[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hello, welcome to Worth Quoting sponsored by Florida Community
College at Jacksonville.
I'm Mary Sue Koeppel, the editor of Kalliope,
a professor at FCCJ.
And with me this afternoon is Elizabeth Seydel Morgan
who asked me to call her Buffy.
That's right.
Welcome, we're so pleased that you're here
in Jacksonville and--
Thank you.
It's great to see you.
I just saw your latest book called
Parties, which for some time has been out of print.
You published it last year in 1988
and it's already out of print?
To what can you attribute such wonderful, wonderful
salesmanship?
Well, I have a lot of friends, like my friends here
in Jacksonville, who have happened
to have attended the same college I went to
and I attribute a lot of the sales of my book to that fact,
that I went to Hollins College in Virginia,
which my shirt will testify to at some point.
These friends of mine around--
it's certainly in the eastern seaboard,
have invited me to come to their town.
And that has accounted for some of the sales.
The other reason is that they're so fantastically good.
Of course, and I'm not saying that with irony or satire.
Poetry is hard to sell, that's true.
And even though this was a small addition, which all publishers
will narrow their editions of poetry
because they don't expect for it to be on the New York Times
bestseller list or anywhere else like that.
And they'll limit the edition, but it's--
I think that my poems are more accessible
then people are used to who read contemporary poetry.
Poetry written today sometime eludes the understanding
of the reader.
And people don't like that.
They don't like to read what they don't understand.
I think another thing, Sue, is that my poetry, written
by a woman, an older woman who's writing about experiences
of being a woman, has touched a market probably
among women, although a lot of men have bought my book.
I've signed them for them.
I think it's just touched something in women,
that they like to read about experiences that they
themselves have been through and want
to be able to put into words.
So you find a lot of identification
as people read your poems.
Do they tell you so?
Oh, yes.
Do they write you letters?
Oh, yes, yes.
Telling [INAUDIBLE].
Come up to me after readings and say,
that's the way I felt when my husband died.
For instance, I'd written a poem, it didn't happen to me,
but it happened to a good friend and I
tried to put myself in her persona
and express the feelings that she might have had.
That's just one example.
You mentioned your shirt.
Tell us about your shirt.
People are probably very curious.
This is Hollins College Creative Writing t-shirt,
which I had just come from a reading at a Hollins Club
function here in Jacksonville.
And these shirts were handed out at a reunion
at Hollins College where all of the people who
had been through their creative writing program
or had been English majors and took creative writing
were all there.
And we have a lot of famous people.
I think maybe Annie Dillard who wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
is a good example.
Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle--
there are just a lot of writers who
have come out of this very small college in the Shenandoah
Valley of Virginia, so--
Makes you proud, I bet.
We're all very happy about.
Annie Dillard was here and probably sitting in your chair
a couple of years ago, yeah.
Kalliope also sponsored her coming.
It was a delight also.
Yes, she's a wonderful writer.
One of the things that I'm going to ask
you to do before we really get into talking about your poetry
is please read for us a poem or two.
I know that if I were sitting in a chair at home
watching this on television I'd be very interested and curious
about the kind of poetry that you write.
And since it hasn't been available
in the bookstores until, what, today?
I think it would be nice to be able to offer that
to the viewers.
Thank you.
Read for us.
The paperback has been available.
It's the hard cover that has just
gone into the second printing.
And this is, as I told you before, the program.
This is the first time I've seen it since November.
I mean, this is the first time I've
seen this, so thank you all who brought it here today.
You've mentioned one that you had read yourself
and that you asked me to read so I'll be happy to.
This poem is called all my friends pets are growing old.
Don't we know that.
Which certainly came from my experience,
our 18-year-old cat was seeing her last days
much to this sorrow of my three children and all the family.
And then I noticed that everybody else I knew
had a dog or a cat or a pet.
And of course what that suggested,
let the poem speak for itself.
It has a light touch.
The title itself is "Light", but of course, underneath I
hope that the seriousness comes through.
