Interview with Poet Linda Pastan

This installment of Advice for Writers is an interview with one of my favorite poets, Linda Pastan. Linda Pastan's many awards include the Maurice English Award, the Radcliffe College Distinguished Alumni Award, and the 2003 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. The former poet laureate of Maryland, she is the author of fourteen books of poetry—the latest of which, Insomnia, won the Towson University Prize for Literature.

Q.: Who were your teachers, mentors, or role models? What were the most useful or lasting lessons you learned from them?

Linda Pastan: My only teachers, mentors, and role models were the poets I read in books. As an only child growing up in New York City, I lived far from my school in a kind of isolation, books were my company, and luckily my parents had an extensive library. (I did work for one semester, in graduate school, with the poet J.V. Cunningham.  It was a one-on-one “class” during which he assigned me various forms, and so I learned the rules before learning to break them.) The lasting lesson I learned from reading Dickinson, Keats, Auden, et al., was to be unsatisfied with what I was writing; to try and try harder!!

Linda Pastan

Q. How has the situation of women poets changed since you began writing seriously in the 1960s?

LP: When I first started sending poems out to magazines, I considered using initials so that the editors wouldn’t know I was a woman. Women were not published nearly as much, and they were hardly reviewed at all. That has certainly changed. On the other hand it still seems to be the case that when male poets write about domestic things—marriage, children, etc.—they receive serious praise, but women poets writing on the same subject are more often condescended to.

Q. Do you enjoy reading your poems to an audience? What is the difference for you between publishing your poems and reading them out loud to people?

LP: To me, the poem on the page is what matters most. Some poets read their work out loud well. Others, T.S. Eliot, for example, read them terribly. It doesn’t really matter to me. But I do enjoy reading to an audience. It helps me to realize that there are real people out there, actually reading my work.

Q. You’ve written a lot about families, marriage, and parenthood. How do you approach writing about topics that are so familiar and close to home that it’s hard to get distance on them?   

LP: I don’t think a poet should aim for achieving distance from a subject. The point is to get up close.

Linda Pastan’s most recent book of poems is Insomnia

Q. Do you see yourself as a Jewish writer? How does Jewish tradition and/or Jewish literary tradition shape your work and your voice as a writer? 

LP: I am Jewish, and I am a writer. And I do use Jewish imagery in many of my poems, imagery I learned from Orthodox grandparents. And I love writing on Biblical subjects, particularly  the book of Genesis. But I don’t consider myself a “Jewish Writer,” just a writer who happens to be Jewish.

Q. When you compiled your book Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems, did you rewrite any of the earlier poems? If so, what were you looking to change or improve? 

LP: I think it was Auden who said poems are never finished, merely abandoned. I keep making small revisions on poems, even after they have been published in magazines and then books. And I am still making changes to various poems in the margins of my copy of Carnival Evening.

More information on Linda Pastan's most recent book of poems, Insomnia.

Zack’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies

Zack’s most recent translation, Bérénice 1934–44: An Actress in Occupied Paris by Isabelle Stibbe

Other posts on writing topics:

How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry? 
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka, The Villanelle
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
Writers and Collaboration
Types of Closure in Poetry

“Good Poets Borrow, Great Poets Steal”

It turns out that T.S. Eliot never said the phrase often attributed to him, “Good poets borrow, great poets steal.” According to a blog I read recently, what Eliot actually said was, “mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” Either way, the phrase sings the praises of literary theft, which on the surface is an incredibly odd statement, particularly in the realm of the arts, where originality counts for so much.

T.S. Eliot

Eliot might have been thinking of works like his poem “The Waste Land.” That classic is, to a great extent, a collage of snippets “stolen” from a variety of sources, including Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, what U.K. bartenders say at closing (“HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME”), the Upanishads, and dozens of others. For Eliot and the poets who were close to him, like Ezra Pound, borrowing from the literary canon, as they read it, was a necessity, a way of showing that you knew your lineage. But to my mind, there is something terribly elitist about that way of looking at the poet’s calling, since the lineage that those poets acknowledged consisted only of certain types of writings by male poets in the Indo-European tradition, with a bit of Confucius thrown in for good measure.

What the phrase “mature poets steal” means to me is something different from what it meant to Eliot and Pound. At a certain point in my life as a writer, I developed a mania for originality. This was useful when I was attempting to free myself of all the influences that I’d cluttered my work with, when I first began writing. By prizing originality over anything else, I was challenging myself not to sound like T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound or my favorite poet of the month, but to write from my own voice and experience. Easier said than done—finding that individual calling as a writer is a lifetime’s work.

What that fixation on originality left out was literary community. I eventually came to realize that I could take my work only so far on my own. I needed a community of writers to provide insight into my writing, and to sharpen my abilities as an editor of the work of other writers, and myself. The reality is that one pair of eyes can only see so much. Many pairs of eyes can see a much wider panorama.

