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Interviewer: Wynn Yarbrough
WY: From World Wars to a Consumer Culture, what have you taken away from this American life?
RS: Oh, there's been so much war. This century seems marked by it. But you must survive, that's what I say. In terms of the arc of writing experience, I wrote all the time when I was younger and, even then, I was always writing in my head. Voices speak to you; when the world changes, the voices change. For me, I was lucky because I have never been terribly impoverished. If you think about the atrocities of this century, so many of us, particularly in America, could be considered lucky though there have certainly been oppressed people and tragedies in this country.
WY: How about poetry in America? What would you say looking backwards?
RS: I think America really found a voice in this century. Poetry in America found itself. The vernacular and exciting language of the Beats was impressive. And of course, recently we see the voices of women and Latino poets. It seems that voices of Afro-Americans and Native Americans have added a much-needed voice to this century. Hopefully, this will continue.
WY: In speaking about your poetry, Sharon Olds said you composed over "the broken field." I took this to mean the ability to change directions and purpose in a poem. Can you tell us something about movement in your own poetry?
RS: I don't know. It's really a strange thing, it's quite natural. The unbidden comes slowly, in great gushes. It seems as if the fruition of experience shapes itself back to you in a poem. I really am not that sentimental and that seems to make my poems move quickly, or doesn't allow that experience to dwell on something that is falsely true.
WY: Your irony is generous but never sarcastic in the sharpening of a blade on someone else's head. How do you imagine the victim in a poem?
RS: It is very hard to be sarcastic for me because we human beings need to feel suffering, happiness, grief: we all share these feelings. There is so much anger, but we have to share these feelings. I hope poetry can be some kind of release for people in terms of anger and frustration. To be sarcastic seems cheap.
WY: What are the differences in judging as a person, as a poet?
RS: Well, in terms of where we [US Army] are in Iraq, it feels like we are still in the sinister machinery of war. Nothing has changed except that leaders have learned from the past, so, in this war, we see a great control over the media. We don't really get any information. I felt [Lyndon] Johnson missed all the opportunities to get out of Vietnam, and Bush isn't any different. As a poet this shows up in my work; my disappointment, hopefully, shows up as something intelligent to say and gives people a way to think.
WY: Is there such a thing as "comedic feminism?" Why is humor so scarce in any "-ism?"
RS: Women had to develop a comedic sense due to a lack of power. The tragedies we suffered in the domestic places pushed us to appreciate stories and jokes and the arts in ways men weren't pushed to do.
WY: "I don't like criticism. I won't read criticism that is deliberately obscure." You said this in an interview. What are the values of criticism? What are the problems with criticism?
RS: I think when criticism became a genre, it became a problem. There seems to be some sense of power in a critic that needs a school. And from this school there are abuses. In fact, one school arguing against another school leaves the work waiting until they work it out. Now, criticism has brought back some authors who have been forgotten: Dickinson, I think of. I hope this continues. When someone is using criticism to shore up their ego, well, they become a charlatan.
WY: How has maternity affected your work? Any advice to a writer with children?
RS: Having children is wonderful and demanding. It also lays you open to the precarious. You love them, you fear for them, you hope for them. They make you vulnerable to so many feelings.
I wrote poems in the backroom, tried to escape to get space and quiet to write. When I was writing one short story, I remember keeping my foot on the door, with the typewriter in my lap, while the kids tried to pull it open.
WY: Deep themes vs. heavy poetry-- how did you manage to attain one (deep themes) and avoid the other (heavy poetry)?
RS: As I said earlier, I think you have to avoid sentimentality. It feels like the worse thing you can be is sentimental. As far as deep themes, I don't deliberately write about anything. I never make anything up. My poems come out of my sense of reality. What you read is what I was going through or thinking-- there isn't a deliberation to find a topic.
WY: What kind of reading do you think a poet should do? Any favorites? You read a great deal of history and science? Do poems originate from this reading?
RS: I decided very early on to not write like other people. I think I was afraid to read others' works. I never called myself a poet. As far as reading goes, I always loved astronomy and botany and physics. I felt that science revealed the universe to me. I can't recommend reading science highly enough. At least for me, it was a joy. So many writers seem so narrow to me, they have narrow obsessions. My interests range all over.
WY: Do you write sound first? The line first? The image/story first?
RS: I always get the line first. So many of my poems are gifts, but I think over them, and like I said, they are speaking in my head. Sometimes whole poems come out like that, sometimes line by line over a longer period of time. Each poem comes the way it comes.
WY: National Book Critics Circle Award for Ordinary Words (1999). What did that mean to you?
RS: I really didn't expect to get it. I was shocked to find I was nominated. When they announced the winner, my daughter told me, "Mama, you need to stand up." When I made a little speech, I really didn't know what to say; it really knocked me over.
WY: What about your eyesight? Has some diminishing in its powers affected your work? You have so much stamina-- it seems as if this will just add to your powers?
RS: It's been over four years, and I haven't really accepted it. I really don't have the best hearing either. A lot of ear infections as a child contributed to some hearing loss. I really am coming to grips with it.
WY: In "Male Gorillas" you wrote "This data goes into that vast/ confused library, the female mind." What is the female mind (as opposed to the male mind)? How is it changing or how has it changed?
RS: That was a real experience in a diner. You have to be so alert to signals, symbols, movements. You have to watch your step in male territory as a female. All of this goes into the mind: those images of a diner, ordering food with the eyes on you.
WY: How has your background--a childhood filled with music and drawing and poetry--affected your art? How did it affect the way you raised your own children?
RS: Well, I had a wonderful childhood. Both my grandmothers painted and wrote novels and poetry, never trying to get anything published or out there. What a great way to learn art. My mother sang all day long, and when I showed her a poem, she would never expose me to another writer or tell me to read this or that person. She supported me and loved my writing.
WY: The pieces in this issue of Pedestal seem to resist easy endings; summation, in some senses. What are your feelings for an audience?
RS: I never think of an audience; the poem does what it wants to do.
WY: In "Almost the Same," you say, "And where is this poem going, if not into stasis."
RS: Things don't move someplace. It is amazing that I am alive, that all of us are alive. When it ends, it ends.
WY: In "Border," you mention "The quiet authority of culture."
RS: There is so much irony out there. The unspoken limits and lines that come out of factories and towns are limiting and defining. This is our human way. One can only accept it and know that this is the way it is.
WY: Finally, take us through your writing process. How do you write and revise?
RS: Well, I write line by line. I use notebooks. I have notebooks I haven't even gone back to. I've lost a lot of my notebooks. I have never memorized my poems, never tried to learn them by heart. I move on to the next poem. I look forward to it.
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