value smaller regional publications, and I’m pleased to support them with my work.

The industry has taken some massive shifts with the turn of the century. If you were a new and upcoming poet in the twenty-first century, how do you think you would go about your career? What things would be different or the same?

CD: I am still old school, at this point in my life. While I do have a website, which I highly recommend, I do not participate in Facebook, Instagram, etc. I send poems out for publication and I participate in readings, in person and online, whenever possible. But I’ve made my career, and I’m comfortable where I am now.

However, if I were a young poet trying to launch a career, I would likely create a website once I had publications to promote. And I likely would be active in promoting myself through social media. I would network with other poets (which I actively do now), and I would get involved with literary organizations, including literary magazines, for experience and connections. I would read poetry as widely as possible and absorb forms and metaphors, and then look for new ways to structure lines and paragraphs and image my ideas.

And then face reality: writing poetry is a passion, but for 99% of poets, it is not work that will pay your bills and support your retirement. Do it because you love it, because it allows you to express your experiences, beliefs, and dreams. Some fiction writers become bestselling authors and make enough money to live on, or even become wealthy. Few poets, if any, do. But if you love writing poems, you’ll find a vocation that allows you to pursue your passion. And that, in the end, means everything.

McKenzie (Mack) Jones is currently a graduate student in English at Angelo State University. Her undergraduate specialization was fiction creative writing with minors in Spanish and psychology.  She is from Llano, Texas, but currently resides in San Angelo, Texas.

Take Risks, Rejoice: An Interview with Shelley Armitage

Interview by Beth Haymond

Shelley Armitage grew up in the farming community of Vega, Texas, in the panhandle. As a university professor in Texas, New Mexico, and Hawai’i, Armitage has spent most of her life away from where she grew up outside of summers returning to Vega. Armitage has worked across the globe in Portugal, Finland, New York, Oregon, and many other places. She’s authored eight books and over fifty articles, including her recent memoir Walking the Llano. Her work explores the philosophical connection we have to landscape. She is a professor emerita at the University of Texas at El Paso and currently lives in Los Cruces, New Mexico.

You've had an extensive career as a university professor, and you've published eight books along with 50 articles. But on a personal level, you've moved back to Texas, to the Texas Panhandle where you operate your family farm, Armitage Farms. I feel like this informs your poetry, and I'd love to hear how that does that.

SA: Well, it's interesting about the so-called farm; about half of it's grassland. One attraction to me about the farm is it had native prairie. When I got old enough to realize what native prairie meant—I felt like we had a treasure. Of course, it's been overgrazed at different times and things like that. But as I hold on to it, cause I'm the last family member here of the immediate family, I don't want somebody else to have it who's going to develop it or plow it under or do something like that. For a long time, the farm has had a kind of evocative meaning for me. As I get older now and don’t go there as often, I have a more imaginative relationship with it. I visualize it in my mind and I feel like I can go there in an imaginative way. I saw these poems that I wrote were in some ways an homage to the idea of having a place like that, a place to go to, a place where you have a family history, but also you have the history of the land, which is very ancient.

Yeah. Like you mentioned, it has native grasses and foliage, and I'm not an environmentalist or naturalist, but I have seen a few people, like on social media who are in those spaces, and they talk about plants that are native to America, and how we're losing them because of development. It sounds like you're more focused on your land on the restoration side of things.

SA: There's all the turbines around out there. And I support green energy, but when you do that, you break up habitats, and it has consequences for some birds and bats. There’s improvement, but people are wild about it because it makes money and employs many people. We're just covered up there in the panhandle with turbines now. Your neighbor might have gotten rich with forty turbines on their land and then you're next door with nothing. But that doesn't matter, because I think some of us still have to be part of the ecological reality of the place. In some ways, the ecological is pragmatic, but it's also very creative. So it informs my poetry.

We've talked about the number of your professional achievements, but are there any specific projects coming up that you want to talk about?

SA: I'm spinning a chapbook next, and I think I've grown some as a poet. I think there are better poems in this collection. The other collection had some very youthful poems, ones that I've done years and years ago, and then some recent ones. You probably can tell the difference.

That's a nice mix, though, where it's poems from different stages of your life and almost like a photograph of that?

SA: Yeah. I'm working on that, and I was going to title that Blue Highways, but then I thought of William Least Heat-Moon, who had that book years ago of the same title. I didn't want to use that, although I like the idea of blue highways because it's rural, the back roads kind of thing. But I re-titled it, which sounds very stiff From a Sandstone Ledge, indicative of perspective—kinds of perspectives. Then I've been asked to give a talk at a sustainable water conference on the Ogallala Aquifer.

That sounds great. How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry? Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

SA: I think when I was a girl I was more interested in narrative. I tried to write a detective work, kind of like the Hardy Boys or something. It was based on an old house in Vega that we'd sneak over there in the middle of the night to see if any blood was coming down from the upstairs tub. I was interested in trying to write stories. Of course, I had watched Western films, so I had some very funny things that I wrote as a third grader about a boy and girl combo who are out in the West and were Western kids and all this is corny is, as you can imagine.

I don't remember writing poems exactly, but then, when I started my first teaching job, I was teaching contemporary poetry.

Bill Moyers had a whole series on American poets, and it included people like Joy Harjo, who were in their infancy; they were just starting as poets. Those recordings I used in my classes, and they influenced me. There was Lucille Clifton, a black writer who's now deceased, but she was a younger person then, and these people read so well. They read their poetry so well. That got into me…something about your inner voice, the rhythm of those poems, the drive of them, and the subject matter too. Mostly the sound they made influenced me. I became enamored of Maxine Kumin. She was a friend of Anne Sexton's. After Sexton died, Maxine Kumin wrote two stunning poems about her. I happened to teach at a college in the Dallas Fort Worth area that brought Anne Sexton to the campus. I started listening to these poets live, including N. Scott Momaday.

So their performances are kind of what inspired you. I love that. How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to write a poem and how does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

SA: I often use walking as a walking meditation. Often lines come to me when I'm walking like an opening line or an end line. The same happens with dreams. At about 4:00 in the morning, if I wake up sometimes there will be lines in my head. I put those down and then I follow their lead and then it grows into a poem. Then I go back and I read them over and over out loud to myself. That's how I can hear where to change things, where to add, and what to do. That becomes a process. And then the last process would be editing, which is so easy on the computer now. You can see the work, but also see it changed. And that makes such an impact on you as you're trying to listen to it.

In your poem “Llano Estacado” you invite the reader to truly notice what the landscape has to offer by the shape of the poem. This contrasts tourists and explorers complaining that the Llano Estacado is “featureless.” What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How did this influence the shape and lines of the poem?

SA: There's an area west of where I grew up on I-40 where you go off what they call the caprock; off that plateau that's called the Llano Estacado down into a shallower area and it's very dramatic. People will drive like the devil through the air. They go over the edge going off because you can see the canyons to the north, the canyons of the Canadian River Valley. This is just right on I-40. It's the main tribal highway. You get the sensation of the height of that plateau when you go off of that area. The Spanish called it the Ceja, which is eyebrow.

They call it the eyebrow of the plains because it was a hump—you went over and went off of it. I traveled that road for years and was aware of that. Then I met another New Mexican poet named Peggy Pond Church. She was old enough to be involved with the Santa Fe Writers Group in the thirties. When I met Peggy, I realized she too lived on a plateau west of the Rio Grande River and had that same experience of the plateau and then the shallow lands. I wrote a piece called “Two Plateaus,” which I used to introduce my book on her. The “Two Plateaus” was the idea of the writer working on another writer, but having these commonalities. That had to do with the Llano Estacado. Then, just as a scholar, I've done work on the sense of place and written about the West. I'm familiar with the expeditionary people's attitude about the sea of grass. I wanted to incorporate that into a contemporary form.

You grew up in Vega, Texas which is a farming community. Your recent memoir Walking the Llano touches on these roots. As an adult, you’ve lived in different parts of Texas, New Mexico, Hawai’i, and internationally, Portugal, Poland, Finland, and Ethiopia. Frequently, you touch on themes of the environment, restoration, and humans as part of the landscape. How have your travels influenced your poetry as it relates to the environment? Have these travels pushed you to reconnect with your home and how has that environment influenced your poetry?

SA: I think of Poland as a prime example when I had a Fulbright in Warsaw. When I flew in there, it looked like somebody had taken a giant shovel and gouged the earth out. It was the middle of winter. The land looked derelict; over-farmed, worked out, and worn out. And I thought, how am I going to live here? First of all, I'm going to freeze to death. Of course, my intention was to fit in and try to have a sense of that place. I got out and walked. I went all over Warsaw on my feet. It's a pretty big city. Of course, that's the home of many things that happened in World War Two. You had the double weight of the Holocaust and the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw and all that business I'll never get over. I have chills to this day when I tell you about it because of things that happened there. For example, there was a group of us who it was kind of like an international church that we met in, and we were meeting in one of the minister's apartments, and it was in the old Jewish ghetto.

We were having a kind of prayer upstairs because we were doing a path of remembrance and stopping at the different places where they loaded people into the railcars and shipped them out of Warsaw to the death camps. So, you look down into the courtyard and they said, “Do you see that olive tree?” We go, “Well, yes.” He said, “That was here during the ghetto and it survived all the things that happened.” That just pulls you into a place. Even though it's never going to be your homeland, you learn you can be home in it. I think those experiences also made me appreciate my farming and ranching background as well. I don't know if that answers your question.

No, it definitely does. I think you seem to meditate on the connection of a person to the land. Changing gears a bit, what advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

SA: Read, read, read, workshops, courses, events, listen, experience, take risks, rejoice.

That seems to be the most prominent advice from other authors. If you want to write, you’ve got to read.

SA: It’s true because those rhythms get into your head. You learn by just reading things and seeing how somebody works out the line and shapes the poem.

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

SA: Katherine Jones is a good poet. She's a feature writer and journalist, and she's newly come to poetry, but I think she's done some nice work. She's also a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.

I think it's people who come from a variety of backgrounds—you're going to get all kinds of different poetry. Because her life is going to inform her poetry way differently than you would or just any other poet. So I think that's cool.

SA: That's true.

We've been touching on the landscape environment as these are prominent subjects in your poetry, but how would you say your poems differ from earlier poetry and those similar subjects?