I belong to a wonderful writers group that meets once a month for a potluck brunch and a round robin where we all read our latest poems. I hardly trust myself to finish a poem until I’ve run it past that group, called Thirteen Ways, because I highly respect their judgment. Even if I don’t take all their suggestions, I need to hear their reactions to my work to know if I’m headed in the right direction. I also show my work to other peers.

At first I was hesitant to take any specific suggestions that other writers gave me. I was still fixated on the need for originality. In time, I came to realize that finishing well the works I initiated was much more important than my personal claims as the author. If a member of my writing group read a line of mine that fell short in some way, s/he might suggest another wording. Originally I would note that down, but insist on altering the offered wording, to avoid stealing. Now, if I feel that the suggested wording is just what the poem needs and wants, I sometimes take the phrase word for word. It’s much more important for the poem to be as good as it can be, than for me to have written every single word in it. “Mature poets steal.”

Of course, if someone suggested completely rewriting my poem, and gave me all the specifics, I wouldn’t accept that. But one line, or a title?—I thank my lucky stars that I have such good literary friends, and I insert that gift into the poem. I know that I can’t always be the best editor of my own creations, and I am grateful that I have other writers I trust who can help me improve my work when I need it.

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Zack’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies
Zack’s most recent translation, Bérénice 1934–44: An Actress in Occupied Paris by Isabelle Stibbe

How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry? 
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka, The Villanelle
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
Writers and Collaboration
Types of Closure in Poetry

How to Deliver Your Message, Part 2: Are Messages Passé?

In my last blog I tried to make a case that The Big Moment, a passage where the author delivers a statement of belief directly to the reader with no finesse, is not a useful strategy for a writer. So, is it outmoded even to try to communicate a message or theme or emotion in a work of literature? Maybe such a corny idea has been made obsolete by postmodernism. Aren’t most people who read literature well-educated liberals or social democrats who already think and feel the same way about most things?

There are certainly a lot of authors who write as if they believe that a message or emotion is not important to a work of literature, or that the message should be understood by the reader even before approaching the writer’s work. I’m thinking of authors where there are so many fragments or so little context in their work that very little of coherence is expressed to the reader. Instead, the writing becomes shards of references that the reader is either in on, or not. Mostly this type of work is read by other writers or artists, often ones the author knows personally.

I have to agree with the poet Pablo Neruda about this sort of writing. In his Memoirs, he describes an encounter with T.S. Eliot. I’m assuming this is a fantasy of Neruda’s, since it’s a strange moment where Neruda says he locks himself in the bathroom to avoid listening to Eliot reading his poems. (Eliot’s poetry is generally written for a smaller and more elite audience than Neruda’s.) Actually, Neruda only refers obliquely to Eliot’s work in this passage.

Neruda concludes: “…if this continues, poets will publish only for other poets…Each will pull out his little book and put it in the other’s pocket…Poetry has lost its ties with the reader…”

The work of the poets and fiction writers who put chapbooks in one another’s pockets and never try to reach a larger audience is work that doesn’t have a message, or doesn’t try to convey emotion. It’s work organized as a collage of splinters, without any attempt to change or move the reader. The writer assumes that the reader is already in accord with his or her ideas or thoughts, and makes no attempt to persuade or move. The author might allude to those shared beliefs or feelings as a sort of common currency or in-joke with the reader, but there is no attempt to deliver a message or emotion.

This is the situation that much of poetry finds itself in today, at least in North America, and in other regions of the globe as well. Nor is fiction exempt from this sort of writing. And it’s this situation that Neruda worked his whole life to transcend, by including a message in his wonderful lyrics, like a delicious dessert that includes both ice cream and fresh fruit, so it’s both sweet to the tongue and nutritious to eat.

In the next blog, I’ll talk about some strategies for conveying messages that are not dogmatic or opaque.

How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

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Zack’s new book of poetry, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging. Order in the USA    Order in the UK

Zack’s most recent translation: The Water Drinkers and Other Sketches of Paris in the Romantic Era by Henry Murger

Other posts of interest:

How to Get Published

Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop

How Not to Become a Literary Dropout

Putting Together a Book Manuscript

Working with a Writing Mentor

How to Deliver Your Message

Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?

Why Write Poetry?

Poetic Forms: Introduction, the Sonnet, the Sestina, the Ghazal, the Tanka, the Villanelle

Praise and Lament

How to Be an American Writer

Writers and Collaboration

Types of Closure in Poetry

How Not to Become a Literary Dropout, Part 10

 

To sustain your work as a writer, you not only have to write the books that you can successfully complete, you also have to write the books you were meant to write.

When I started writing, I wanted to be exactly like the artists I admired. They included the Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and oddly enough, the French filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard, who was not a writer, but whose attitude and politics I admired. So I imitated them at first. When I got to college, the poets my literature professors promoted as role models were Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. There are still many things I admire about those two, as much as I find their politics extremely distasteful. I especially admire their multilingual and international approach to literature, and the originality of their diction. When I’m trying to get my eight-year-old son into his shoes and jacket and out the door, I still find myself saying out loud these lines from Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

Let us go then, you and I

When the evening is spread out against the sky

As soon as I started to meet people my age who also hoped to be writers, I wanted to write like my junior-year-in-college roommate and fellow poet, who admired André Breton and the French surrealists. Surrealism continues to be a lighthouse for me, even though my acid-head roommate ended up becoming a minister, but that’s another story.

