Conducted by Shivana Souchet
Ithaca College Intern to Cayuga Lake Books
- How many years of writing do these poems span?
I constantly work on poems but not all of them are new. In this case there are poems that took 40 years to get them “right” and some that were quickly done.
- Some of your poems, such as “Last Words”, are written about friends you’ve known who have passed. What was the process like for you composing these poems?
I’ve written quite a few memorials and obituaries, some for family and others for friends. In fact I am working on one right now. It occurs to me that I returned “home” in 1974 after graduate school and other travels to be with friends and family and now, 50 years later, I’ve also been here for them at the end. I try to honor them with an honest, earnest evaluation, with some sense of loss and sadness but more commonly with pleasure at having shared this round with them.
- How did you decide on “How I Became A ϨhamaϨ” to be the final poem of your collection? What do you hope the mysterious-looking title will suggest to readers?
Well, as usual, I didn’t decide; the poem complete with title chose me. And it struck me quite suddenly. This is one poem that I made very few changes on after its writing. I chose to put it last because it is a summation. In my previous book, Hard Work in Low Places, the manuscript ended with two poems describing an Angel of Death and an actual suicide (of a poet), heavy stuff. This time I had a poem that came easily and described my own state with some humor. I modified the word shaman to a variant spelling to suggest that it was a state particular to me, not whatever others may think a shaman ought to be. The poem describes an attempt to be of help to another person. To identify three sources of this thought, many years ago I read and absorbed ethnologist Bronislaw Malinowski’s Magic, Science and Religion, which suggests that magic (and perhaps religion) exists because human beings cannot accept that their fondest desires will not be efficacious. I was also reading and working on W.B. Yeats’ last poems and his A Vision which implies that one lifetime may prove not to be enough to work out one’s fate. And finally, I worked with the folklorist Louis B. Jones whose Things That Go Bump in the Night suggests that “ghosts” may be, as in Yeats, postmortem attempts by spirits to achieve their destiny. They come to the living for help.
- Many of the poems in this collection are dedicated to others. Have those persons influenced the specific poems? Who are some people who have influenced your poetry?
My family of course and teachers. The book has a dedication to Eugenia Friedman, Elaine Gill, and Hilda Wilcox who were my poetry and life mentors at various times. The dedications do indicate strong feelings on my part. Among poets I admire, but do not necessarily imitate, are Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Jim Harrison, Lorine Niedecker, Millen Brand, Rainer Maria Rilke, Denise Levertov, Theodore Roethke, Pablo Neruda, Antonio Machado, Catullus, Constantine Cavafy, James Wright, and Gaius Catullus…. There is no end.
- Some poems in this collection, such as “Plate of Rain”, feature beautiful descriptions of nature. What is the relationship between your connection to nature and your connection to poetry?
My connection to nature is only challenged by my connection to books. But I live in nature whereas I buy, store, read and refer to books. Fifty years ago, I realized that poetry would not support me, or if it could by my teaching, I’d have to choose between writing and teaching. So I found work with what used to be the U.S.D.A. Soil Conservation Service, my first real job. After that, it followed naturally that I’d be employed, and volunteer, with agencies and organizations that would maximize my time outdoors. Because involvement with nature requires informed sensitivity as well as some specialized scientific training, I got that by doing it. For example, I can identify which organisms inhabit specific streams and lakes and what their presence means about the quality of that body of water. I’ve even cited this kind of information in poems, much to the bemusement of my readers. But my conservation work over forty years was a delight. During that time I always wrote but seldom published.
- What were the greatest challenges for you when creating this collection?
Sheer work, hands, brain and eyes. It was a large pile of paper plus some pieces that only existed electronically before it was a manuscript. Then it was a smaller selection, then it was an attempt to impose order over pieces written many places and sometimes years apart, and to have rational sections. Then it was almost a manuscript, but I had to seek editorial help and received some (rejected others). Then proofreading, first for the CLB editors and later for the printer, time after time, correcting errors of all sorts, typos, grammatical, conceptual, punctuation, line length, type size, italicization and thinkos. Thinkos are the big ones. I’d like to think I caught all of them.
- “Excessive Oxidation” speaks to a distressing reality about the current state of the world. Did you find this poem was a difficult one for you to write?
Not at all. I don’t think there’s any doubt what direction we are going. Nor the world our descendants will inherit. But the Pandemic is a better model of a Serious Problem. My imagination finds it easier to see a world without humans as a result of disease rather than from climate change. (see the end of “Round About”). I doubt that either can be avoided.
- Did you have a specific audience in mind when creating this collection?
Yes of course, since beginning writing I’ve always wanted to be read by the people of Upstate New York, however you define that.
- Many of your poems, such as “Attention”, speak about your earlier life and reminisce about experiences with your family. How have these experiences shaped your poetry?
I must object to the word “reminisce”. As in answer #5 about my connection to Nature, I am part of my Family in the same way I am part of Nature. I grew up in what seems to me a common, extended family, actually two of them, my father’s and my mother’s. It would be sad to say, “They have provided me with material,” because in fact I loved and sometimes feared them. Had no choice. Luck of the draw, you know. But in poetic terms, my maxim is, don’t look back. So I try to bring them into the present, with me.
- What does the term “Ground Truth” refer to?
With so much research done with technology in laboratories, think tanks, and test plots and so much surveillance provided by remote sensing, such as topographic maps, satellite imaging, aerial photographs, ground-penetrating radar, geographic information systems, and computer models, and so much action guided by algorithms, Ground Truth is the insistence on actually visiting and walking over a site, gathering information through first-hand observation, what philosopher’s call “empirical evidence” as distinguished from inference. You know “boots on the ground”; this is like that without the boots, though a good pair is often necessary.
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