SA: For some reason, there's a little bit of an edge in some of my poems. There's one poem that has to do with an old love affair with someone who was separated from his wife. It was not a happy thing that I reported on myself that I went out with this man when he still was not divorced. We were both crazy about the history of photography, and I had met him in graduate school. We both worked on photo things together. My point is the poem talks about a feather, implying the idea of “light as a feather” and the quill and a feather and writing. All this is connected to his love of ornithology. So the poem, unless you know me and know the background, you probably don't get all of it. But it's a torturous poem because it's about his death. He died from Alzheimer's. It incorporates landscape and natural images to work through these points as I was trying to make just a poem on a page. It's not a long-form, but I think that sometimes we talk about eco-poetry, and it's a celebration of the natural world. Certainly, I'm trying to do that too, but also I'm trying to be prickly about it and write about it regarding human nature and kinship issues. That edge or the turn that's in the poem sometime at the end is an effort to shift the focus a little bit.

I like that. And then this last question: Do you have a poet you admire living or dead? Who is that poet and what might you ask them?

SA: Scott Momaday. I've heard him read twice. Once when I was a young woman in Fort Worth and he was a much younger man, and then at the Taos Writers Conference a few years ago. He's a brilliant reader, and he has a way of reading and bringing you around to the poem with his introduction: it's just magic. It's amazing. Joy Harjo was there; of course, she knew him very well and was just in awe of his performance. So I would ask Scott, because he also was a nonfiction and fiction writer, “How does narrative inform your poetic work and how does lyric inform your narrative work? Because I, too, am a nonfiction writer largely, but I've gone into poetry because my writing was very lyrical. My other writing was lyrical, and I knew I had those kernels that I could work with some lyricism. But I'd like to see what he might say about those two seemingly different genres, which can overlap.

Beth Haymond became an English graduate student at Angelo State University after working in marketing for several years. She hopes to pursue her education even further and get a Ph.D. She moved to the United States at nineteen after growing up in Calgary, Canada, and she has lived in several states with her husband and two kids. 

Did It Work? An Interview with Vincent Hostak

Interview by Rebecca Hargus

I had the privilege and opportunity to interview Vincent Hostak, a writer of poems, and a person who has a tight grip on the natural world. Hostak believes that in our modern world, there is a movement, or inclination, at least, to remove ourselves from the natural world in lieu of the blue light of the virtual realm.  His poetry aims to reconcile this movement.

Producer of the literary journal, Sonder Midwest, and a Langston Review of the Arts contributor, Vincent Hostak spent thirty years in the film and TV industry working with postproduction sound editing. It wasn’t until his fifties that he became serious about poetry. This interview took place via Google Meet.

I have read your bio and poems in the Texas Poetry Assignment, and I'm wondering what else you might want readers to know about you and your background as it relates to you and your poetry. Are there other experiences in workshops or readings or publications beyond Texas Poetry Assignment you want to share?

VH: I worked in the film and TV industry for thirty years doing postproduction (video and sound editing). I have done audio documentaries for world literature and English translation. I am not from an academic background. I did not go to a creative writing college and did not get serious about poetry until my fifties.

Beyond Texas poetry, I produced a journal called Sonder Midwest. I was also published in the Langston Review of the Arts. I have also done a TPA project, entitled Lone Star Poetry. I am not from a traditional academic background, but I am a lifelong reader of poets and have learned much from my reading. Mary Oliver spoke of the utility of imitation when finding your voice, I would paraphrase this as “Steal—but within reason, of course.” Also, I’ve heard it said that poetry is highly generative and ideas continue to sprout in another author’s work.  I wrote a visual poem as a dialogue between Sappho’s lyrics and my own, referencing the author and translator.  It was actually fun.

Workshops that I have attended in the past five years or so include the National Association for Poetry Therapy and a summer writing workshop for poetry in Boulder, Colorado at Naropa University. Naropa University is a Buddhist adjacent university. Anne Waldman (current director of the MFA program) and Allen Ginsberg were founders, Yoko Ono and John Cage were important contributors and teachers. My work is not as radical as theirs. My work is more conventional— while I try to be contemporary, mine is not radical poetry.

My interests include the physicality of the book—I have an emotional interest in the creation of the book, so my hobbies include working with things that are real like the antique art of the letterpress to create broadsides and books.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry?  Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

VH: My father was an English major. He was an editor. His texts weren’t literature, but he was an editor and had a thick library. The first poets that I remember reading prior to high school were Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robinson Jeffers, and poetry of the Ecopoets, like Wendell Berry. I wanted to sound like them in my writing. I also liked Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnel, and Marvin Bell. They were new voices in the 80s. They were sparse, less verse, but still metered. Their meter wasn’t always in the traditional iambic pentameter. There is a mystery as to why something works with a hanging line and hard stops. I picked this up from reading and imitating these poets.

 How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to write a poem and how do the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

VH: Laurence Musgrove is famous for saying, “Sometimes I wake up and say I am going to write a poem today.” My generative process is to read, then think, then continue another chapter of the poem.

Galway Kinnel wrote “Wait,” a poem for a student who was contemplating suicide. I believe it helped save the student. It is edited but retains the urgency he felt, I believe. Amazing things happen when you don’t make rash decisions, so editing, for me, can take years. One wonderful way to get there is to write from a prompt, and then you have a wholly new creation. This sometimes leads to going back to find what it was about, kind of like exploring “My Backpages” by Bob Dylan.

I recently conducted an interview with David Unger, a Spanish translator of the ancient myth of Mesoamerica, from his title, “The Popol Vuh.  He was speaking of a poet from Guatemala who reminded him of William Carlos Williams as a writer of wrote poetry about things, not ideas. You could write a poem about the “Border” as an idea or a thing. For example, the border as an instrument of political control, not a wall. So, I think it is important to hold the idea that writing poetry is a continuous process that changes. I hold as certain proof poetry made from experience and reading other poets can be a long process.

What topics or issues frequent your poems?  Have those changed over time?

VH: When I was young, I began writing about love or lovesickness. Now I write about aging and mortality. Poetry can be about so many different things. I am currently also interested in the idea of the intersection of poetry and the science of the natural world, with the role of the poet to demonstrate this. Universities are beginning to teach this, to teach physics and poetry together.

The visual artist and poet, Amy Catanzano, has written a scientific novella studying physics and expressing scientific principles in poetry—poems about shooting stars, and the cosmos. Wendell Berry wrote about listening to the wood drake, expressing that the natural world is not something other than us. There is a movement now away from the natural world, and I want to write poetry that brings us back to it.

I have read your poem "Quiet Beauty" on Texas Poetry Assignment. What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page? Shape? Line? Music? Comparison? Balance? Were there any new craft choices you made?

VH: The Japanese phrase, “Shizukana utsukushi-sa” is best translated as “quiet beauty.” I imagined this scene and created the poem during the height of the pandemic. This is an example of a poem about the experience of the city of Chicago. I was in Denver during the lockdown, and the city looked so different. I imagined what the Chicago River would look like in the downstate rivulets. I imagined the transformed, calm atmosphere of Chicago looking like the Illinois River downstate with no industrial traffic. I took off on the Japanese phrase.

My choices kept balance and harmony, and I built the conclusion of why this is quiet beauty. The flow of the poem followed the downstate rivers. The empty city streets were deer paths. Coyotes were crawling in office parks. In Denver, I had seen a coyote in the parking lot of a huge tech center, and this was my inspiration for the coyotes in Chicago.

The shape of the poem emulates the physical shape of a flowing river. This is not a choice I always make in a poem.  The flow of the downstate rivulet was literal in comparison to deer paths.  I like dissonance and consonance.

The words “bistros bereft of buyers” were deliberately percussive—I would say I continued this in my other poetry after this poem was written. I kept lines short, and there were deliberate choices in the last third of the poem to be more percussive and have a musical conclusion. Every line is building a definition of what that means.

I hope the tone was not too deeply dark. I saw pictures of the L.A. skyline at this time, and there was no smog! I hope this poem served to be some small archive of the details of what was happening in our world at that time.

I like consonances in poems. I like line. Poetry can be a highly experiential process. When you are writing as fast as you can think, the intention is not formed; the music is not there yet. You see how the form will emerge.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

VH: If you find the impulse write it. The best advice I have heard is, not everything has to be a monument—you don’t have to build pyramids. Read, read, read. Not all lines have to be the same length. Coleridge’s poetry was kind of like that.

I like small journals dedicated to poetry. Read these journals, and make sure you understand we are connected to the natural world. Find editors who like and respond to your work. The problem with some publishing processes with paid entries is that you must have money to invest for them to look at your poetry, so don’t expect to make a living through poetry. Poets make a living through teaching.

Understand the journal you are submitting to and the character of the poetry they publish. Is it traditional? Is it experimental?  Many journals are seeking to publish writers underserved by publishing.  This is necessary and a journal seeking to publish work from the BIPOC community may not be the community you represent, but one looking more generally for first-time authors may be. Find an editor who gives valuable feedback and does not charge for the privilege. This is a great way to learn and extend your practice.

Right now, I am working on my first full volume of poetry—poems on fabric and clothing. These are both culturally and historically interesting. Victoria Finnley wrote a book, The Hidden History of the Material World. My work is a collection of poems, a manuscript about exploring what I can say about fabric. The history of fabric that says things about colonist practices, the racism that can be seen, and the historical expression of who we are is an interesting topic.

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

VH: There are so many. Jesse Doiron and Betsy Joseph top my list. Jesse Doiron’s language is clean and plain but still, it is a language that is sensuous. Betsie Joseph weaves Texas surroundings into her poetry.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

VH: Themes have not changed—mortality, beauty, mortal life. The idea that life will end is so much more adventurous than the idea that we will live forever.

Moving from the classic poetic direction, there is greater experimentation in contemporary poetry. Most poets I have studied wrote differently to bring about meter and rhythm.

Wanda Coleman’s Book of Sonnets is not looking for clues in poetic diction or paired lines. But she still uses an adaptation of iambic pentameter. Contemporary poetry is experimenting with classical forms. Poets of the 19th Century, like Whitman and Dickinson, I would still argue that they are experimental in meter, invented language, and the end-stopped line. People are still trying to emulate them.

Contemporary poets use parse, yet fully develop musical language. Modern-era poets like Carl Sandburg and Robinson Jeffers have a deeper concern for the natural world.  As I mentioned, they are probably the inventors of “Ecopoetry.” There is also a lot of blending of artistic disciplines in contemporary poetry. There are poets who are also visual artists, using words in a highly experimental form in physical installations, like Julie Carr. I have not built forms of expression on visual arts.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet and what would you ask?