In general, the trick is not to write like the authors you admire, but to find the way that you, personally, were meant to write.

There’s a famous story about the 18^th century Hasidic leader, Rabbi Zusya. Hasidism is the mystical branch of Judaism. The story goes like this:

Once, the great religious leader Rabbi Zusya went to speak to his followers. His eyes were red with tears, and his face was pale with fear.

“Zusya, you look terrified. What's the matter?” asked one of his followers.

“The other day, I had a vision,” Zusya responded. “I learned the question that the angels will one day ask me about my life.”

His followers were puzzled. “Zusya, you’re pious, scholarly, and humble. You’ve helped so many of us. What question could you be afraid of?”

Zusya turned his gaze to heaven. “I’ve learned that the angels won’t ask me, ‘Why weren’t you more like Moses, leading your people out of slavery?’ The angels won’t ask me, ‘Why weren’t you more like Joshua, leading your people into the promised land?’ The angels will say to me, ‘Zusya, there was only one thing that no power in heaven or on earth could have prevented you from becoming.’ They’ll say, ‘Zusya, why weren’t you more like Zusya?’” 

Other recent posts about writing topics:How Not to Become a Literary Dropout, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

How to Get Published

Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop

Putting Together a Book Manuscript

Working with a Writing Mentor

How to Deliver Your Message

Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?

Why Write Poetry? 

Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka

Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer

Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 5: Beginnings

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

—T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

The beginning of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is a perfect example of how to start a book of poetry or shorter prose. It grabs you with the very first phrase: “April is the cruellest month…” But I thought April was the most beautiful month, you say to yourself, when spring gives us such hope? No way, this is a fallen world, where hope only leads to broken promises. Read the rest to find out why, Eliot seems to tell us. And is if to tempt us into the poem, Eliot ends each of the first three lines with a present participle—breeding, mixing, stirring—active words that move us right into the odd reality of this Waste Land, half-dead even while it’s blooming. You can’t help but read on.

The strategies that Eliot uses to begin The Waste Land aren’t necessary for your book, but they demonstrate that the opening needs to snatch our attention away from whatever else we’re thinking, so we focus only on what we’re reading, and we want to read more.

Here’s another good beginning, the opening sentence of Anne Lamott’s book on writing, Bird by Bird: “The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth.” A provocative statement, one that makes you want to find out more. Why is good writing about telling the truth? What does she mean by telling the truth?

And then there’s the beginning of Virginia Woolf’s famous essay, A Room of One’s Own: “But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what has that got to do with a room of one’s own?” Woolf throws down the gauntlet right from the start. I’m going to break the rules now, she’s saying. Watch me. And she starts with a question, a terrific way to bring the reader into the argument. What does a room of one’s own have to do with women and fiction? Everything, we now know because of Woolf, but back then, she was starting her essay with a total surprise.

Let’s look at the first sentence of Sherman Alexie’s book of connected short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven: “Although it was winter, the nearest ocean four hundred miles away, and the Tribal Weatherman asleep because of boredom, a hurricane dropped from the sky in 1976 and fell so hard on the Spokane Indian Reservation that it knocked Victor from bed and his latest nightmare.” Alexie gives us humor, action, and unpredictable events, all in the first sentence. You just have to read on to find out what it’s all about.

The first sentence or the first few lines of a book (in the case of poetry) have to make the reader want to read on. You’ve got to win the reader’s attention immediately. Readers may encounter your book in a library or a bookstore, where there are many other books competing for their interest.

So let’s say you’re putting together a collection of poetry or short stories or essays. Which piece do you choose to put first? Well, I’d say one with an engaging beginning. One that fulfills its promise, and gives the reader the sense that this book will delight and/or instruct, and not disappoint.

You wouldn’t start with the poem or story or essay that is the crux of the collection. You don’t want to give away the ending at the beginning. You want to work up to the climatic moment.

James Joyce holds back the story “The Dead,” the masterpiece of his book of short stories Dubliners, till the very end. He starts the collection with a relatively minor story, “The Sisters,” but one that opens with a crisp first sentence and a page of dialogue, an engaging beginning. “The Sisters” introduces some of the themes of Dubliners, with its narrative about a priest who goes mad after accidentally dropping a sacred chalice. The story’s exposé of the stultifying conventions of life in the Ireland of Joyce’s day echoes throughout the book. But the ultimate laying bare of that situation doesn’t come until the end of the very last story in the collection.

The beginning of a book should provide an active introduction to the book’s themes, it should start on an exciting note, and it should present the dilemma of the book without resolving it.  

Other recent posts on writing topics:
Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry? 
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka

Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer