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Did you always know you wanted to write? I’ve been writing poems as long as I can remember. I loved notebooks as a child, and I loved the sound of words. My first pet was a black and white bunny that I received around the time I was 5. I named her Chutzpah. I am not Jewish and was not raised in a family that spoke Yiddish. But I was living in New York City, and I picked up the word from a sauce commercial that was on tv. Even then, I was always storing away little pieces of found language that felt mysterious in meaning and fun to say. So, some part of me clearly always wanted to be a poet. Who are some of the writers you hold most dear? T. S. Eliot. Emily Dickinson. Anne Carson. Susan Howe. William Faulkner. Marcel Proust. And Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse was the novel that convinced me as a freshman in college to devote my life to literature and become a poet, no matter what. It was the most poetic writing I had ever read – despite being a novel – and I recently re-read it earlier this year and had that feeling confirmed. I could live in the “Time passes” section forever. How has working in marketing and publicity at the University of Chicago Press and as Poetry Editor at Black Ocean influenced you as a writer? Being surrounded by books and authors every day is incredibly humbling. I have no ego about what I do – nearly everyone in my world has written a book, and I see 600 new ones every six months. I know how incredibly competitive the literary and publishing world is, and I know how many books that are smart, powerful, and creative never receive the attention they should. My career has made me a very grateful writer. How do you know when a poem is ready to send out into the world? It’s entirely instinct. And sometimes I’m wrong. How has living in Chicago influenced you and your writing? I think there is no better city in America to be a writer. I am blessed to be a part of a big community of poets and writers here, and it’s truly a community. It’s not competitive. It’s supportive; it’s another way in which Chicago earns its “city of big shoulders” nickname. Everyone is out to help one another, to make connections and introduce you to new writers and friends. There are many wonderful reading series, each with its own personality and all with engaged and consistent audiences. I don’t get to anywhere near as many readings as I’d like, but I love knowing they are happening. You host the reading series, Poetry & Biscuits, and it seems you excel at building community. Do you have thoughts or advice on nurturing a sense of community, as writing can so often be a solitary endeavor? Don’t wait. Don’t think you have to be a Martha Stewart-level hostess. Don’t think you have to have a big space or any space at all. It can be an online community of a few friends who share work and keep each other accountable. It can be an informal book club. And, of course, it can be a regularly scheduled meet-up at a coffee shop or bar. The most important part is building this network, reminding each other that, especially in these dark times, there are other people who believe in literature, language, creativity, art, and the human. We all need that. Your Poetry & Biscuits newsletters are deeply poetic and it seems that you approach life – whether it's a piece or writing or a recipe – as a kind of poem or work of art, what would you say to this? Do you have a general set of guiding principles? I’m truly honored that you think so, because if I have achieved this, then I achieved exactly what I have wanted for my life, which is for there to be no separation between life and art. It means living so that every act is one of observation, critical thinking, and/or creative making. Day jobs and their rote communications and bureaucracy certainly get in the way of this. But, in every moment that’s truly mine, I try to choose the side of art. Congratulations on your forthcoming book, The Book of Marys and Glaciers, coming out from Tupelo Press! How did this book come to be? Thank you – I am still surprised the book will exist, as I am every time I publish a book. The book is composed of three long sequences of poems, and the longest sequence, “Dust Cover” was written first. I had never really been to the desert until about five years ago, and I immediately fell in love. Yes, it was the loneliest, emptiest place I could think of. The vastness, the overwhelm, the uncanny of is this really Earth? But, I began to realize that deserts, despite their definitions, are not empty at all, but full of many things, if even also full of emptiness. And, there are also many kinds of deserts, not just the sandy hot kind, but the cold, glacial kind, the echoing of space kind, and the urban and domestic kind. Deserts, it turned out, were everywhere I looked. And, so the poem began. Could you share how the book explores space, emptiness, and quietude (as mentioned in the description)? I am a poet who is very grounded in place as much as the process. In the case of the title poem, Italy and Alaska. It was in Italy where I found myself confronted with the first Marys. But it was never just Mary. It was Mary with the angels; Mary with a baby; Mary with the wisemen. She was never just Mary, but always defined in relationship to someone else. I kept thinking that all Mary wants