VH: I was fortunate enough to see Galway Kinnel read once. His poem “Blackberry Picking” was an expression of living life to the fullest. He relished small moments. His poem, “Wait,” was in response to a student who was contemplating suicide. I would like to ask Kinnell if that poem worked. What stronger outcome can you expect from poetry or any work of art than that you saved a life? Did you achieve the outcome of a saved life?

Rebecca Hargus is a graduate student at Angelo State University, majoring in English. A lover of literature and poetry, she hopes to bring this appreciation to students at the collegiate level. She is a dog lover, empty nester, mother of one, and soon-to-be grandmother. She has been married to her husband for twenty-eight years.

Milton Jordan: A Historical Poet

 Interview by Summer Flores

Milton Jordan can be described as a pastor, a historian, and a storyteller. Jordan grew up in the great state of Texas. To be specific, he grew up in “The City with No Limits”, Houston Texas. You can say Jordan is a real Texan at heart but has worked also in the Midwest writing historical pieces, poetry, and reviews.

As far as his academic career goes, he received a Bachelor of Arts in History and English at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX. He would later receive his Master's at Perkins School of Theology at South Methodist University located near the heart of Dallas.

Jordan went later on to publish a few poems and seminary journals while in his college career. Although, at Southwestern in the 1950s and into the early 60s, he was writing very little poetry. Jordan was involved in sports writing for the campus’s weekly newspaper. There he wrote game coverage and feature pieces nearly every single week. He also wrote one poem on living in the dorm where J. Frank Dobie, a folklorist, writer, and newspaper columnist of the depictions of Texas, lived 50 years before.

Since then, Jordan has been working diligently on poems, essays, stories, and reviews and publishing many. Jordan has been graced with the opportunity of getting some of these writings published in journals and magazines, such as “Christian Advocate,” “Texas Methodist,” Texas Observer,” “Idaho Heritage,” “Slackwater is Living in the Firelands,” and a few weekly and daily newspapers.

While in Ohio, he wrote for the “Black River Review,” “Poetry is Living in the Firelands,” “Alternative,” from Oberlin College, and a few other Midwest journals

As a true Texan, he has also written for “East Historical Journal,” “Southwestern Historical Quarterly,” “Gulf Coast History,” and several more. His poetry has appeared in Texas Poetry Calendar, Ocotillo Review, Voices de la Luna, Arts Alive SA, Texas Poetry Assignment, and New Verse News.

Jordan continues his writing career back at home in Georgetown where he is now retired and able to spend more time writing.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry? Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

MJ: My college English professor, F. Burr Clifford, while in Georgetown, introduced me to William Carlos Williams. I later found Charles Olson, Ed Dorn, Denise Levertov, and others in that same tradition.

How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to write a poem and how does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

MJ: I sit down and write three or four mornings a week. Yes, I know for some that it is time-consuming, but that is easier since I am retired. Previously, I would write a first draft on a notebook page, revision on the facing page, and often repeat that process. I also always wrote in pencil with an eraser handy. Lately, I’ve been using a computer. In every case, I try to read a poem aloud several times. Editors sometimes are helpful. My wife Anne reads almost all my stuff. I also have a few friends who make suggestions.

What topics or issues frequent your poems? Have those changed over time?

MJ: Usually, a word or a phrase gets my attention or a scene, especially some event in my experience or the news. Much of my poetry is what’s sometimes called “occasional poetry.” About 80% of what I write is “occasional poetry,” and it has often been successful. I send these out to a list of friends and adversaries two or three times a month and get feedback.

I have read your poem "Wandering the Back Roads" on the Texas Poetry Assignment. What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page? Shape? Line? Music? Comparison? Balance? Were there any new craft choices you made?

MJ: “Wandering the Back Roads” was originally in standard blank verse stanzas inspired by my strong desire to avoid the main highway. Laurence posted an assignment for a shaped poem, and I rewrote it as a Texas map. My poetry is almost always in an iambic pentameter line format and usually between twelve and twenty-five lines. I am not sure why I settled into that habit.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

MJ: DO IT. Read a lot of poetry by a lot of poets. Write when something gets your attention and when you’re not sure you have any inspiration at all. It’s good if you can set aside a particular regular time a few days a week. Read journals and little mags you find in your library and online and try submitting poems to some you like. Expect to get a lot of rejections, but keep trying.

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

MJ: Most of them, especially: Loretta Diane Walker (sadly no longer living.(“Poetry Is..”), Chip Dameron (“Letter to Child Never Born”), Jim Lavilla-Havelin ( “It Might as Well Be…”), Katie Hoerth (“The Recipe for Fudge”).

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

MJ: Current technology makes it fairly easy to set up online journals, so contemporary poetry seems to have a thousand forms and styles. You can now type something up, edit it, and send it on its way easily. Poetry in English before WWI may have had more standard forms, but the 20th century likely had as much variation as we see today.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet and what would you ask?

MJ: Charles Olson. Olson was notoriously difficult to question. He was, as often as not, likely to ignore questions and go on with what he was saying. It could be embarrassing I'm told (never having met him) and folks were hesitant to raise questions. Even so, I might ask to comment on his epigram “What does not change is the will to change.” That seems to be foundational to his work and his teaching. Most of what I know of Olson, beyond the poems, I learned from his student Ed Dorn, a great poet in his own right.

When did you feel successful when it came to writing poetry? Did you ever doubt yourself during your writing journey?

MJ: My first feeling of success in writing was when the local Georgetown Weekly reprinted one of my sports pieces and paid me $5 - big money in 1959. My first successful poetry submission beyond in-house school and church papers, was in 1971 when the Texas Observer published a poem of mine and paid me $5 - still pretty big money for me.

Summer Flores grew up in Coleman, Texas, a pretty small town. She has always had an interest in the literary arts and graduated from Angelo State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities for education. She now resides in San Angelo, TX where she teaches the young minds of 7th graders.

The Accidental Poet: Alan Berecka

Interview by Grant Compton

Alan Berecka was raised in New York. He was inspired to write poetry when he heard Rudyard Kipling’s “If” read on NFL Films. He first read Ogden Nash's books, as a child. He attended the University of Dallas, where he became enamored with poetry. After working as a telephone operator, he later decided to go back to school, as a graduate student. After suffering some frustration in poetry, he decided to take a creative writing class, hoping to be asked to quit writing. But instead, he did great in the class and won the University’s poetry contest. He would later finish his MLS at Texas Woman's University. After some time at North Adams State College. Alan then spent some time at McLennan Community College. He then became a Librarian and began to write less and less. Being conflicted about not following after poetry, he began to seek spiritual counsel. After a powerful sermon on the parable of talents, Alan felt a greater desire to continue writing. He then started to attend workshops to improve his craft and finally surrendered to poetry for good.

I have read your bio and poems on Texas Poetry Assignment, and I‘m wondering, what else you might want readers to know about you and your background as it relates to you and your poetry?

AB: I’ve always thought the bio for a publication should be as short as possible. A journal is all about the poems. As for me, I am the grandson of 4 immigrants from Eastern Europe (two from Poland, two from Lithuania). My father was a tough kid from Utica, a high school dropout who joined the Merchant Marines in WWII. He made a living as a welder. My mom was a dairy farmer’s daughter from Marcy; she was a psychiatric RN. When I was in middle school, she was inflicted with a facial neuralgia that she suffered from for the rest of her life. The intense pain led to addictions and institutionalizations. A real-life tragedy that was not easy to witness because it was misdiagnosed so often. When she finally was getting relief from the pain, she contracted a rare cancer and died in her early 60’s. I grew up in rural Central New York and left to attend the University of Dallas in Irving. After working for the Southwestern Bell for two years as an operator, I went to the University of North Texas where I had a Teaching Fellowship in the English Department. I got an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies. It was the degree you got if you wrote a creative thesis before they started their MFA program. I met my wife Alice while there. She was working on a Master's in ESL. After a year of being unable to get a teaching job, I went to Texas Woman’s University and got an MLS. I worked as a librarian at North Adams State College in Massachusetts, and McLennan Community College in Waco, before settling in for 26 years at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. I reached the rank of professor. Along the way, Alice and I raised two great humans. Rachael is married and a web engineer who lives in Portland, Oregon, and Aaron is a photographer/videographer/gaffer who lives in Austin and is in a long-term relationship with his partner Maddy. I retired in 2023, and retirement is by far my favorite job ever.

Are there other experiences in workshops you want to share?

AB: I have been lucky enough to do workshops with B. H. Fairchild, Scott Cairns, Bridget Pegeen Kelly, and Mark Jarman to name a few. I had given up really writing, just played at it, when I began my career as a librarian. Dana Gioia came to the MCC campus when I was working in Waco. I was in charge of driving him around town during his visit. I’d really do anything to get out of the library and everyone seemed frightened of him, so I volunteered. We had several discussions about poetry, Elizabeth Bishop, and Howard Nemerov. He invited me to his poetry festival in West Chester, PA. He wrote to me after he left Waco, and eventually convinced me to attend. I took Jarman’s workshop on narrative poetry, and Jarman taught me quite a bit about line theory. That was my reentry into poetry.

Are there experiences in readings that you want to share?

AB: I love doing readings. I’ve read at countless open mics and featured at them Shawnee OK, Hot Springs Arkansas, (I ran one for years at DMC), at festivals in Texas, such as several times at the Kelton, the Windhover festival at UMHB, The Scissortail Festival in at East Central University. I have been featured at festivals in Georgetown, TX, and was the Art Saltzman Visiting Poet at Southern Missouri University in Joplin, and the Oswald Distinguished Author at the University of South Carolina Aiken. I have also read at the PEN poetry festival in Vilnius and Druskininkai, Lithuania (2010), and I have read at the Lithuanian Writer’s Union Poetry Festival which has events all over the country in Lithuania(2022). I’ve read to paying audiences Chatters in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, NM, and storytelling festivals in Wimberly, TX (paying audiences are scary) and in houses and to organizations from Santa Fe to Corpus, to a park in Albany, NY.

Are there any publications beyond Texas Poetry Assignment you want to share?