This is a poem which is not my voice.
This is a poem which we poets call a persona poem, where
I put myself in to the voice of a person who doesn't really
like animals and is protesting about all these people worrying
about their animals.
All my friends pets are growing old.
Mike's clawless, scabby cat can't roam outside
for fear of the blue jays she once mocked will strike
and peck her sores.
So Mike picks up the turds from his prized rugs
with only mild disgust.
And smiles at Tiger sleeping in a shaft of sun.
Barbara said at lunch the other day
she's lugging her black lab with help
to push him up into the car, weakly to the vet for shots.
And every Tuesday he plays dead at 2 o'clock.
I thought how much I'd hate a week
with such a time tied to it.
I didn't like her dog when he was frisky.
I did like Millie's Corgi who looked old when he was new.
But I hate the way she talks now of his cancer
as if he were a relative or friend.
Bob and Connie Kincaid are the worst with their menagerie.
A house that reeks of cat piss, two huge wheezing dogs,
and one with heartworm.
A hamster warned to lumpidness from running round in circles.
A toothless rabbit Aphrodite they coax to suck a bottle.
And talk, that's all they do is talk
of all the trouble they go to.
So smug, the way they are trying to suggest they'd
do the same for anyone.
And the part I really cannot bare--
they tricked me into talking about Whitlock Street, where
we couple stood around somebody's small backyard
grilling sirloins, sipping beer.
A nudge, a hug to go with watching Millie's puppy waddle,
grass high toward the plump legs of our diapered babies.
Such a commentary of growing old.
Yes.
It reminds me of the Robert Frost poem about the old dog
that barked backwards--
Yes.
Without looking up.
I can remember when he was a pup.
It's a short.
Oh, and that's it.
That's the whole poem.
That's the whole poem, two lines.
I told my students about your poem about growing old.
And they kind of looked at me as if, but I'm young, I'm young.
And so I said to them, you can watch your own pets, right?
The pet that you had when you were 3 or 4
is now going to the vet and dying.
And even an 18 or 19-year-old has those experiences,
sometimes younger kids even.
It's a good way to talk about maturity.
And I think making up this person who's
looking down on the whole process
as she talks about how dumb all this is that other people care
so much about their aging or dying pets.
And yet, when she thinks back to her own children,
she gives it all away that she too is caught up in that time.
Absolutely.
Moving.
Beautifully done.
You have another one for us?
All right, just right next door to that one is a poem call
"Heron", which is a poem, a more serious vein
that is actually based on an experience that I had.
I live in Richmond, Virginia.
And I don't live anywhere near any place
that a great blue heron would be living, near us.
And yet one day I woke up and looked out
the window of my house and there was this heron.
I think down here in your area you're
used to seeing very great birds like that, but I'm not.
And it stood there in my yard, as the poem talks about.
And it came after the experience.
I felt that I had to write a poem about it.
And it had to mean something, that you don't just
look at your window and see a heron in your yard very often.
And I tried to work it into to the kinds of things
that happen in our lives that are meaningful,
at that one time.
And that's what I've tried to do here.
It's called "Heron".
The moment between what wasn't and what is
has to shock like the instant I saw the three foot
heron perched like a plank in my front yard.
I've known a few annunciations, my god, I'm in love was one.
And a bloody baby's head between my thighs.
Then my thin son with a suitcase, losing resolution
in my rear view mirror.
The elegant heron stood in my yard,
in my cluttered neighborhood, miles from water, fish,
it's kind.
It curled and uncurled its neck, scanning the air for bearings.
All morning I thought it would fly away.
By afternoon I was afraid it never would.
Who could miss this incongruous sight?
Everyone who passed by did.
Walkers, drivers, runners, children--
never noticed the great blue heron dying by my Pontiac.
It stood there all day long, bearing its weight on legs
as frail as marsh grass.
Nice.
Sometimes I feel as if it's kind of inappropriate to talk
after a poem like that.
