April isn’t over! That means there is still time for us to observe National Poetry Month. This year, Himmelfarb’s two resident poets, Randy Plym and Deborah Wassertzug, interview each other about their journeys to poetry, what advice they might have for emerging poets, and more.
How did you discover poetry?
DW: My earliest memory of poetry is reading the poems and rhymes in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in my father’s crumbling paperback copy, which he bought to learn English as a young man in Argentina. We read it at bedtime, and I was so taken with the nonsense poem in the book, “Jabberwocky,” that I eventually memorized it.
RP: During my childhood, my mom would make food for the widows at our church. In junior high, one of them gave me a few Modern Library books, including the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe, whose poetry of the beautifully doomed appealed to the undiagnosed emo in me. I started writing on a whim and felt I had discovered something useful and important to me.
What does poetry mean to you? What draws you to this art form?
RP: Children draw, teenagers write poetry, and most adults do neither. Those who continue typically have a powerful reason to do so. People talk about “artistic expression;” I think what people experience as “angst” is the urging of art desperate to be given shape. I’m a Gemini and deeply conflicted person. Writing helps bring the sides of me into some sort of productive union.
DW: Artistic expression of all kinds is important to me, but when it comes to creating, I most strongly connect to the verbal compression and abstraction of poetry, as well as its musical elements.
Is there a book of or about poetry that's essential to you?
DW: I have a lot of favorite books on the craft of poetry, including the very unique Rhyme’s Reason by John Hollander. In this book, he explains different poetic forms by writing poems in those forms, which explain how to write them. It’s pretty amazing! As far as a collection of poems, there are just way too many to mention that I love, across many eras, but to name just one, I am a big fan of Philip Larkin (one of the greatest librarian-poets), and his collection The Whitsun Weddings.
RP: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke won’t teach anyone how to write, but it provides excellent advice for living deeply, closer to the core of things. It’s a well that I frequently return to. As far as poetry itself goes, I was really inspired by Rumi back in the day and his ecstatic mysticism.
Do you have a philosophy of writing? If you don't, is there some formulation that now comes to mind?
RP: As best you can, turn off the interpretive mode while you're writing. Don't let your left brain know what your right is doing. Latent in everything is incredible beauty, mystery, and depth, and you risk spoiling it if you consciously try to mangle it into neat, easily analyzed rows. For this reason, I've always used dream content in my poetry. At least while writing, the image is an elf, the critic a huntsman who drives the elf away.
DW: I agree with turning off interpretive mode, or as one of my earliest poetry teachers instructed, “Quiet the censor.” My philosophy of writing probably aligns with my philosophy of life: Fake it ‘til you make it! In the poetry context, this means finding poets and poems I like, and trying to emulate them in the hopes of incorporating new tools into my practice.
Do you have a tool or practice that you use to help when you are stuck?
DW: I am fond of the Oblique Strategies cards that were developed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. These started out as a deck of cards (now available as a free app) with suggestions or mottos which can be helpful when one gets stuck on a project. One of my favorites, of course, is, “Try faking it!” Another fun one is, “Do something boring.”
RP: I practice what the psychologist/cognitive scientist John Vervaeke would call “frame-breaking.” Sometimes you have to live through a writing problem, but sometimes you just need to change the way you’re thinking about it. This idea is reflected even in the etymology of “solution,” which chemically speaking, requires the dissolving of a solute in a solvent. Practically, frame-breaking can be as simple as talking through the writing problem out loud, which can reveal assumptions or flawed conceptions or missing emotional architecture.
Want to share a poem of your own?
RP: I want to share a series of quatrains that I published in Azure Literary Journal, mostly as encouragement to potential writers. This started as a writing exercise (a simple schematic of writing quatrains loosely themed on numbers) and ended up becoming one of my writing successes.
DW: Here’s a poem I wrote last year and revised recently. (Yes, the title was inspired by the solar eclipse we had last year.) It’s unpublished.
What are some insights from teachers that you continue to keep in your mind as you write?
DW: Phillis Levin, a poet I studied with in undergrad and then again in New York at the 92nd Street Y, said during class once, “While you are playing Bingo, you play by the rules of Bingo.” This was in reference to someone’s poem which was written in a specific form – poetic forms can be played with, but ultimately, if you are hoping for the form to be recognized by your readers, there are elements of form that need to be preserved. In a later workshop, she said, “the need to communicate is the death of poetry.” Meaning, poetry isn’t an email or a term paper or a magazine. A poem requires a certain amount of abstraction to make it succeed. My favorite teachers have been the ones who teach through compelling aphorisms or metaphors.
RP: It sounds like my experience was totally opposite. My teachers pushed a brute conformity to art, my development has mostly involved striving (struggling?) to prove them wrong. I started writing on my own and never liked anything I’ve written for a workshop. It’s okay to forge your own instincts.
What advice would you give someone who wants to get into poetry or go deeper into writing?
DW: There is no substitute for reading and reading and reading. The more you read, the more you will get to know the landscape of poetry. After reading, try to imitate the style of the poet you’ve been reading in a poem of your own. I think workshops are a great way to learn and also to build your writing community, and are so easy to access now that many are offered on Zoom.
RP: Create a log of interesting things you see (a note app works, but you can also go old soul and carry a Moleskine or the like). Logging this way creates a surplus of material to draw from, trains observational and descriptive skills, and (can) cultivate appreciation for the vastness of life. At least in my case, writing has helped cultivate a Zen/stoic outlook, since anything that happens to me – especially the negative things – is only useful material for art.
I would tell anyone who wants to get into poetry – or any other art form – to keep with it; you’ll be astonished at how persistence can develop you.
Places to learn how to write (poems and other genres):
The Writer’s Center (Bethesda, MD)
The Muse (Hampton Roads, VA)
Grackle & Grackle (Houston, TX)