AB: They tell you when you start out as a poet to keep a submission log. I guess they tell you that so when you get asked how many times you were published and where you can give a cogent answer. I never have kept a decent log. So this is a partial list. I’ve been in the Texas Review, The American Literary Review, The Concho River Review, The Windhover, The Red River Review, The Blue Rock Review, New Texas, Ruminate, The Christian Century, The San Antonio Express, The Windward Review, The Penwood Review, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. I remember some more, but that’s enough. My work has been translated into Lithuanian and Chinese. I’m quite proud of being included in the Trilobite Press Chapbook series that includes the likes of Walt MacDonald, B. H. Fairchild, Naomi Nye, and Albert Goldbarth.

How would you describe your origin as a poet?

AB: As close to one as I can remember, it was an NFL Films Production at halftime of a NY Giants game. They clipped highlights and put in some schmaltzy background music as John “the voice of God'' Facenda read Kipling’s “If.” If I remember right, The last clip that played to the line …you will become a man my son…was Joe Namath running off the field with his finger raised after the Jets beat the Colts in the Superbowl. And that was my introduction to poetry at around the age of ten. It really caught my attention. I grew up in a lower-middle-class family. My mom read mysteries and romance novels; my dad read the paper. The first poetry book in the house was my older sister Janis’s copy of a Rod McKuen collection.

What are your first memories of reading?

AB: Another moment in a high school class…We were reading “Song to Amarantha” by Richard Lovelace. I should say I was not a good student. Years later, much too late to do anything about them, my wife figured out I had some fairly serious learning disabilities, but on that day as the class was reading that god-awful old poem, I happened to be staring at the back of a pretty blond girl’s head across the room, and as Mrs. Watson read: Like the sun in early ray,/But shake your head and scatter day. The sun hit this girl’s hair in such a way that I swear it scattered the day. I thought wow, there’s something to this stuff.

What are your first memories of writing poetry?

AB: I filled many notebooks as an undergraduate and punished my friends with the stuff. I couldn’t spell or punctuate long before word processors were invented to help, so none of it ever made it to the school’s literary magazine. In graduate school at UNT, I came in to be a Shakespearean scholar. The school needed to offer a creative writing class or it would have to take it out of the catalog. I took the class figuring that Rick Sale would tell me to just try, which would be a great relief. We read Hugo’s Triggering Town. In it, he says you should never write about your mother. Never tell anyone who is Polish or Lithuanian not to do something. I wrote a poem about growing up with my mother and the horror of one day wishing she would die. It won the school’s writing contest that year, and a later draft was published in the American Literary Review. Rick Sale began encouraging me to do a creative thesis at that point, and the rest is history.

Which people, teachers, and poets, were most influential to you in the beginning?

AB: I come from a family of storytellers, my parents were ill-matched but both had great but odd senses of humor; a Franciscan Friar Emile Kransawitcz encouraged my intellectual endeavors, which was unusual in my blue-collar childhood teachers. A high school teacher, Barbara Watson, saw past my inability to read fast or spell or write without missing letters or words, and tutored me in basic grammar when she could, she also encouraged me to think. Dr. Cherie Clodfelter, the head of the education department at the University of Dallas encouraged my creative writing, Dr. Louise Cowan asked a kid in her class barely making C’s to be an English major because she thought he had an affinity for understanding literature. The poets Rick Sale and Les Palmer at the University of North Texas, both took an inordinate amount of time to foster and encourage my writing(both became great friends as well), and Dana Gioia for pulling back into the craft. In high school, I read way too much Ogden Nash, but I’m a sucker for wordplay. As an undergraduate, I studied the poetry of D. H. Lawrence. It's his slightly elevated diction that helped form my conversational style. In graduate school, I was introduced to the work of B. H. Fairchild at UNT. Rick Sale had just published his first chapbook. I saw how the blue-collar world of my childhood was fodder for poetry. I also fell upon the work of Elizabeth Bishop, what a master. Also, Scott Cairns' work freed me up to take on religious and spiritual matters. I also became a fan of Howard Nemerov's later work. They were so funny and to the point.

How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry?

AB: It’s hard, and I’m probably lying, but the closest I can come to describe it is there’s an itch, an idea or story that just keeps growing and if the itch can be mated with an image, the poem begins to take shape. Occasionally a line pops in my head, but that is much rarer. The line “You don’t have to Atlas to know this world is a heavy place,” was the last time that happened.

How do you know when you are ready to write a poem?

AB: It’s finding the image that can be drawn from as the poem grows, once I have that, it’s a matter of building on that as the poem grows.

How does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

AB: At UNT, Les Palmer was a hard taskmaster. He was a beautiful and kind man, but when it came to poetry, there was no room for being nice. He always had two things to say when he looked at a draft, some line was too easy, or that I could find more poetry in there. So as I revise I channel him, looking for cliches and looking to see if I can show something that I might just be telling instead of showing. After Les died unexpectedly 20 years ago, my writing process was in a tailspin. I met the poet and now noted Flannery O’Connor scholar Angela Alaimo O’Donnell at the conference at UMHB at the time of Les’s death, and we became each other’s first readers for many years. She was as harsh as Les, and I beat up on her drafts. We are still friends. She runs the Center for Catholic Studies at Fordham. Anyway, now I channel Les and Angela, but it’s always great to have another pair of eyes to keep you from making a stupid mistake.

What topics or issues frequent your poems?

AB: Religion/spirituality, family, work, and sports are the main ones with an occasional social justice poem.

Have those changed over time?

AB: I started out as a Catholic poet, and now I’m a liberal Episcopalian so the accidents of the religious poetry have changed, but I believe the essence has remained the same. My kids are grown, and I’m a lot older, so one’s experiences change. Since I’ve mainly mined my life and beliefs for poetry the subjects change slightly as well.

I have read your poem, “Remembering the Body.” What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem?

AB: I’ve always had a problem with the idea that the body was the seat of sin, and that religion somehow purified us through denial. I’m thinking a lot of that was added baggage given to us by Augustine. I know as a kid, I bought the party line and it messed with me pretty well. I got to thinking of the expression of celebrating mass, and the true presence is body and blood. You can tell that the poem is rather old with its reference to the Yellow Pages. I guess I’d use Craig’s List if I wrote it now. I worked on it quite a bit at a workshop in Ouray, Colorado with Scott Cairns. I know he helped me hammer out the last few lines, but I forget what’s me and what’s him. I think the collaborative nature of poetry is a secret to those on the outside of the craft. When you get immersed in it though, all that matters is the poem.

How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page, shape, and line?

AB: I naturally fall into a 8-12 syllable line and try to keep the lines to similar lengths unless I want to call attention to something, like the word joyous, but to say I’m conscious of this might not always be true.

How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on music?

AB: I’m not really good at scansion, so I write for flow, often using hard consonants to create rhythm. To me language is like a drum set, b, g, d might be like a bass drum, th f sh are like the cymbals. I play with it until I think it sounds decent. I forgot to include Hopkins up above. I love his alliteration. “Oh, if we knew what we do when we delve a hew” from Binsey Poplars is my favorite example. It’s something that comes naturally to me, but I learned I needed to tone it down for a modern reader. It can seem comical if it’s overdone. For example too many f’s and you end up sounding like Elmer Fudd. Comparison and Contrast seems to lend itself to poetry. Pinging from one stanza to the next, sets up movement in a poem and pulls a reader in.

How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on balance?

AB: I wanted to add that in most poems I try to interject a bit of humor. To me humor is like a magician’s misdirection. It allows me to get somewhere that might be uncomfortable without it.

Were there any new craft choices you made?

AB: Not really, but I was writing this at the time I was breaking from the Catholic church. I had befriended a very liberal Episcopal priest, and I remember asking him to fact-check the theology for me. I was worried about Gnostic being correct.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry?

AB: Don’t worry if you don’t like or get everything. When you’re in a class you read poems from an anthology, normally. To me, that’s like walking through an art museum. As you go through the museum a painting might really grab you, cause you to stand at one place for a long period of time. We don’t think that’s strange. It’s the way art, new works, something in the viewer and the viewed clicks, and becomes in some way transcendent. The same thing applies to poetry. Learn what you can from all the masterworks, but when a work of somebody grabs you, go to the library and check a collection by that poet and dive in.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in writing poetry?

AB: Be humble enough to work on your craft, know that you can always get better, but be stubborn enough to stick with it. I’d also add it’s probably not a bad thing to remember your reader. Give him/her a chance to understand what you are trying to get at.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in publishing their work?

AB: It’s really hard to get a piece accepted. More importantly, the likely rejection is not a personal attack. More than likely the poem didn’t fit that issue, or the editor’s taste and your style don’t mesh. To give yourself the best chance, make sure each line of your poem has a reason to begin or end where it does. Think of each line like a poem in miniature. My experience as an editor and a judge of contests has convinced me of the importance of line structure.

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

AB: I might know half the people listed on the page and half of those are good friends, so it’s hard to pick one. Plus, the editor Dr. Musgrove is a hell of a poet. But that said I’m big fans of Larry D Thomas, Jerry Bradley, and Sister Lou Ella Hickman. Larry and Sister Lou are masters of concision. Larry mentored me when I was starting out in the Texas poetry scene. I especially like his collection Amazing Grace. Jerry was the longtime editor of the Concho River Review. Jerry is a fine poet and one of the rare ones who is gifted at using humor. Juan Manuel Perez, a good friend and fellow Corpus poet laureate, is really gifted in his use of humor as well. Sister Lou is a nun in Corpus, whose work just doesn’t get enough attention. Her collection, her: robed and wordless is just amazing, a retelling of stories of women in the bible. But truly you can’t go wrong with anyone on the list including the other two Corpus Poet Laureates on the list: Robin Carstensen and Tom Murphy.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

AB: I’m really not sure, because there are so many schools of poetry these days. I see the poetry I write and that of poets I admire as a reaction against modernism. Fairchild, Bilgere, Crooker, O’Donnell, Collins, and Thomas have tried to make poetry accessible to a greater audience, to free poetry from the ivory tower and the poetry one needs a PhD is comparative languages to understand. I mentioned that I enjoyed the later works of Howard Nemerov. George Bilgere studied under Nemerov at Washington University in St. Louis. I asked George if he knew why Nemerov had transitioned from writing poetry in the modernist tradition to the wonderfully funny and accessible poems he wrote at the end of his life. Bilgere said Nemerov told him he felt it was a mistake to write just for other scholars and poets. I hope that story is true. I sure like it.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet and what would you ask?