Well most people who talk after that particular poem,
it's not that old, but I've read it a few times
in the last year to audiences.
And most of them want to know what happened.
And what happened is that the great blue heron died.
It had been poisoned by toxic waste according to the experts
that I had called to come see why it was just standing there.
It was not frightened by anything that happened,
but it was disoriented.
But of course that's not the point.
That's a sad story, and I could really make a case for it
in my local anti-pollution, or Keep the James River Clean
Committee, which is the river in Richmond.
But for poetry, it needed to end with the heron still standing.
Of course.
It's the beautiful first line, how does it go again?
The moment between what wasn't and what is has to shock.
Yes.
Those are the first two lines.
And that poem shocks.
Well, I think that that's what poetry does.
In an earlier draft of this poem the name of the poem
was Poetry.
Ah, yes.
It makes me ask this question.
Where do you find your images?
It's as if the heron was in your yard,
the cats, the dogs, the dying animals
are in your friends porches or houses.
But from that comes a wonderful statement
about the meaning of life.
Is that how you find your images, kind of looking
around life?
You know, I used to think that everybody in the world
thought metaphorically.
Everything I see I think reminds me of something else.
I compare it.
I thought when I saw the heron it wasn't just a heron,
it was something else.
And I think that there's just some people who
think-- now I know that everybody
doesn't think that way.
I'm a teacher, I've been teaching all my life.
And I know that for most of my students
do not think metaphorically.
Do you think it would be good if they could?
No, it's very confusing.
You have this wonderful quote about a genius,
would you tell us?
A genius?
Yes.
I don't know--
Here I have-- I think if I can find it here.
I hope I didn't say it.
A genius is one who can keep two ideas, two contradictory ideas,
in his head at the same time.
Well I did say that, I was under duress.
I was given a reading at the Virginia Military Institute
to a roomful of 300 men in uniform.
So I felt I had to say some intellectual things
between poems.
And did they pay attention?
They were wonderful.
It was one of the best audiences I've ever had.
And I was terrified because this--
a professor at VMI had spoken to me at dinner
before I was to read and said, now
do you have any poems that could relate to the cadet experience?
And I said to the what?
And he said the cadet experience.
And you know, you could tell my poems are not quite about that.
But those young men are people too and they understood,
they were real wonderful audience.
But I did say that at that occasion.
And I was trying to point out to them the two
ideas I wanted them to hold in their heads
at the same time, which contradict each other--
is that everything that a poet writes is from real life.
And nothing a poet writes is from real life.
Those are two contradictory ideas, obviously.
Which is very related to your metaphorical thinking,
which is so confusing.
Because people, when my book came out,
there are some books, some poems in here,
that are very sexy, to be frank about it.
One of them the name of it is "Sex",
that's getting down to the nitty gritty.
But people in Richmond, my friends,
would say now is that one about Frank Johnson?
And I'd say what?
Or different forms that--
Sure.
Had people in them.
For instance, the people in the poem about the animals,
I made all those people up.
Except one of them is myself who had the cat that would
leave droppings on the rug.
But the fact is is that they're all really
about me in some way, or that something that's happened.
And yet none of them are really true, exactly, to my memory
or to my knowledge of people, so that's
the contradictory idea that you hold in your head at all times.
And I bet that's true for all writers.
Absolutely.
And I think that even novels like Peachtree Road--
some of us were just talking about--
in which obviously Anne Siddons has used real people in Atlanta
in her novel, Peachtree Road.
But I don't think it's fair to pin down
an exact equivalence to each person in that kind of fiction.
What made you write?
I just always wanted to write ever since I was very little.
I started reading when I was really young,
about three or something.
I loved books.
I used to make up covers, like this, and write,
she lives with her mother and daddy at this address.
And then draw little pictures of myself on the back.
And I never knew I'd really have one.
With your picture on the back.
A long time, but I did used to do that when I was little.
It was a fantasy, so.
