THE POETRY CHAIN GANG (part 15 w/ Jennifer Chang)

The Black Telephone has five fast questions for poet Jennifer Chang.

BT: I would love to write a poem about a poet. Have you ever written a poem about a poet? If not, what poet could you see writing a poem about?

JENNIFER: I recently put Frank O'Hara in a poem about looking at a field and thinking about the death of my friend's dog, Tammy. I was mad at myself for writing yet another poem about a field, even though it was about my friend's loss, but then it was about what draws artists to our subject matters and I started incorporating an exchange about art
between O'Hara and Motherwell. "Shut up, and just paint the pictures," Motherwell says at one point, frustrated with all their navel-gazing.

Anyway, I feel better when I think about Frank O'Hara and he's in there because he's a hero and a specific word like "Gauloise" and what's weirder than a nature poem with Frank O'Hara in it? I also have a poem with Andres Breton in it. It's about not wanting to leave the house. Clearly, neither of these are good poems, but other poets appear in my poems when I'm feeling the anxiety of influence, which is really the anxiety of self, in an especially keen way. I'd like to write a poem with Gertrude Stein in it, but Lynn Emanuel's already done that so exceptionally well. Her poem's kind of about anxiety, too.

BT: Pick a poem, any poem…

JENNIFER: "Theme for English B" by Langston Hughes

BT: I love your poem Pastoral where you say: "dirt and chant" and "roar and bloom." I love when poets throw together words that aren't usually thrown together. What made you put "dirt" and "chant" together?

JENNIFER: Thank you! I wrote that poem while I was staying with a flower farmer in Napa Valley. One morning I was watching her from the window working in her fields of flowers. Even though I couldn't see her face, I could tell she was so very happy out there in the dirt and in the wind. I hadn't known one could farm flowers. And there were so many flowers! Most of the poem's images and word play emerged from that experience. I liked the sound of "dirt" and "chant; they share a similar concluding consonance and yet have such different denotations.

BT: I am a logophile which is a lover of words. Do you have a favorite word at the moment?

JENNIFER: Lately, I've been thinking about, a little obsessed with, words whose roots don't quite match their current meanings, and because I just taught Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad was another logophile) I keep wondering about the repeated use of the words "absurd" and "unsound" at the end of the book. Neither word is about sound, even though both words' roots are related to hearing. So this week, I've thought about both "absurd" and "unsound" at least once a day and I know I'm going to eventually find a way to use them in a poem.

BT: I'm trying to start a chain, a chain of poets, sort of like a chain gang of poets. Can you please suggest a poet I should ask five fast questions to next?

JENNIFER: Jennifer Kronovet


Jennifer Chang’s first book, The History of Anonymity, was an inaugural selection of the VQR Poetry Series and a finalist for the Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in A Public Space, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New Republic, and Northwest Review and she has received recent fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. A Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Virginia, she is writing a dissertation on race and pastoral modernism.

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THE POETRY CHAIN GANG (part 14 w/ Cecily Parks)

The Black Telephone has five fast questions for poet Cecily Parks

BT: It’s 9 p.m., are you…
a.) just putting the finishing touches on a poem?
b.) just beginning a poem?
c.) reading a poem?
d.) not even thinking about poetry?

CECILY: d

BT: After I've read a really good poem, I always find myself in a writing mood. How do you feel after you've read a really good poem?

CECILY: A really good poem makes me feel like I might cry. I get that tingly feeling on the backs of my eyeballs.

BT: In a 1970 interview with poet Robert Graves, he had this to say: "…Writing a poem is…like finding the top of a statue buried in sand. You gradually take the sand away and you find the thing, whole— that is what poetry is, rather than building something up. It's rediscovering what you've known inside yourself the whole time, what you've foreseen." Would you agree or beg to differ?

CECILY: I agree that writing a poem allows you to rediscover something inside yourself, but I don't think that the process is as pristine as Graves suggests. Because I'm obsessed with swamps at the moment, I've come to think that writing a poem is a little bit like wading into a swamp. Maybe it's the swamp of the self, or the swamp of the mind— either way, it's messy and dark and fluid

BT: I love the idea of found poems ("Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and [turning] them [into] poetry by making changes in spacing and/or lines…"). That said— how do you feel about found poems?

CECILY: I think that in the game hide-and-go-seek, the hider secretly wants to be found. So, I like found poems because they remind us that poems want to be found, even though they may be elusive and elliptical, or hiding in a block of prose.

BT: I'm trying to start a chain, a chain of poets, sort of like a chain gang of poets. Can you please suggest a poet I should ask five fast questions to next?

CECILY: Jennifer Chang


Cecily Parks is the author of the poetry collection Field Folly Snow, which was a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award and the Glasgow / Shenandoah Prize for Emerging Writers. She is a PhD candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center and teaches in the undergraduate creative writing program at Columbia University.

THE POETRY CHAIN GANG (part 13 w/ Leigh Anne Couch)

The Black Telephone has five fast questions for poet Leigh Anne Couch.

