Interview by Jessie King
Q: What inspires you as far as the subject matter of your poetry? There seems to be a lot of nature imagery, but the poems don’t necessarily feel naturalistic. What inspires you toward this seemingly contrasting feel?
A: My own life, what I see or experience or feel or know or remember…that is where my poems come from, for the most part. Those things combined with other things. There is a lot of nature in my life—I grew up on many acres in a beautiful valley in Montana. I have traveled quite a bit. I lived in Arizona for 7 years. And now I’m living on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. All of those experiences have been intensely connected with their landscapes, with their creatures. With their climates and quantities of water or light or warmth.
I don’t know if I understand, exactly, the distinction between nature and naturalistic. Maybe by naturalistic you mean western culture’s consensus reality agreement on what does and does not happen in nature? If so, the nature in my poetry probably won’t always look like that. But I do feel like the experience and portrayal of nature in my poems is as clear and as true as I’ve known how to make it. Is how I have experienced nature.
I do believe that nature is fully magical and fantastic and wonderful and horrible and inexplicable and as enormous as enormous can be.
My life is that way, too. Our human world is that way, too. Those are my inspirations.
Q: Your poetry isn’t the most straightforward or narrative. What is your response to people who find it difficult to relate to or understand? Is that something you strive for when writing?
A: I don’t know what my response is to those who find it difficult to relate to my poetry. It’s probably different all the time. Inside my own self, and probably invisible, the most common response I have is a small, familiar, present-since-childhood pinch of sadness in my heart and gut that reminds me that I am a separate human being from those I love or am trying to be near. “Experience is only purely itself in the completely present moment, and for a quite unenlightened person like myself, those completely present moments are the rarest, briefest, most special and fleeting moments in my life.” Which is painful. I think maybe I’ll spend my whole life trying to merge my whole being with the beings of my parents and siblings and friends and husband and children and teachers and students and someone reading a poem I wrote and particular creeks, a few mountains, a cat or two, a horse or two, and so on. I think my poetry is full of that instinct…of trying to be near.
So no, difficulty relating or understanding is not something I strive for in my poetry. I strive for just the opposite. Though I do understand and believe difficulty and the inability to relate or understand to be true and present in the world, and so, should also be true and present in poetry.
But your question. I would agree that I don’t write narrative poems, though I do think there is a lot of narrative present in my individual poems and in my books…the movement of and connection between the poems in the books. But I don’t know if my poems are straightforward or not. For me, for who I am, they are certainly as clear as I know how to be about whatever I’m struggling to say at that moment. And usually, I’m trying to include things that might not, in a casual conversation, usually be included. This might make my poems different from a casual spoken English. But whether or not any speech or writing is ever straightforward, I’m not sure.
I just looked the word up, and see now why I was confused. Straightforward can either mean moving straight ahead (no, my poems don’t usually do that), or free from deceit (I do think my poems are free of Deceit, though perhaps not always free of deceit, which is needed, isn’t it, to protect and promote one’s heart and loves and histories and secrets and truths and Truths?)
It seems, to your point, that the two most common responses I have to my poetry are strong and opposite. Either…frustration because the poems feel difficult. Or a connection to the poems, and a sense of being able to understand them easily even though they are not narrative (which is our culture’s most familiar way of speaking and reading).
Often, people who wouldn’t call themselves readers of poetry have the second response. And people who have heard me read my poems at readings.
It’s my hope I would be able to honor all the responses people might have.
Q: Most of your poetry is from a first person perspective, yet is not limited by that single perspective. How much of what you write is from personal experience and how much from imagination?
A: I suppose I can’t separate imagination from experience. I know what you mean; it’s really a beautiful question. For me, to answer, it goes something like this. Experience is only purely itself in the completely present moment, and for a quite unenlightened person like myself, those completely present moments are the rarest, briefest, most special and fleeting moments in my life. My experiences are instead almost always infused with, and experienced with, my imagination. The filtering of my experience through my own mind and heart and spirit. My own memories and limitations and hopes and the stories I tell myself or the stories I accept from others.
So, in that vein, all of my poetry comes from my experiences-and-imagination.
The following can be answered in a word, a phrase, a sentence…
Q: Name a writer who is currently making you jealous.
A:I greatly admire, am touched by, the poems that Carolyn Guinzio is writing.
Q: What kind of child were you?
A: This is a really sweet question. I hope someone asks me this once a year for the rest of my life. My mom and dad are visiting right now, so I asked them how they remember me as a child. My dad says, “Normal.” My mom says I was an easy child, and not influenced by others. My dad adds, “Adventurous.” My mom says, “Yes, you jumped off the high dive when you were two years old.” My dad says, “Does she want to know if you had a messed up childhood and that’s why you’re a poet? We have no idea how the hell you turned out this way.” My mom says, “You were affectionate.” My dad adds, “Sensitive.”
I personally remember an ongoing fantasy that I was either a) Sacagawea or b) the Hobbit or c) a horse or d) a dolphin.
Q: What is your relationship with rejection like?
A: Warm. Tender. Long.
Q: What book did you suffer for the most, and why?
A: I suffer and am elated by all of them, in totally different ways.
Q: What was the greatest surprise for you in your most recent writing?
A: I am astonished that I am writing essays, creative non-poetry, not sure what to call it.
Q: What writerly habit would you most like to break?
A: I want to say so many, and also none. For argument’s sake, I’ll say loneliness and too much selfishness. What the hell, let’s also give up fear. And worry.
Q: Lastly one random fact to top it off… What did you have for lunch today?
A: A cheese quesadilla.
Sarah Vap is the author of American Spikenard, winner of the 2006 Iowa Poetry Prize, and Dummy Fire, winner of the 2006 Saturnalia Poetry Prize. Her third collection, Faulkner’s Rosary, is forthcoming from Saturnalia Books. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula with her family, and is the poetry editor at 42opus.