And then as I say, I went to this college
where creative writing was one of the major activities.
And it enforced what I already wanted to do.
What I enjoy about reading women's literature is
that sometimes there are themes, as you just mentioned,
they are not the themes that appeal to the cadets,
but you're writing to a human being.
What would you say are your themes?
Human relationships.
Sex.
Absolutely, that's one of the major things that keeps
human relationships going.
And death?
Death, birth-- I have two poems in here
about birth of my own children.
And death, separation, loss--
I have several poems in the book about my relationship
with my mother.
Which I think whether you are a man or a woman,
your relationship with your mother,
as Freud pointed out among others,
is a very important one.
So yeah, I think certainly that to me
is more important than nature or pure philosophy
without human beings attached to it.
Or pure spiritual subjects without Earth attached to it.
People know you as an autobiographical poet.
What does that mean to you?
Well, it's just what I said earlier.
That yes, things I've written are
based on either actual events or friends or just things that
have happened in my life.
But I have a poem in here called "Shake Down Time in the Pine
Forest", in which the speaker is a forester whose job in life
is in Louisiana to climb up pine trees and attach belts to them,
which generate an energy to the tree that makes it shake.
And then makes the pine cones fall down from the trees.
And that's my whole poem and I have never done any such thing.
So that's not autobiographical.
It's fun to try to take on the persona of other people
and other activities.
That's one of the fun things about being a writer,
is to use your own memory when you want to.
When there's something you need to write about,
I found my relationship with my mother
was something I needed to write about.
Do you learn about yourself when you write?
Oh, yeah, very much so.
Could you give us an example, or is
that an inappropriate question?
I can't give an exact example, but I'll tell you something
that I have mentioned before about writing poetry--
is that if you really are honest with yourself,
and you really keep pushing, you get to a level
and you think I hadn't pushed on this one far enough.
I have to push further on this idea.
And you keep pushing, you'll come up with things
that you don't quite understand.
You'll come up with an idea, an image, a thought.
You write it down.
And later, maybe a year or two later, you will read that poem
and then you will think, how did I know then, two years ago,
that this was going to happen.
Or that I was going to feel this way.
In other words, you know yourself
better than you think you do.
And poetry is a way to get at some of the things
you already know about yourself, but you
haven't allowed your conscious mind to deal with it yet.
Do you do write at times when you
can tap into that subconscious like
just before you go to sleep, or May Sarton writes
just as she wakes up?
After a few martinis.
After a few martinis.
No.
No, I don't have any magic formula of timing or place.
Something will come to me and I'll
start just worrying with it.
I have to write with a pen, pencil.
I can't write on typewriter or word processor.
And I have to write, just keep working on it
until it starts emerging.
Can I change the subject just a little bit?
Who has influenced your writing?
You were mentioning before we started
how somebody like Eudora Welty has maybe
influenced other people.
How about yourself?
I was very much influenced by James Dickey.
And the reason for that is that when I was in school
I was studying the modernist.
And I was studying people like Elliott, Yeats, Wallace
Stevens, and poets like that.
And for the few women I studied--
they were Elizabeth Bishop, Marion Moore,
who were all modernist poets.
And I really wasn't quite sure I understood
what they were-- they weren't talking to me about anything
I was interested in.
Then one day I opened up the New Yorker magazine and James
Dickey's now famous poem "Falling"
was published in that magazine.
I don't know if I can say that was the one day that I thought
that I could write poetry, but the fact
is that Jim Dickey write, wrote, and writes
about interesting subjects.
Whereas before me, poetry had been boring.
And that started it.
And then I started reading--
I was very much influenced by Sylvia Plath.
Because mainly, not because of her very despairing
and depressing subjects, although I found
them very interesting, too.
I'm not afraid of despair.
Even though she put her head in the oven
it still doesn't frighten me.
What I loved about Sylvia Plath, her poetry, is the sounds.
The way she was she understood how
you can put words together and make them sound good together.
And I love that.