BT: What triggered your interest in poetry?

LEIGH ANNE: My inability to write a lucid essay in college and falling in love with an artist. Since there was no way I could paint, I tried to fake it with words, so we'd have dreamy things to talk about. When he left, I didn't want to fake it anymore and decided to read what living poets were writing. That was exciting to me and as humbling as it was, I wanted to try to be a part of that community.

BT: Is there a topic you haven't covered in your poetry that you would like to cover?

LEIGH ANNE: Mother-love, both ways. I can hear the deep sighs out there and I feel it, too. Poems about mothering are set-ups for sentimentality and kitsch. But raising a person from complete dependency to their successful abandonment of you is such a powerful thing and, handled in the right way, has deep roots in the body, the culture, the society, and of course the self.

BT: What poetry book are you currently reading?

LEIGH ANNE: I'm currently reading a fabulous manuscript of poems by April Naoko Heck. It's her first book and it's called "Shelter of Leaves." I've read it three times now just trying to figure out why and how it works the way it does for me.

BT: Is there a poetry book on your bookshelf that you think is a "must have" for poetry lovers?

LEIGH ANNE: This question, as simple as it is, is really giving me fits. I can't name just one. I have really enjoyed seeking out first books by poets I love— I'm going with "Summer Anniversaries" (Donald Justice), "Lies" (C.K. Williams), and "Colossus" (Sylvia Plath). In addition, anyone who loves poetry because it makes them feel weird must read "The Orchard" by Brigit Pegeen Kelly.

BT: I'm trying to start a chain, a chain of poets, sort of like a chain gang of poets. Can you please suggest a poet I should ask five fast questions to next?

LEIGH ANNE: Cecily Parks


Leigh Anne Couch lives in Tennessee and is the managing editor of the Sewanee Review. Her poems have appeared in the Western Humanities Review, Shenandoah, 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, Carolina Quarterly, and other journals. Her book, Houses Fly Away (2007), was the co-winner of the Zone 3 Press First Book Award.

THE POETRY CHAIN GANG (part 12 w/ Erica Dawson)

The Black Telephone has five fast questions for poet Erica Dawson.

BT: I love the title of your book "Big-Eyed Afraid" (winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, 2006); I would have bought the book on the title alone. What made you ultimately stick with that title?

ERICA: First, thanks so much for the compliment. There were plenty of naysayers when I initially proposed the title. I stuck with it because I thought it provided a true trope for the entire book. Though there are moments where I seem quite sure of myself, some say, there's, to me, always an underlying current of self-consciousness and fear. And, my mom loved the title. Her opinion counts a lot.

BT: Did you ever buy a poetry book just because of its title?

ERICA: Definitely. Cate Marvin's "World's Tallest Disaster" was one of those buys. Barbara Ras' "Bite Every Sorrow" also caught my eye.

BT: When poet Juliana Gray suggested I interview you next, she said, "Erica…[writes] in meter and form…and she has a dexterity with these musty old forms that I really envy. She can handle something like a crown of sonnets…with such dexterity and sass." So what is it about these musty old forms that draws you to them?

ERICA: Ah, Juliana is so sweet. I'd say it's the "must." I love the fact that people consider the forms old and dusty. I have a little mission to prove that things from the 17th century and earlier were pretty damn sexy and sassy in their day, and still can be sassy today. I love any mix of old and new, anything from new songs that sample 60s music to an outfit that combines something vintage with something very contemporary. The poems work the same way for me. There's something unexpected about the combination of the older forms with modern language. I like catching people off guard.

BT: As an undergraduate, I didn’t care too much for the poet Sylvia Plath; now, I can’t get enough of her work. Is there a poet that you didn’t like too much at first, but enjoy now?

ERICA: I had that same relationship with Plath, actually. I think I was too caught up in her biography to give her poetry the attention and work it deserves. Also, my biggest love right now, the British Renaissance, was not a love of mine in undergrad. Not at all. It came later in graduate school. But now I can't get enough of "Paradise Lost," for example. No lie. It's amazing. Frightening, really sexy, and incredibly dense yet completely readable like a novel.

BT: I'm trying to start a chain, a chain of poets, sort of like a chain gang of poets. Can you please suggest a poet I should ask five fast questions to next?

ERICA: If you haven't already, ask Leigh Anne Couch. She's an amazing poet whose work has this kind of charm I've never seen before. You read or listen to Leigh Anne reading her work and you are utterly mesmerized by the sounds you hear, the words you digest, the rhythms and pictures she creates in your mind that stick with you, deliciously, long after you've closed the book or the reading has ended. Her voice, literal and figurative, is hard to shake, in a very good way. And, she's one of my favorite people in the world.


Erica Dawson’s book Big-Eyed Afraid (winner of the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize) was published by Waywiser Press in 2007. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2008, Southwest Review, Harvard Review, Raintown Review and other journals and anthologies. She lives in Ohio where she’s completing her PhD in English and Comparative Literature at University of Cincinnati.