AB: You know, every time I read a biography of a long-dead poet I admire, D. H. Lawrence, Elizabeth Bishop, or Gerard Manley Hopkins, I find out they were either mean drunks or really strange. Not sure I’d want to meet them. I’ve met Fairchild, Cairns, and Bilgere who are nice guys, especially George Bilgere. Maybe I’d like to meet Shakespeare, just to put that Andrew Marvell really wrote everything to bed once and for all. But I guess it would be Les Palmer; I’d just like to be with my old friend and teacher one more time. I owe that man so much. It would be great to say thanks.

Here's a good story for you. I love George Bilgere’s poem “Learning to Ride a Bicycle.” I once wrote to him and said I thought it was the best poem written in the last 50 years. He wrote back thanking me, but told me I was nuts, the best poem was B. H. Fairchild’s “Body and Soul.” So, I wrote B. H. (Pete) Fairchild and said, hey I know you never met him, but George Bilgere thinks your poem “Body and Soul” is the best poem in the last 50 years; Pete wrote back and told me to thank George, but he was nuts, everyone knew the best poem was Anthony Hecht’s “Grapes.” Mr. Hecht had died the year before, so I couldn’t write him, but no doubt the chain could have lasted forever.

Grant Compton lives in Abilene, Texas, and is completing the Professional Education program in curriculum and instruction at Angelo State University. He is currently an instructor at Cisco College, where he teaches psychology, education, and English.

All Instinct, Then Revise, Revise, Revise: The Suzanne Morris Interview

Interview by Katie Carpenter

Suzanne Morris, a recognized novelist, has ventured into the realm of poetry. With an impressive career spanning four decades, she has authored eight works of fiction, captivating readers from 1976 to 2016. Morris possesses a natural talent for crafting poetry, having achieved multiple publications without having any formal poetry training. Morris, a native of Houston, attended the University of Houston, majoring in English, and studied creative writing at Clover Park Community College in Tacoma, Washington. She currently resides in Cherokee County, Texas.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry? Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

SM: Long before I began writing poetry, I was a novelist, with eight works of fiction published between 1976 and 2016. I had no formal training in poetry, and I do not recall an interest in writing poems until I was well into adulthood. Along the way, I admired Emily Dickinson, the Lake Poets, Longfellow, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, and others.

I have an ear for music, an innate sense of rhythm, and a love of words, all of which I believe are fundamental to the writing of poetry. And, I have an instinct for building narrative, which is helpful. In my novels, I would occasionally include lines of verse, attributing them to the characters in the stories. And the narrator in my most recent novel, Aftermath, a survivor’s tale of the London School tragedy of 1937, becomes a poet over the course of the story. A selection of her poems appears as an appendix to the novel.

The transition into writing poetry as a major pursuit was gradual and seemed natural as I wound up my career as a novelist. By then I had come to admire a list of fine poets that is still growing, including Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall, Ada Limón, Langston Hughes, Sharon Olds, Claudia Emerson, Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Mary Oliver, Natasha Trethewey, and most recently, Jane Clarke. I know that all of them have influenced the way I write poetry.

With a background of writing novels, I have come to think of a poem as the distillation of a theme into the most vivid and economical language possible. This is quite different from the work of the novelist to enlarge on a theme.

My novels have tended to tie up the loose ends in the final pages– or, at least, the important ones. So, I’ve slowly learned to recognize where to leave off in a poem, and hopefully provoke the reader to take it from there.

How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to write a poem and how does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

SM: The idea for a new poem often seems to come out of the blue, yet I soon realize it has been forming in my mind for a while. Maybe I see something unusual, or someone makes an arresting statement that stays with me and becomes a refrain. Usually, I sit down and draft the entire poem, rather than just pieces of it; though not always. Sometimes the closing lines are the first to grab me and find their way to the page.

I often work for weeks on a single poem, revising then letting it sit; revising again, and so on, endlessly trying out different words, adding, deleting, moving stanzas around, until the poem feels about right. Once in a while, I get a bonus: a poem that comes out well on the first or second try. But I have learned not to trust that very far. Often, after I have put aside a poem as “done,” I pick it up weeks, months, or even years later, and find there is room for improvement. My early poems were often made up of three- or four-line stanzas. Gradually, I began writing more often in couplets. I don’t know why this has come to feel natural.

One of the things that I love about writing poems is being able to make up so many titles!

A novelist may work for years on a book, and for all those pages of words, there is, finally, just one title to contain all of them.

What topics or issues frequent your poems? Have those changed over time?

SM: Most of my poems center around situations I find compelling, and/or people with traits I find interesting. (This was also true of my character-driven novels). I grew up in the suburbs of Houston and did not develop an ability to closely observe nature until after I moved to East Texas. I greatly admire poets who are knowledgeable in the many areas where I am lacking.

One type of poem I especially enjoy writing is the ekphrastic form. Most of the time, these poems call for some amount of research beyond the painting or other work of art that inspires them. Since I spent years researching each of my novels, conducting research comes naturally to me. I have always sought variety in the poems that I write, so topics and issues are ever-changing.

I have read your poem "Telehandler Ballet" on Texas Poetry Assignment. What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page? Were there any new craft choices you made?

SM: I am all instinct when it comes to writing poetry, with its rhythm and cadence and voice. I feel more than know what I am doing. My poem, Telehandler Ballet, was among the poems that came out of the experience of losing my husband of 59 years, back in January of 2023.

My husband was a business owner who had always wanted to retire out in the country. When his dream came true, he purchased a number of pieces of heavy equipment to cultivate the property where we built our home.

Before he became ill, I never really thought much about the equipment, other than what could be accomplished with it. After he died, the time arrived to sell what would no longer be needed. Watching from a distance, near the end of the day, as the buyer removed the telehandler from our property, was a profound experience for me. I couldn’t hear the noise of the engine; I could only see it slowly moving across the green pasture, never to return. It felt like saying goodbye to my husband all over again. I suddenly saw that it moved gracefully, almost like a ballet dancer. And there was something truly beautiful about his relationship to all the equipment he used.

The poem grew from there. I just kept trying to put into words how this great hulking machine could actually be a thing of grace, and so the poem had an elegiac quality. It was the closing line, occurring to me after many drafts, that finally clenched the poem for me, put all of its meaning into just those few words.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

SM: I would advise young people who want to write and publish poetry to deeply respect the art, to work at writing every day, and to revise, revise, revise. Don’t think writing poetry is easy just because it’s short. It isn’t. Otherwise, be honest in what you write, honest with yourself, and with your reader.

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

SM: There is a wide range of poetic voices and styles to be discovered at The Texas Poetry Assignment. It has been a great pleasure for me to read examples from so many of them. I feel privileged that my poems are in such talented company.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

SM: I honestly don’t know how to contrast poetry written in one era with that of another. Styles of writing come and go, but a good poem is timeless.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet and what would you ask?

SM: I have no questions, but I would like to say, to all the poets I have come to love and admire in my lifetime, thank you for all you have given me.

Katie Carpenter is currently pursuing her master's degree at Angelo State University. She earned her B.A. in Strategic Communication from Howard Payne University in 2020. Her aspirations include becoming an English professor in the future

The Daily Privilege: An Interview with Chris Ellery

Interview by John-Nathanael Caesar

Chris Ellery is a poet and author of five collections: Canticles of the Body, Elder Tree; The Big Mosque of Mercy; All This Light We Live In; and Quarry. His works are published in various literary magazines and literature anthologies. From 1999 to 2000, he served as a Fulbright professor at the University of Aleppo, Syria, and co-translated the short story collection, Whatever Happened to Antara, by Walid Ikhlassi. Now retired, Ellery was an English professor at Angelo State University, where he taught creative writing, American literature, and film criticism.

I’ve read your bio and poems on Texas Poetry Assignment, and I’m wondering what else you might want readers to know about you and your background as an Angelo State University professor as it relates to you and your poetry.

CE: This seems like a good opportunity to acknowledge how fortunate I feel and how grateful that I was able to write poetry as part of my job, a job that I loved. I think I would have written poetry even if I hadn’t been able to use my presentations and publications toward promotion, but you never know. So, here’s a big thank you to the taxpayers of the State of Texas, who paid my salary over the years. I’ve always been conscious of this patronage and, honestly, have tried to give my fellow citizens their money’s worth in all my professional endeavors. I’m also grateful to the many administrators, colleagues, and of course, students who supported my career over the years and gave me the freedom and resources to develop professionally. Not everybody gets to combine vocation and avocation. I was really lucky.

Do you think your work as an educator and poet has satisfied you and your passions for the more nuanced side of life? By “nuanced side of life,” I mean the aspects of life that aren’t just the routine “9-to-5,” the aspects that philosophers might discuss in their works or that people need a cultivating of poetic consciousness to recognize.

CE: I found all aspects of my career as a college professor—teaching, writing, service—very satisfying, both extrinsically and intrinsically rewarding. Poetry—what I write and read—expresses and nurtures my interest in metaphysics, helps me grapple with the big meaning of life issues. More importantly though, it has made me alert to the wonders of the everyday. You find poetry in the 9-5 of work, study, relationships, the habits and impulses of biological existence. I like your use of the phrase “poetic consciousness,” which, if I understand you, is as essential to the perception of the “routine” as it is to the understanding of the “nuanced.” No doubt the best poetry—and I suppose the best philosophy—is rooted in common occurrences, ordinary existences, the daily privilege of being human.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry? Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

CE: It’s like one of those fairy tales in which a boy is out walking in a forest and a deer or maybe a maiden leads him off the path into an adventure he never anticipated. I took drafting classes all through high school intending to become an architect. I was also a Boy Scout and very fond of the outdoors, camping, and hiking. It was maybe in a merit badge pamphlet or more likely a book of campfire songs and stories that I came across the opening lines of Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road:”

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

The few lines immediately gave me indescribable joy. I had to look up and read the whole poem. I’d grown up reading the King James Bible and singing hymns along with pop music of the Sixties, so I wasn’t totally insensible to the power of language and rhythm. But this was the first time I really felt the transformative and transcendental power of literature: “[f]rom this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines.” It still gives me chills and so much gratitude and joy to read those lines.

This experience made me a reader, but I still wasn’t planning to be a poet. I took a journalism class and worked for the local paper. I went to college to major in radio-television. It was an up-and-coming field and seemed practical. I also had, however, a wonderful senior English teacher and another great literature class in my first year of college. That’s when I decided to major in English. At that time, I was writing more fiction than poetry and wanted to be the next Hemingway. I transferred as a junior to Arkansas Tech and enrolled in their brand-new Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. Karl Kopp was the poet-in-residence and quickly became my mentor. William Carlos Williams was his favorite poet. Gary Snyder, W.S. Merwin. That was when I really started writing poetry and thinking of myself as a poet. Karl encouraged me to submit to a little magazine, and I got my first publication. Thanks to a pipeline between Tech and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, I also got to hear readings by a lot of great poets—Merwin, Miller Williams, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg—and discovered the power of poetry as performance.

How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to write a poem? Is there a feeling that tells you that you’re finished, or is there a more formal process? How does the drafting, revision, and editing process work for you?

CE: It’s thrilling! It’s an adventure, an archeological dig, a journey to Middle Earth. Timeless archetypes keep you company. But it can be scary. You might encounter a monster. Don’t dial it in. It requires all you know and all you are. Skill and discipline. You have to put in the time, commit yourself to the page. I know I’m ready to write a poem when I sit down with blank paper and a pen. Something’s going to happen. It’s all so mysterious, even mystical. I think it’s best to say that I offer myself up to it. I’ve always kept a journal, and that’s usually where the seed of a poem shows itself first. A phrase or a line or an image or memory shows up and I want to see where it leads me, like that deer in the fairy tale. I also find ideas in my reading through a practice similar to lectio divina. In the early drafts, it’s important to let it flow. I usually write a lot of drafts before I type anything on the computer. Then I write a lot more drafts. Sometimes this is a matter of tweaking formal elements—diction, prosody, stanzas, line breaks. Sometimes I find the poem—the crux—in the twentieth draft.

Because of the number of drafts you often write before you call your poem “ready for publishing,” do you ever think that there are more revisions that could be done to it even after it’s been officially published?

I revise some poems for book publication, even after they have been published in a series or anthology.

What topics or issues frequent your poems? Have those changed over time? Did your time as a Fulbright professor at the University of Aleppo affect your topic selection for your poems?

 CE: Writing is a spiritual practice. My subject matter is the human condition, or what a Christian might call “incarnation,” or a Taoist, “flow.” I’m especially interested in that intersection of physics and metaphysics. I’m a nature poet. I’m a very political poet. These days I’m interested in age, though (oddly perhaps) less interested in death than I was as a young man.

The Fulbright in Syria, of course, affected me deeply. I came back a different person. But then we’re all different at the end of another year. My time in Aleppo and travels in the Middle East gave me some of my best poems. The Big Mosque of Mercy is my “Syrian book,” but I’ve written a lot of poems since then that draw from that experience. The Syrian civil war devastated me, and today it’s Gaza. My heart’s breaking. I’m going to write about it, of course, and I can’t worry about who might disagree or be offended by what I have to say. Your perspective on culture changes when you are welcomed into it and when you love and are loved by the people who are colored by it.

What is your goal when writing about Syria or Gaza: conveying feelings of the people there or something even deeper?

CE: Solidarity. Arabs, particularly Muslims, are vilified and objectified by many Americans, who as a rule don’t understand or care about their situation and suffering. I do. Because Syria is the cradle of civilization, there is a saying: “Every man has two countries: his own and Syria.” I feel that.

If writing is a spiritual experience for you, does the way you write it entail a similar experience for the reader? Did that influence the way you wrote The Big Mosque of Mercy?

CE: I can’t really say how readers respond to the book. The book expresses my longing and hope that human beings can someday learn to live together in solidarity and love.

I’ve read your poem “The Pyre of Hector” on Texas Poetry Assignment. What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page and the following: shape, in the flickering flame-like waves of the stanzas; line, in its enjambments, making extant the alliterations and rhythmic quality; music, in its repeated words that emphasize the transcendence of purity; comparison, in metaphors that contrast decay, disturbance, and peace and permanence; and balance, in how the chaos and disturbance of remains in the future is balanced by the peace, relief, and freedom given from the fires of cremation?

CE: Honestly, I don’t recall much about writing “Pyre of Hector.” It was prompted, obviously, by the “War Poems” assignment. Laurence always includes a little stylized visual icon when he posts an assignment. As I recall it was that icon of the Mycenean war helmet that sent me back to Homer. I’ve always found the conclusion of the Iliad extremely moving. Achilles kills Hector, the killer of his friend, even though it means his own death is imminent. Priam, Hector’s father, then goes to his mortal enemy to beg for his son’s body for burial. For a moment they are joined in their common mortality, in the shared emotions of love and loss and grief. The form of the poem is an homage to William Carlos Williams and his beautiful long poem, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower, with its Grecian sensibilities and allusions.

 Of asphodel, that greeny flower, like a buttercup

upon its branching stem— save that it’s green and wooden—

I come, my sweet,

to sing to you

William’s poetics should be studied and revered by everyone who admires poetry.

Do you think that when Hector says, “They too will know the burning and relief,” that on Priam’s side, he is referring to the destruction of Illion through its sacking and burning? In a way, the city is like Hector: dearly loved by King Priam yet destroyed. Additionally, little from the historical conflict and at-present layer of Troy that inspired Homer’s epic remains, allowing the real combatants and victims to rest peacefully and undisturbed.

CE: “They” refers specifically to Priam and Achilles, but yes, their fate is shared by both Achaeans and Danaans and indeed by all mortals, although the fire may be metaphorical rather than literal.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading and writing poetry, and publishing their work?

CE: Do it! Don’t listen to the voices (internal or external) that tell you that it’s too hard, that no one cares, that it’s all been done, that it’s a waste of time. I think everyone hears these demon voices but creatives probably more than most. You’re putting yourself out there. Self-doubt will always try to pull you back. So don’t listen. Just write. Just do it. But don’t do it with the ego, do it with the heart, the soul. If you’re trying to do something big to call attention to yourself, your little self, it probably is a waste of time.

Gerald Howard notes in Literary Publishing in the Twenty First Century that getting selected for publishing is like and NFL draft (p. 198-99). From your perspective and experience, if young poets are interested in being published, how do you think they should contend and navigate that?

CE: Read a lot of contemporary poetry. Study the markets. Go to poetry readings. Participate in open-mic readings. There’s no better way to get a sense of whether your poetry is connecting. Get feedback from readers and editors whenever possible. Workshops are always valuable. Most importantly, keep at it. The draft analogy suggests that hours and hours of practice go into developing your talent and skill—and indeed there is a lot of skill and craft involved. At most, I would guess I’ve published about 15% of the poems I’ve written over the years.

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest, and why?

CE: Jan Seale and Kathryn Jones come to mind because I know them. But there are lots of fine poets publishing on the platform. I like reading the ones I’ve never heard of.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from earlier eras, such as Victorian poetry?

CE: It would take more than a dissertation to answer this question. Somehow a favorite quote from William Blake pops into my head: “I do not reason or compare, I only create.” That seems sufficient, but I’ll just add that aesthetic tastes change with the times, but the Poet (I’m borrowing Emerson’s capitalization) is indispensable to every age and every society for the same reasons. Tennyson (since you mentioned the Victorians) was just as interested in sounding “the foul rage and bone shop of the heart” as Yeats was a generation later or as Terrance Hayes and Natalie Diaz are today.

That reminds me, back to the question of advice to poets: read, read, read! Read your contemporaries, read all kinds of poetry, present and past. Really delve into it. There is still a whole lot to learn from Chaucer or The Rubiyat of Oma Kayam, just as there is a lot to learn from Ko Un and Ren Gill.

It seems like the 2nd Industrial Revolution, Romantic Era, and ideas surrounding Modernist philosophy affected poets writing what we know today as Victorian poetry. What do you think are externals that affect contemporary poetry today?

CE: The environment in general and climate change in particular. I don’t know any poets who aren’t somehow concerned about the future of the earth. The internet is changing publishing and indeed media of all kinds; social media is changing the way people relate. I guess you would say this is an aspect of globalization. “The Pyre of Hector,” for example, can be read by people all over the world. Having such a broad audience was unthinkable when I was an undergraduate. Political and social division and dis-ease seems to be generating a lot of poetry. Identity issues, especially gender. A.I. might be a wild card that affects what means to be an author.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet and what would you ask? Why do you admire them?

CE: I might like to ask Rumi what he thinks about being a best-selling poet today in one of the most materialistic nations in the world. I can imagine how he might answer. I can imagine his inscrutable smile.

Rumi appears to believe love is a means of bridging the gap between God and man (tahwid) and man and each other. Do you think Americans, in their arguably consumeristic and commoditized view of love, may have lost sight of what Rumi was trying to say? Or is this a case of people getting their own meaning and not the author’s original ideas for their work?

CE: Alas, sincerely and single-heartedly following the path of love always has been and still is countercultural.

How does the poet navigate the concept of the Death of the Author?

CE: Personally, I think the intent of the author is pretty much irrelevant. Most of the time we don’t know it anyway. Bob Dylan has steadfastly refused to “explain” his poems or invoke intention, and I once heard Terrance Hayes politely acknowledge and deflect a student’s far-fetched reading of one of his poems without correcting or insulting. Meaning is not absolute. Reading is an art in itself, a collaboration. Some readers are good at it—attentive to the actual language and knowledgeable about the genre. Others are careless or ill-prepared. Either way, readers bring a lot of the meaning with them, and it’s no surprise and no big deal if a reader sees something in the poem the author never intended or thought about. It’s no surprise and no big deal if some readers are moved by “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and others find it obscure, pretentious, and solipsistic. Affective criticism and reader-response theory explain why the Supreme Court sometimes votes 5-4. They are applying the same texts—the Constitution and legal precedence—but interpreting them according to their own values and ideologies. So-called originalists may claim they are merely trying to get to the “original intent” of the framers, but we know there is more to it than that.

Would you then say meaning is the combination of the design and intention of the author (whereby their intention drives specific construction) and the interpretation and experience the reader has of the text?

CE: I think that’s a succinct way of explaining how meaning is created in the act of reading.

John-Nathanael Caesar is a master’s student in the Curriculum and Instruction: Professional Education program at Angelo State University and is a member of Kappa Delta Pi. He works as an Adult Education and Literacy Instructor at Howard College and is a host of the “On the Stoa” philosophy podcast.

Wondering about Watson

Interview by Kayla Pellar

E. D. Watson is a well-rounded poet, whose work is very well balanced and aesthetically unified. When not writing poetry, Watson works as an educator, which is prevalent in her poems. She is also a yoga instructor and cello player. I really enjoyed picking her creative brain and asking her the following interview questions.

I have read your bio and poems on Texas Poetry Assignment, and I'm wondering what else you might want readers to know about you and your background as it relates to you and your poetry? Are there other experiences in workshops or readings or publications beyond Texas Poetry Assignment you want to share?

EDW: I've published one full-length collection and two chapbooks: Honey in the Vein (Bric-a-Brac Press, 2023), Via Dolorosa & Advent Wreath (2024), and Anorexorcism (Bottlecap Press, 2022). Via Dolorosa & Advent Wreath was the winner of the 2023 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. I have an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Texas State University, and am a certified Practitioner of Poetic Medicine with the Institute for Poetic Medicine. I have taught many poetry writing workshops both online and in person. In addition, I am part of a team who runs When the River Speaks, a community-powered art and poetry zine published through the San Marcos Public Library (where I also work). I host a quarterly open mic, and offer poetry workshops.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry? Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

EDW: I have been writing poetry and stories since I was a child. My first memory of writing poetry was in response to the Challenger space shuttle explosion. I think I turned to poetry quite naturally as a way to write through and explore my feelings, and to memorialize the astronauts who died. I continued to write in high school (angsty love poems, of course), but I stopped writing poetry for many years in my 20s and early 30s. It just wasn't a part of my life at all, and in hindsight, I'm not sure why, except that calling myself a "poet" suddenly seemed silly and pretentious to me. I was a college dropout and waitress working three jobs to make rent and I had very little time, I suppose. My return to poetry didn't happen until after I'd graduated with an MFA in fiction writing. Something about that educational process tainted fiction for me, and though I still enjoy reading it, I really haven't written much fiction since I received my MFA. Poetry on the other hand still seemed wild and untamed and fresh and free of formula or "shoulds." I've always found opaque poetry distasteful and alienating, so when I began exploring poetry again post-MFA I was drawn to poems I could understand without having to do a deep analysis and multiple reads, such as Hafez, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton. These poets brought me back to poetry and gave me permission to write in a way that was straightforward and also beautiful.

How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to write a poem and how does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

EDW: I always write everything by hand first. I think there is something magical that happens with writing by hand, a deeper bodily connection. I know I need to write a poem when I have an experience I want to preserve and explore, or when I have complicated feelings about something, or when I don't know how I feel -- the poem will tell me. If I go too long (more than a week or so) without writing, then I start to feel alienated from myself, tense, generally untethered, and a little dead inside. Revision usually occurs when I flip back through my notebooks and find poetry that is interesting. Maybe there's one or two standout lines, and those are my "entry" into the poem's subsequent drafts. I type them up so that I can more easily delete, cut, paste, and play around with enjambment/punctuation, which I don't bother with in my first drafts.

What topics or issues frequent your poems? Have those changed over time?

EDW: Topics I'm drawn to are the body, the natural world, spirituality, and, lately, ancestors. My first chapbook, Anorexorcism, explores my own recovery from anorexia in my teens and early twenties, and the factors that contributed to patterns of self-harm, namely toxic Christianity, gender identity, societal pressure, and sexuality. Honey in the Vein presents a feminist retelling of the life of Saint Mary of Egypt, a little-known 4th-century saint and former prostitute. My version offers an alternative interpretation of a woman who lived life on her own terms and had no need of the church at all. Via Dolorosa & Advent Wreath recounts my pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2018, where I grappled with my own disintegrating faith while awakening to the political reality faced by the people of Palestine, and my own American complicity in it. The common theme shared by these books is a complicated relationship with organized religion. But lately, I've been exploring humanity's relationship to the earth, and my relationship to my ancestors.

I have read your poem "I AM NOT ASHAMED OF CRYING AT WORK WHEN I HEAR ABOUT ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING" on Texas Poetry Assignment. What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page? Shape? Line? Music? Comparison? Balance? Were there any new craft choices you made?

EDW: I wrote this poem while at work, moments after hearing about the Uvalde school shooting. I could not stop crying and had to get someone to cover my desk shift while I pulled myself together in the back of the library. This was one of those rare instances when I did not write by hand first, because I was at work and didn't have my notebook. I wrote it on my phone, primarily because I needed to do something with my big, messy feelings. I was also embarrassed by my "unprofessional" emotionality. My coworkers understood and no one shamed me, but being aware of my embarrassment helped me see how messed up it is that we weren't all crying, and of course I don't cry every time there's a school shooting--and that struck me as kind of horrible and perverted. So this poem became for me a kind of anthem for public wailing, grief and rage, even in spaces where it might be considered inappropriate, because, it seems to me, we lose our humanity little by little as we become inured to such violence. I don't remember making a lot of changes to the original draft. Another rare instance of the poem pretty much coming out whole. However, in hindsight, I would change some things, such as the inconsistent use of capitalization. I wanted it to retain the breathless, raw feeling I experienced that day, rather than have a considered, edited feel--and I think it does feel that way, but now reading back over it, that inconsistency bothers me a little. If I could change it, I'd remove all capitalization so that it felt more like the first draft in the Notes app.

As far as choices I regularly make, enjambment is one of my favorite poetry tools. I love how meaning can be doubled or expanded with a simple click of the Enter button. My poems tend to naturally come out with a lot of rhyme. Sometimes it's too much, and I have to tone it down a little so the poem doesn't sound corny. A little rhyme, especially internal rhyming, is pleasing to the ear, but too much is distracting and sing-songy in my opinion.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

EDW: My advice is: Do it! There's so much wonderful poetry out there. So much of what gets taught in school--at least when I was a kid--can be offputting. You know, Ye Olde Poesie kind of sixteenth-century stuff. Poetry is for everyone, not just English majors! There's amazing spoken word poetry people can easily find on YouTube, and so many up-and-coming young/queer/POC authors writing poetry that resonates with younger generations. Social media is a great way to discover new authors. Go to open mics and meet other poets! School or community writing groups can also be a good way to get feedback on work for those interested in learning how other people receive their writing--what you're doing right, and what doesn't land the way you hoped. The internet has also really leveled the playing field as far as publishing opportunities go.

Submittable accounts are free for writers, and that's a great way to find places seeking new work. You can also follow online submission notice groups, journals, and presses on social media to see who is taking submissions. Or go the DIY route and self-publish! There are so many options now, poets don't have to wait for some dude in an office in New York to like their work before they are able to share it with the world.

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

EDW: Gosh, there are so many! But if I can only choose two, then I have to say I've especially enjoyed poems by Sumera Saleem, and the late Loretta Diane Walker.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

EDW: It seems to me that there's less emphasis now on form than there was say, 150 years ago--although there are contemporary poets engaging with old forms and doing really interesting work. One example that comes to mind is Terrance Hayes' American Sonnets For My Past and Future Assassin. My book, Honey in the Vein, is written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic tetrameter). But on the whole, I sense an urgency in what contemporary poetry is communicating--fewer idylls and more manifestos. I'm also heartened to see publishers really start to expand and include the voices of Black/brown/Indigenous/immigrant/queer poets in their catalogs. There's a surge in interest in Palestinian poetry right now that is so beautiful and important. Poetry is like a river flowing through humanity over a very long period of time: epic tales, worship poems to ancient gods, frilly little19th century odes, spoken word, and Instagram poets like Rupi Kaur -- it all reflects the changing sensibilities and languages of readers across cultures and time.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet and what would you ask?

EDW: OK, don't roll your eyes, but I'd love to be able to chill with Mary Oliver for an afternoon. It would be nice just to soak up nature with her and loll on the banks of Blackwater Pond or let her take me to her favorite meadow and show me the butterflies. I probably would just ask her the names of things, and I imagine we would each quietly point at things we wanted to direct one another's attention to, like a toad or a mushroom. And then we'd sit down together with our notebooks and we'd each bang out a poem and read them out loud to each other. And then share a warm, slightly smashed peanut butter sandwich from my pack and coffee from a thermos.

Besides poetry, what genres do you enjoy writing?

EDW: Other than journal entries and social media posts, I really only write poetry these days! But I do a lot of other things besides writing: I also teach yoga and play the cello!

Kayla Pellar is a fourth-year elementary school teacher in Athens, TX. She is currently working to obtain her Master of Arts Degree in the Angelo State University English program. She has recently found a new love and respect for poetry.

Finding Her Place: Kathryn Jones on the Peace in Poetry

Interview by Marilyn Krum

After growing up on the Texas Gulf coast and later moving to Fort Worth, Kathryn Jones, a journalist, essayist, and poet, eventually found her way to her remote 125-acre Texas ranch that she has shared with her husband since 2004. Here, she is at home with her rescue cats, a Border Collie, two horses, and two miniature donkeys. On the sprawling ranch with limestone ledges, one can witness a spectacular view of the western sky with its “notched horizon.” The ranch, near Glen Rose with its cedar-lined rocky hills, is also a natural habitat for the golden-cheeked warbler, an endangered species of bird that breeds in Central Texas. Taking her inspiration for poetry from the natural world, she is able “to observe land, flora, and fauna up close and in detail in all seasons.”  It is this unique setting that provides a respite and a place of peace for Jones, who can often be found with a camera and notebook observing and writing about nature.

Born in Los Angeles, Jones moved as an infant with her father and mother to Texas as fast as she could.  Her mother was a small-town girl from Kingsville, yearning to return home. Raised in Corpus Christi and attending Del Mar College and Trinity University, Jones later launched her journalism career with the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. “Beach Glass” and “Oysters Don’t Feel Pain” are poems inspired by the Gulf Coast.  Jones completed her undergraduate degree at Trinity in San Antonio where she double majored in English lit and journalism, graduating in 1979.  She liked the fact that Trinity was a small campus and she fell in love with it. “I always loved to write,” she recalls, “and my professor encouraged me to take journalism classes and I found I was good at it.” After her work in Corpus Christi, Jones covered the Texas Legislature and then worked as a staff writer at The Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Times Herald, and as a writer under contract for The New York Times. She later freelanced for several prominent magazines, which she found allowed her more creativity.  “Journalism taught me to be an observer and to do research when I didn't know about something,” Jones notes how both of those skills have been helpful to her poetry. Later, after moving to the ranch, she and her husband, Dan Malone, landed teaching positions at Tarleton State University. “Teaching dovetailed with my interests,” reflects Jones, who taught journalism.  “I loved every minute of it.”