And I think you have to love the [? all ?] effects of words
to be to be interested in poetry, too.
You have to, is not just the content,
you have to be real interested in words.
Which is probably why you like to do poetry readings.
I love to give readings, yeah.
Do you read your poetry out loud as you write it?
Or can you hear it?
You do.
Yes.
After I've gotten to a certain point,
I read it in the shower or some where and see how it sounds.
Are you concerned with rhythm?
Very much.
That's what dictates the line breaks in free verse poetry.
When you heard me read, you didn't have any idea
where I'd broken the lines.
But for instance, in the Heron, the moment between what was
and what wasn't, or what isn't has to shock.
And then the [INAUDIBLE] line is broken at the word shock.
And then the poem comes back around, like the heron.
And each one of those line breaks
is determined by this sound and what I'm punching in,
those last words.
The last words of each line.
Yes.
When you write-- can you tell us a little
bit about how you write.
You know people have sometimes written whole essays
on how they write.
Can I have some water first?
Can you have some water?
Yeah, sure.
I was saying to a poet the other day and she has 30 notebooks.
And in every notebook she has a poem going.
I can't imagine writing like that.
But how do you do it?
Well, I have one notebook.
And I have-- right now I would say about 10
going in various stages.
Then I have a folder that is--
as I feel that one is finished, it goes into that folder.
But those are not finished either, really.
So I guess I have two working--
How do you know a poem is finished?
Well you just don't, that's what I mean.
But there is the time when I think I'm through
working on that one.
And so that's one notebook of so-called finished ones.
No, when I got the manuscript-- my editor at LSU sent back
the manuscript for this--
I still made changes in it.
Do you think you'll change anything else
when you go to another edition?
I've already-- I was reading a couple of them today
and last night and I made changes
from where they were printed.
Little ones--
Sure.
Little ones.
Sure, not major changes.
Obviously are you, you're writing every day, I suspect.
You're writing every week.
What are you working on right now?
Just very much the same thing.
It's not-- I don't have any overall project
for the book, a book.
I'm just writing poems.
You're a poet who compiles many poems until she has
a manuscript and then sends--
I like very much to try to work another way.
I was talking to my friend Margaret
Gibson whose fourth book of poetry has just come out.
And she has written a book recently
that had an overall theme that she wrote the poems for,
the theme, and she said it was so much easier.
Ah, and you're thinking of doing that?
I'd like to try that.
Are you thinking the theme?
I'm sorry--
I have a vague idea.
But nothing that has come to my mind to write about now
fits into it, so there went that idea.
There went that idea.
We have time for a minute more of conversation.
And I know that sometimes sitting on the other side
you wish you had been asked this question,
or you wish you had been asked another question.
It's your final minute to tell the city of Jacksonville
something about poetry, or something about yourself.
What would you like to tell us?
Well I could tell what I've told to both of the readings
that I've given that the audiences here in Jacksonville
and have said often.
I think to hear poetry is even more
difficult than to read poetry.
And a lot of times I will tell a friend of mine
or an old college chum or my children, my teenagers--
my teenage students-- that I am going to a poetry reading
and they'll say, ooh boring.
They can't imagine anything more boring.
Because poetry is boring enough as it is, right?
So if you go to hear one, that's even worse.
But my advice to people is give it a try.
Give it at least one try to go to a poetry reading
and you might go to a really boring one.
I can't say they wouldn't.
But give it a try and listen for the images.
Don't try to understand the message.
Just listen to the imagery that's being read to you
and try to picture it in your mind's eye.
And I think that if--
that's the best advice I can give to people to approach
poetry and not be scared of it.
Just let the images work on them.
Buffy, thank you for joining us today.
Elizabeth Seydel Morgan has joined us
at Worth Quoting sponsored by Florida Community
College at Jacksonville.
Elizabeth Seydel Morgan was brought to Jacksonville
by Kalliope, a journal of women's art,
and the Koger Foundation.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you, Sue, enjoyed it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét