WWU instructor reveal the poet within 'Meanwhile, Back in Kansas'

| COURTESY PHOTO

The distinction between chapbooks and full-length collections is that chapbooks can range from 10 to about 35 pages (not an absolute), limited editions 500 copies or, mostly, fewer; while a full-length book is considered to be between 48 and 100 pages published in a lot of at least 500, if not more.

In most cases, chapbook manuscripts are selected for publication as a result of a contest or competition, the judge or judges having deemed that it has sufficient literary merit, whatever that means. In some contests, a winner will be chosen for publication and prize money while other submissions may also be selected for publication.

In my case, with this chapbook, it having been deemed worthy, the printing of copies was then dependent on enough people buying copies in advance. This is publication by subscription, once popular, now generally in abeyance. In this case, as with contests, the publisher decided whether or not to publish, not me. All I did was send the manuscript in, fingers crossed.

Q: Who are you, in your poems?

A: Do I hide behind my poems? They are perhaps the only place I don't.

In poetry, maybe all writing, the relationship is first to the mirror of the page, then to an audience. I remember a poem, whose author I, of course, forget, in which he wrote about always wearing a mask, of father, husband, son, teacher, friend, and of being able to take all his masks off only when writing.

The only time I'm a poet is when I am drafting and revising a poem, only in those moments. Otherwise, I am just another standard, unsorted human being with the usual aches, pains and worries.

Q: And these poems, in particular?

A: This book is simply a selection from poems written over a period of time that I thought well-written and liked. Many contemporary poets do themed books, wherein every poem relates to some central notion. In many contests, a theme is one of the selection criteria.

I don't do that. Individual poems I write reflect some preoccupation I had at the time, something in front of my face at a given moment, or something that happened, through some ineluctable process, to show up. In my next chapbook, "The Raw Silk of the Dark," all of the poems relate, directly or indirectly, to my divorce.

Q: How do you feel about reading your poems in public?

A: Reading publicly terrifies me. Even though it frightens me, I love reading. It doesn't matter where. I've read to empty rooms, the moderator/emcee and me, the audience having left after hearing a friend or relative read.

Nonetheless, it's one way of getting the poems out into the world, though I think it an incomplete way because audiences usually don’t have text with which they can follow along. The nuances the page provides are supplanted by the purely oral/aural nature of readings.

Given that. I think that one of the technical concerns of poetry, especially open form, is the management of sonic qualities through the crafting of line breaks, I am always surprised when I go to readings and the poets sound like they are reading sentences and paragraphs, not lines. What’s up with that?

Q: What happens "... when words won't come" — what do you do?

A: Poetry is no less a discipline than any other pursuit. Practice makes perfect. When the muse has gone AWOL, write about not being able to write. Sit down and begin typing because, like those famous monkeys eventually reproducing Shakespeare's plays, eventually something that can be worked and formed into something beautiful will emerge.

Real writing takes place from the second draft forward. There are days when nothing eventuates. Go do something else. Classrooms, 10-week quarters, are wholly artificial, yet, surprising as it may be, the requirement to make something can result in a first draft, terrible beyond belief. No matter how inadequate a first draft may appear to be, something can be done with it.

I tell my students that we are not concerned with good or bad, whatever those may be, that all writing can be improved. My interest is in having them write, turning the spigot on and then working with whatever issues forth. Whatever they do write, it’s up to their peers and me to help them figure out how to make it better.

Feelings of frustration are common, as are feelings of inadequacy, even when one is writing. Without those, what impulse to get better? Prolonged frustration with not writing eventually leads to writing. Any kind of writing, even very bad writing, is better than not writing. If the bad stuff can’t be improved, it doesn't have to be shown to anyone.

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