Michelle McEwen (that's me!) will be reviewing your poetry journal/zine soon!

Please visit for more details: http://orangesandsardines.blogspot.com/2009/07/michelle-mcewen-will-be-reviewing-your.html

THE POETRY CHAIN GANG (part 11 w/ Juliana Gray)

The Black Telephone has five fast questions for poet Juliana Gray.

BT: When poet Chuck Rybak suggested I interview you next, he said, "...I'm not sure if Juliana has any tattoos, but she sure could give a great answer if asked about them..." That said— I'm going to ask you the same question I asked him in his interview: sometimes poems are bigger than the page; what poem or line from a poem would you consider having tattooed on your body?

JULIANA: I am ink-free, though the cover of my book depicts a young woman with a tattoo of the Mars symbol on the back of her neck, and people sometimes ask if that's a picture of me. I like the idea of a tattoo, but I'm afraid of pain. As for a line of poetry on the body, I don't think anything can beat Harry Crews's bicep tattoo of cummings's "how do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death?" The only thing I might get that could compete with that is a line from Larkin's "Church Going" – "A serious house on serious earth it is" – as a tramp stamp.

BT: Do you do something poetry related everyday?

JULIANA: At the very least, I read the poem of the day on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily each morning. (This routine is complicated by the two cats competing for space in my lap and walking across the keyboard, but I manage.) I also keep a couple of books of poetry on the coffee table, and I dip in and out of them as I read a novel, grade papers, or putter around the house. Right now I'm reading a few poems a day from Jim Murphy's terrific book Heaven Overland. I know Jim from graduate school at the University of Cincinnati, where I also met Chuck Rybak, your last interviewee, and I'm just loving the book. In the poem "River Minstrels, No Date Given," he describes the figures in a photograph as "disguised quite as/ themselves, bent to survive the times." I wish I'd written that.

BT: I absolutely love your poem "Summer Downpour on Campus." I can't get enough of it. It gave me goosebumps the first time I read it and still does each time I read it— especially this part which, to me, was an unexpected surprise: "...but I am walking to meet a man/who'll buy me coffee and kiss my fingers— " I'm curious, how did you feel when that line came to you?

JULIANA: I'm blushing— thank you so much! That was one of those poems sparked by a real experience; I was teaching at Auburn University, and one August afternoon the sky just opened up while I was, in fact, walking to the local coffee shop to meet the man I was seeing at the time. When I sat down to write the poem, I tried to think of a small, affectionate token that wasn't too terribly cutesy – one of those little loving gestures that couples unconsciously perform with each other – and that's what I came up with.

BT: Writer's block— what would you prescribe?

JULIANA: I'm not sure I believe in writer's block. Certainly there are times when the creative powers are lying fallow and we aren't producing much or any work, but as for a "block"– some kind of barrier between you and the language – I just don't buy it. Louise Glück goes for months or years between books without writing a thing, but she's certainly not blocked— I think it can be a way of storing energy, recharging the mental batteries. Of course, I may just be blithely optimistic here. I've written very little in the last year, not because I'm "blocked," but because I don't seem to have much to say at the moment. The only piece of advice I might have is not to reject an idea or spark of a poem in advance, without even attempting to write anything. The most trivial-seeming starting point can lead to something really surprising and wonderful.

BT: I'm trying to start a chain, a chain of poets, sort of like a chain gang of poets. Suggest, please, the poet I should ask five fast questions to next?

JULIANA: This is a hard question. I've had the incredible good fortune to spend my last ten summers teaching at the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference and working on the staff of the Sewanee Writers' Conference. (In fact, today is the last day of the Young Writers' Conference, and the "old writers' conference" will begin next week.) Through both of those conferences over the years, I've met so many diverse and amazing poets— legends like Mark Strand, Andrew Hudgins, Donald Justice, and Mark Jarman; and emerging writers like Sandra Beasley, Dan Albergotti, Jake Adam York, Beth Ann Fennelly, Eric McHenry, Leigh Anne Couch— the mind boggles.

But if I can only suggest one, I'd pick my fellow SWC staff member Erica Dawson. Her book, Big-Eyed Afraid, won the Anthony Hecht Prize in 2006. It's just marvelous, personal and confessional and clever and funny and so, so brilliant. It's like nothing else I've read. Although Erica and I both write in meter and form, her approach is completely different from mine, and she has a dexterity with these musty old forms that I really envy. She can handle something like a crown of sonnets – the very thought of which intimidates the hell out of me – with such dexterity and sass. The woman is just too smart. I love her dearly, but I'd never play Scrabble with her.


Juliana Gray is the author of The Man Under My Skin (River City Publishing, 2005) and the chapbook History in Bones (Kent State University Press, 2002). Recent poems have appeared in New South, 32 Poems, Iron Horse Literary Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Alfred, New York, and is an assistant professor of English at Alfred University.