Though other jobs left me hungry to get to the other side of my brain, it was strange to spend so many hours a day at tasks that had absolutely nothing to do with my interests. When I began to teach, and to conduct workshops, my life felt so much more yoked together, so much more unified, that there was a kind of seamlessness. Nothing felt like wasted effort.
I have been very lucky, I think, to find my way to incredibly generous and skillful teachers and mentors. I’ve learned from all of them, in very specific ways. There’s something that happens in poetry, and in creative work in general, that feels more like a laying on of hands, teacher to student, than what we tend to think of as academia. I feel called to be part of this linkage. It seems to be how it happens. It’s a pleasure to pass things on and it forces me to learn things and see things clearly enough, deeply enough, to be able to articulate them. And so teaching is also a part of my own learning. The more I teach, the more aware I am of my own knowledge gaps.
TL: Do you have a certain approach or philosophy to the teaching of poetry and poetics?
Honest praise is terribly important. We often don’t know what we’re doing “right,” or well—what affects people. Punitive teaching models, I think, are overrated and can be constricting. We learn, I think, by inspiring one another, responding to one another; we end up sparring with one another, and no one wants to bring something yucky to the potluck. Meanwhile, every creative risk will lead to a greater sense of permission—true in workshops as well as in simply reading, which is also key.
TL: You
grew up in
SM: Certain images are going to come into the poems because of what is experienced—whether we can say that travel occurs in map-able places, ones we can locate in the exterior world, or in dreams, all of these things create a palette of imagery. Words themselves, as they are juxtaposed—as they ask to be juxtaposed?—may create other images that feel like, but are not drawn from, either dreams or lived experience in the world. And so, of course, there are many things that have entered my poems that may not have if I’d only stayed in one place—particulars about palm trees in wind, for example, that I might not have been able to imagine in detail without seeing them, over time, in different seasons and weather conditions. Likewise cottonwoods or the specifics of certain rooms and neighborhoods—but, so have, for instance, certain pieces of art or music.
Beyond what creeps into the poems in this way, I still think that place creates other predilections for, say, how we tend to experience the world—and part of what may be most exciting about this is the way that a significant amount of time in one kind of place influences the way another, perhaps entirely different in character, is seen. Something like this happens too, I think, as we accumulate other kinds of influence. My own poems occur within the company of other voices, voices who have told me, over time, what is already possible and what the limits are not—yet this does not mean I’m actively thinking of other poems or other art or other music while in the process of writing, though I can think of times when it has meant exactly this.
TL: I am curious to know what you feel are significant ingredients of the creative process; specifically, what do you feel are three essential elements of your personal approach to the craft of writing poetry?
SM: The first thing, I guess, is to listen for lines and to trust them when they come up—to write them down as they emerge, which may mean I have to repeat them for awhile if they strike in some situation where I don’t have a pen or can’t stop the car or something. It always feels like they emerge from a place between the brain and the ear and you can keep drawing them out as though they’re coiled like a tape measure—if you keep pulling on it, if you keep honoring what you hear, the words will keep coming. If you don’t, you’ll lose the poem. I have learned that the exact way a line comes, and by this I mean in its specific syntax and rhythm, will determine the course of all other lines—even if that first line is eventually cut or re-ordered. I have learned that if I don’t honor the exact line, I’ll end up with nothing more than a paraphrase—and the paraphrase will not lead to a poem. Music trumps logic. Music trumps meaning.
Which leads, I guess, to a second thing—I have found that reading a poem out loud is a great way to edit—once again, because music trumps logic. But there’s also something about being able to feel the way the energy moves. For several years I would spend hours trying different sets out loud before giving readings. It’s great practice for putting a manuscript together, because that’s essentially what you’re doing. I had to hear and feel all the different combinations and sequences I could imagine. In the middle of doing this once, there was a poem I liked a lot that I wanted to include in the set, but I had to, as Ralph Angel always says, “Get really honest” and realize that the energy just sank in the middle. I couldn’t figure it out. I thought it was a beautiful poem, and it had been an important poem to write because it represented a big leap in the way I was using language and imagery. I finally cut two lines in the center that a workshop-mate had suggesting cutting in a workshop two years before that, and the poem finally worked—no energy sink. The next time I sent it out, it was published. So in editing, I find—whether in my own work or in the work of others—there’s a sort of feng shui involved. I’m not talking about the use of mirrors or red doors or any of that, but of something much more basic—if you go back to the roots, feng shui comes fromwind and water—so it’s all about flow. What is the channel that best allows the poem to flow in its own way? Are there any obstacles or blockages? If you flip something, or delete something, or run it backwards, or re-order lines (once you have them), does it suddenly become more interesting? Does it suddenly become, in some way, itself? Curiously, if a poem is feeling a little limp or uninteresting, I may actually court the appearance of words or phrases that feel like interesting hurdles, that rough up the edges of things to shift from a more “normal” sense of unity and coherence.