Jones describes her poems as featuring vivid imagery and detail. At Trinity, she worked for a professor who was a concrete or shape poet who ran a small literary press. Under this professor, she remembers studying T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. However, she followed the journalistic path and put serious poetry aside until 2020. Today, the “minimalist” desert and the western vistas of northern New Mexico also call Jones’ name.  After spending several summers in Taos as part of a graduate program through SMU, Jones earned a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies of the Southwest. Embracing the landscape and culture, she now looks forward to yearly travels to northern New Mexico, particularly Santa Fe. This is the place where her poems “Vessel” and “Resurrection” are set.

Jones’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas.  Her poetry has been published on Texas Poetry Assignment, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and in Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast.  She has also written a new nonfiction book, a biography of Ben Johnson, actor and world champion rodeo cowboy, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi in the upcoming year. In 2016, she was inducted into the prestigious Texas Institute of Letters, which Jones refers to as “a real honor.”

Although she began writing poetry as a child, Jones did not write poetry seriously until 2020 when her work as a journalist came to a halt. Tejascovido.com, now called Texas Poetry Assignment, filled the gap and provided connections to other poets during the pandemic.  Jones states, “It was brilliant and survived.”  With this group, writers were able to stay in touch, complete online assignments, hold monthly meetings online, and develop a sense of community.  “It was a great way to keep Texas poets together.”  She yearned to write. “Castaway at Midnight” (2020) is one of those poems. In this project, she found encouragement from TPA founder Laurence Musgrove and gained enough confidence to begin sending her work out. She also enjoys writing haiku with its simplicity and economy.  She has written “Haikus of Texas” and “Moon Haikus” and enjoys reading Matsuo Basho, the master of haiku. Her fascination with the natural world continues, and a favorite poet in this realm is Wendell Berry.

Her upcoming chapbook, An Orchid’s Guide to Life, is actually autobiographical.  Her father cared for the largest collection of orchids in the Southwest well into his 90s.  He was an expert and became known as the “orchid man of South Texas.” However, he was completely self-taught. The Samuel Jones Conservatory at the South Texas Botanical Gardens and Nature Center in Corpus Christi is named for her father. This is the place where her father taught classes on orchid care. Orchids are the largest family of flowering plants and, though temperamental, they can grow in dry places like mountains and rocks. Jones states that orchids became a metaphor. “You can learn a lot by observing nature.” In a news article from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Jones reflected on her father, who died in 2018, "He was the ultimate cultivator. He found learning about them, teaching and mentoring people about them to a new generation ... as gratifying as growing them."

For Jones, writing poetry has been gratifying as it helps her today to cope with and to process grief.  She coped with the loss of her parents in 2016 and 2018. And it is poetry that has helped her cope with her husband’s recent diagnosis. On social media, Jones refers to herself as a “writer and editor, poet, orchid keeper, lover of wildlife and wild spaces.” When she is not traveling to Santa Fe, hiking in Big Bend, and visiting other noteworthy landscapes in Texas, she finds peace outdoors at her ranch. She and I spoke recently about her background, process, topics of interest, and the craft and inspiration for her poems published on Texas Poetry Assignment.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet?  What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry?  Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

KJ: I remember memorizing poems as a child.  They all rhymed back then, like a song.  Memorization came easy to me and I had a voice that projected, so I was often asked to read poems and plays aloud during school functions.  My biggest influence was my high school English teacher, Dorothy McCoy, at W.B. Ray High School in Corpus Christi, where I grew up.  She opened the door to the English poets–Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Blake, and others.  After I graduated from high school, I went to a local junior college my freshman year–Del Mar College–and had the good fortune to work for a retired Baylor professor who was an expert on the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and was editing a book of letters between her and her cousin, John Kenyon.  My job was to transcribe the letters and then see if I could find links between the content and her poetry, which I did.  This professor had a fire-proof room in her condominium where she kept a large collection of letters she and her late husband had amassed over the years–letters of Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, and others.  Sitting there in the afternoons listening to her talk about a life of literature and letters never left me.  I always harbored a desire to write poetry.  I just didn’t know how to go about it.  I read a lot of poetry.  One of my favorite forms is Japanese haiku.  I’ve tried lots of different forms, but free verse is what I tend to do these days.

How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry?  How do you know when you are ready to write a poem and how does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

KJ:  I find inspiration for subjects from so many directions: an artwork, a photo, a video (like the one I saw of a murmuration), another writer’s poem, a memory.  If I’m doing research on a topic –for example, my poem “Perseverance” about the Mars rover–I’ll open a file and start making notes.  Then I think about format–would this be better in one long stanza or two-line stanzas or a form like a sonnet?  I start drafting and revising as I go along.  When I get a draft I’m happy with, I let it sit for at least a day, then look at it again and edit.  Sometimes I’ll write a poem quickly, in one sitting, but most of them take shape over several days.

What topics or issues frequent your poems?  Have those changed over time?

KJ:  Nature still provides me with a lot of subject matter because of where I live.  Sometimes I sit on my patio with my camera and take pictures or just observe.  Place is a subject I come back to over and over again.  This has changed over time as I’ve traveled more.  I love northern New Mexico and spent part of my grad school days at SMU there; the university has a campus at Ranchos de Taos. I’ve hiked and backpacked over the years, especially in Big Bend.  Canyons resonate with me.  A lot of my poetry concerns place and how it shapes people.  My parents died over the course of two years (2016-2018) and I have struggled with grief.  My new chapbook, An Orchid’s Guide to Life, which will be published in August by Finishing Line Press, deals with that.  Also, my husband was diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s last year after struggling with dementia for four years.  I’ve written about that more recently.  I’ve come to realize that I process grief by writing poetry.

I have read your poem “Murmuration” on Texas Poetry Assignment.  What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem?  How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page? Shape? Line? Music? Comparison?  Balance?  Were there any new craft choices you made?

KJ:  What I like most about Texas Poetry Assignment is that I write poems on subjects I probably otherwise would overlook.  When Laurence sent out a call for poems about personification, under the heading of “What It’s Like Here,” I struggled at first. The poem “Murmuration” came about after I saw a video on Facebook of a murmuration of starlings.  I got interested in what prompted murmurations, did some research, and came up with the poem pretty quickly.  I wrote it so it would look like a murmuration on the page, with stops and starts and a swirling sensation.  Every stanza is different, just as a murmuration is constantly changing.  Then I came up with “Perseverance” and enjoyed writing both so much.  Shape matters when it fits – I’ve written a poem called “Vessel” written in the shape of a Pueblo Indian pot.  With murmuration, watching birds swirling in the air made me think of music.  “Murmuration” is my most successful poem, I think, in terms of marrying subject and form.  I read it last year at a TPA poetry event at the Lark & Owl Bookstore in Georgetown.  I could feel the audience’s warm response.  It’s fun to read aloud. 

KJ:  Another poem: “Yearning to Breathe Free.”  I like to challenge myself with different forms I haven’t used before.  Somehow, I heard about a form called an “acrostic golden shovel” and was fascinated.  I had to try it.  In acrostic poems, the first letter in each line spells a word or phrase.  In this poem, the phrase is “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.”  In golden shovels, the last word in each line is borrowed from an existing work, often a poem or a song.  In this poem, the last word in each line comes from the end of the bronze plaque inscription and date on the Statue of Liberty from the poem “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus.  I thought of Walt Whitman when I was writing it.  Laurence called it a “fine poem” which made me very happy because he’s such an excellent curator and judge of poetry.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

KJ:  Keep reading poetry; that’s the best way to learn.  I have a folder on my desktop titled “Poems I Like.”  I subscribe to the daily poem from the Poetry Foundation.  I look forward to reading a poem in my inbox first thing every morning.  I put the ones I really like in the folder.  Sometimes a poem will inspire me to write a poem and I sit at my computer and start composing.  Keep a notebook.  Jot down things that come to you—possible subjects, a line that pops into your head, a description, your reaction to something. When I am stumped, I look at the list. I also look at titles and words [researching a word].  I also take a lot of photographs.  Many times I’ll go back to a photograph to help me describe something.  Give yourself permission to experiment.  Challenge yourself to write a poem a day; I’ve been doing that this year.  I spend 30 minutes to an hour early in the day or late at night. Getting in the habit of writing poetry and making time for it – not waiting for moments of inspiration – are key.  You might write a lot of poems that will never get published, but you are improving and getting experience, and for every dozen mediocre poems, there might be a great one.  Finally, I recommend subscribing to a newsletter like Duotrope, which compiles lists of mags and journals, and what I find especially helpful is deadlines coming up for poetry contests or open submissions.  Then enter contests – some are free – and take advantage of open submission periods.  Remember, rejection is part of the process in any kind of writing.  Don’t get discouraged.  Keep trying and you WILL get published!

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

KJ: I think Suzanne Morris is one of the best poets on TPA. She seems to get to the heart of what she’s writing about–she captures a word or a feeling.  Her poems always stand out to me. Katherine Hoerth, who is the editor of Lamar University Literary Press, is another favorite.  Hoerth’s poems have a lot of beauty and attention to form. They are very professional but also very emotional and approachable. Vincent Hostak is a regular and I love hearing him read his poems during our monthly Zoom readings.  His poems are so ethereal.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

KJ:  I would say that subject matter and form are the big differences.  In the 19th and early 20th centuries, most published poetry rhymed.  Much of it fits a formal structure – a sonnet, a pantoum, an ode.  Contemporary poetry usually doesn’t rhyme, and some literary journals say upfront in their guidelines that they don’t want rhyming poetry.  Stanzas are blown apart.  Lines and spacing are all over the place – sometimes too much so, in my opinion.  Sometimes scattered words and lines make it difficult to read a poem.  If there’s a reason for it, great.  Freed from the confines of the past, modern poetry can reach a wider audience and, in my opinion, communicate more emotion.  It used to be that poets write about nature or love, but these days the subject matter is a lot grittier and realistic.  Poets are more diversified, too, and that’s reflected in the subject matter about racism, social injustices, war, violence, politics, gender, and sexuality.  I’m enjoying the poems written by so many talented Native American poets (like Joy Harjo) and Latino poets (Ada Limon) these days –both U.S. poet laureates.  That would have never been possible in the past.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet and what would you ask?

KJ:  Oh, good question.  I guess it would be Emily Dickinson.  I would like to ask her how she found the inspiration and courage to defy the restrictions of her day.  How did she come up with her original wordplay, abrupt line breaks, and unexpected rhymes?  She still has such influence today.

Marilyn Krum is a retired high school journalism and English teacher from Gonzales, Texas. She currently teaches and tutors at Victoria College-Gonzales Center. She is pursuing a second career as a college English instructor and is currently working on a master’s degree in English at Angelo State University.