RS:
We've known each other a long time, Rodger - since Big Table published your chap, Hope & Compulsion in 2009. What's the biggest difference between your writing then and now?
We've known each other a long time, Rodger - since Big Table published your chap, Hope & Compulsion in 2009. What's the biggest difference between your writing then and now?
RL:
We have known each other a long time, even though we've never actually met. It's funny. I thought we would meet when I moved to Boston, but at the exact same time, you moved to San Francisco!
I'm always working to improve my writing. I'm always reading and learning more and more about this art. I approached my writing back in 2009 with the same seriousness that I approach it now. I had the good fortune of studying with great poets like Thomas Lux, Stephen Dobyns, and Marie Howe. Their work made an enormous impression on me as a poet and as a teacher.
As poets, we are always reading, listening in on conversation on the subway, observing the world around us. Our perception and sense of the world changes as time passes, and I'm older now, so I see things a little differently than I did back in 2008 when I wrote those earlier poems. So i guess the biggest difference between my writing then and now is having aged and having experienced more. I'd like to think that I have spent the last 12 years refining my craft, but I don't know that I can be the best judge of that.
RS:
Whenever I work with a poet who has a flair for narratives, like you, I always want to ask - have you ever thought about doing a novel?
RL:
I have thought about writing novels and short stories. The problem for me is that my brain works in line breaks. I see the world in quick bursts of images. That's reality to me. Narrative in my mind is a series of insights, of lines, that link to form a metaphor. It's just the way my mind works. I'm drawn to those moments of lyric insight where something just sort of turns on in the brain after reading a line of poetry. It's as though something clicks and for a moment the entire universe seems altered.
Stephen Dobyns is a great example of a poet who is able to write stunning poems and also write stacks and stacks of great novels. I have never understood how his brain is able to switch between genres the way it does. I don't know that I have enough brain power to do that... Prose does something different for my brain. It's generally more linear, less associative. Insight for fiction writers comes from how characters find their way through a challenging situation. It's great to read, but I can't seem to get my brain to work that way from the other side of the book. I have wondered if my inability to follow through on a novel is because I'm not social enough? There seems to be something inherently social about understanding how a character might behave in a certain situation. I'm not sure. I'm definitely not the most social person. I read a lot of fiction and non-fiction, though. I actually read anything I can get my hands on. I switched to Kindle a while back so that I could carry my library with me everywhere i go. Some people carry their entire music collection, I carry books.
RS:
Kirkus praised your new book, Studies for a Self-Portrait, calling it "poignant verse that asks readers to look - and think - deeply." Do you think that is one of the main goals of poetry?
RL:
I do. That was a nice compliment. Poems should prompt us to think about the world. They should help us notice lives around us. They should motivate us to think about those things in a way that brings empathy and emotion into our lives. Poetry, all art, really, should inform our emotions on how we might live more thoughtfully. I love the Books on the T program in Boston for this reason. I love the idea of bringing poems into a public space where people who might not normally be exposed to books of poetry can encounter them.
RS:
Favorite tip for writing poetry?
RL:
Most poets would answer "reading," I think, and I agree, but I want to add "out loud" to that response. Hear your favorite poem in your own voice. It will let you get a feel for the cadence, for the connection between how the poem finds meaning and how the poem makes music with words. As Thomas Lux once said, fill your lungs with poems. In fact, I'd like to ask anyone who is reading this interview to stop here, pull out one of your favorite poems, and read it out loud as though it was the last poem you will ever read.