is to be alone. Less than a year after starting the notes on these poems, I was in Alaska in the Prince William Sound listening to the calving of glaciers. And, I kept thinking about Mary again. The solitude and magnificence of a glacier that calls out as it metaphorically gives birth or calves as it slowly sheds itself into shards. One day, the last of its language. They all had something in common to me, and that’s a place these poems keep trying to interrogate, to press a finger deep into. You write of solitude and silence beautifully: “A woman alone is entirely herself. A woman alone leaves excess in her wake, every portion too big. In the company of others, she takes up no space, but alone, she is the space.” Could you speak to how solitude plays a role in your writing practice and life? Do you intentionally carve out time for solitude? And last but not least – how can we all, especially women, practice taking up more space? I grew up as an only child, and so being alone comes rather naturally to me. I barely survived my freshman year in college dorms and moved into a studio apartment on my own as soon as I could. My husband and I have been married for nearly 25 years, but for much of that time, he has had jobs that have required him to travel frequently (sometimes every week). Those evenings alone are definitely key to my writing process. I talk out loud to myself constantly, and I usually compose poems aloud as well—I’m always working through a thought and its sounds; and I can only do that alone (or with my cat). I am one of those weirdos who truly enjoys dining alone at a restaurant (as long as it’s not too frequent an occurrence), and I also love being on my own in a foreign country. And I wrote those lines doing just that—having lunch on my own in Italy, independent and joyful. As a woman, independence has always been something I’ve prized. I love being married to my husband, but I need to know that at any moment, I can take care of myself completely. I think cultivating a strong sense of independence is the first step toward learning how to take our place in society and not apologize for it. You write: “Our days are squares of everyone’s posturing. Twice filtered and retouched...I look at all of us and see our need.” This encapsulates the attention economy so well. How would you describe your relationship to social media? What would you say to writers who feel pressure to be on social media but prefer not to be? My Gen X self hates social media and longs for the 90s (in oh so many ways). Don’t let anyone pressure you into it. As I tell all my authors at Chicago who ask, if you’re not already doing it, don’t start. You need to be comfortable with it; it needs to feel authentic, and it needs to be consistently maintained. If it’s not natural to you, it’s not worth it. It’s not natural to me, but somehow I find myself a middle-aged woman in charge of a publishing company’s social media strategy. So, I can’t escape it and need to know how it works, but I actively pine for it all to implode. It is one of many failed utopian promises of the internet age; it didn’t make us better informed or bring us closer together as a society. Instead, it just taught many of us the power of good lighting for selfies. You write: “Ask me in any language / I stumble just the same / All communication is through fragmentary / expression, questioning and guessing / The listener carries the burden of communication” and “We are writing our own dictionaries with each attempt to explain to each other.” How do you think we can all be better listeners and speak to one another’s worlds? That is a really big question, and I wish I had the answers. I think part of the problem is that we’re not really listening at all these days. We’re talking over each other. We’re scrolling and scrolling, even while we’re streaming something on TV. We’re being pinged by email and Teams messages and texts and calendar reminders. We’re always doing at least two, if not four or more things, at once. I love my cat Maya because several times a day, she gets demanding. She climbs over my laptop and onto my lap or my chest, and insists that I put my computer or phone down and take a break. And just sit still. I listen to our breathing. I listen to the birds in the big tree out front. I listen to the squirrels on a chase, the delivery drivers with their music turned up, the passing threads of conversation from neighbors out walking their dogs and babies. I think it all starts there. Putting down all our distractions and sitting still. You start to feel human again, not just someone plugged into a machine. And regaining our own humanity will lead us to acknowledge it again in others. What are you currently working on? I am a project poet, and my next, in an ode to my NYC upbringing, has the working title of “Bridges and Tunnels.” I recently finished the “Bridges” sequence, and you can see a selection from it at Periodicities. The sequence is a reckoning with family history that also engages in dialogue with Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots by John Swanson Jacobs (brother of Harriet Jacobs). Do you have any advice for young writers? Read. And then read some more. Read widely – anything that sparks your curiosity. And then, listen. Poems are happening all the time. Take notes.
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