It's not every day that I get an opportunity to interview a former poet laureate. So when I was afforded the chance to read Patricia Fargnoli's Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press), I jumped at the chance to interview the former New Hampshire Poet Laureate (her term ended earlier this year).
Though Fargnoli is a retired psychotherapist, she just published her first collection of poems Necessary Light (Utah State University Press) in 1999. And has made her presence felt in the poetry community in a very short period of time with another full-length collection and chapbook in the same 10-year span. Oh yeah, Fargnoli is also in the final stages of publishing another collection with Tupelo Press.
Here's one of my favorites (I have many) from Duties of the Spirit:
The Undeniable Pressure of Existence
I saw the fox running by the side of the road
past the turned-away brick faces of the condominiums
past the Citco gas station with its line of cars and trucks
and he ran, limping, gaunt, matted dull haired
past Jim's Pizza, past the Wash-O-Mat
past the Thai Garden, his sides heaving like bellows
and he kept running to where the interstate
crossed the state road and he reached it and ran on
under the underpass and beyond it past the perfect
rows of split-levels, their identical driveways
their brookless and forestless yards,
and from my moving car, I watched him,
helpless to do anything to help him, certain he was beyond
any aid, any desire to save him, and he ran loping on,
far out of his element, sick, panting, starving,
his eyes fixed on some point ahead of him,
some possible salvation
in all this hopelessness, that only only he could see.
*****
What are you currently up to?
On March 22, I finished my 3 1/2-year term as New Hampshire's Poet Laureate. And my new book, Then, Something, which is due to be published in fall by Tupelo Press, is at the publishers and soon to go into production. We've already decided on the cover. I've also recently finished work with two private tutorial students...all of which should mean that I could rest a while, and, hopefully, turn my energies toward writing new work. But March's calendar is full of readings I want to attend and lunches with poet/friends and teaching my private class. And April's only a little freer. The last week in April and the beginning of May I'm going to The Dorset Writer's Colony in Vermont for a week (and would go longer if I didn't have a cat and no one for him to live with in my absence). In June, I'm teaching at an Elderhostel for a week, and leading an Ekphrasis workshop in July and a workshop for Teachers in August. In between, I'm giving a couple of readings....and will be working at proofreading my manuscript for the press...and writing a reader's guide. Whew! Would you believe I've been "retired" for 10 years now?
You've just recently finished up a stint as New Hampshire's Poet Laureate. What were your duties? Were you able to accomplish everything you wanted?
As poet laureate, I had no official duties. Some poet laureates do a little or nothing; some do a lot. I like that what I did was left entirely up to me so that I could use the skills and interests I have in the way I wanted to. I'd decided from the outset that I wanted to do something for children, something for libraries and something for New Hampshire poets. And I'm proud that I accomplished all three. With the support of the NH State Library, The Writer's Project and the NH Council on the Arts, I was able to recruit 43 poet-volunteers from around the state, and to organize a "Children's Poetry Day in the Libraries Day" the first April after I was elected. The Governor issued a proclamation proclaiming April 14th as statewide "Children's Poetry Day;" and each volunteer put on a program for children in a library near him/her. We published articles in almost every regional magazine promoting the importance of poetry in children's lives and served about 350 children and parents on that day.
I also initiated (again with the help of Art Council personnel) a "New Hampshire Poets Showcase" link to the Arts Council website. Every two weeks we featured a new NH poet with a poem, bio, photo, links and a paragraph about how their poem came to be.
I also did readings and workshops around the state and attended civil functions occasionally. And I delivered a poem at the Governor's Inauguration.
When I look back at what I accomplished I'm amazed that I could do it. I had reservations about accepting the position in the beginning because of some chronic health problems that have limited my mobility and energy. But I'm glad I didn't turn it down; the position was life-enriching. I made many friends and have some wonderful memories.
When and why did you begin publishing poetry?
I began writing and studying poetry seriously when I was in my mid-30's in a graduate class with Brendan Galvin at Central CT State University. Along with 7 other women who became my close friends (and are to this day), I took the class for several years. My first poems were published in Tendril (which has been gone for years) and Poet Lore. In fact, Brendan sent out my work to Tendril without telling me and when, one of the poems was accepted, he called me from his vacationing on Cape Cod to give me the news.
I was hooked. I've always loved poetry and had written it earlier...publishing in the high school newspaper etc., but I knew nothing then about contemporary poetry and the only two poets' names I was familiar with were Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell. However, it was many years later, when I was 62, that I published my first book, Necessary Light, after Mary Oliver chose it as the May Swenson Award winner.
The "why" is harder to explain. Besides the love of poetry, there's the challenge of getting what can't be easily said into words; the thrill of connecting in a deep way to readers, the adrenaline rush when you open an acceptance letter and the way writing a poem can somehow make sense of your life.
Do you have any method to where and when you submit your poems?
Hmmm. I usually submit about 3 times a year....in late September, January, and maybe June (to those journals that accept summer submissions). But this isn't rigid and if I have some poems I want to send out and have the time, I'll send them. I have a list of journals I'd like to have my poems in...a rather long list. Over the years, I've subscribed to many of them and I know what kind of work they take. I believe strongly that poets shouldn't be expecting editors to publish them if they, themselves, aren't supporting the work of presses, literary journals, and other poets.
I only occasionally do simultaneous submissions because it's hard to keep track of them. But I do them more lately because I am 71 and time is passing far too quickly...I can't afford to wait a year to hear results anymore...especially since the competition is so fierce and rejection so frequent. And when I do submit simultaneously, I don't send to more than 3 journals at a time, or to journals that don't accept them. But other than that, I have no specific method.
Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press) won the Jane Kenyon Poetry Book Award and your first collection Necessary Light (Utah State University Press) won the May Swenson Book Award. What do you think makes a good collection?
Oh Robert, it is so, so subjective! I've several times been a judge or early-round judge of a book competition so I've read hundreds of manuscripts and I can tell what impresses me....though it probably would be different for someone else. At the top of my list is "Vision." I mean that the book presents the poet's unique way of looking at the world....some fragment of the whole. And the poems must "matter" and, when taken together, seem like a cohesive whole (even though there may be single poems that are different from most of the others)....I don't have patience with the superficial or pretentious language that reveals nothing when you look under it. I look for depth. Craft matters to me greatly. And once I gave top prize to a book (a novel in verse) mainly because I fell in love with the "voice" of the protagonist. (He was an ironic everyman.) Of course, the craft was impeccable too.
What do you look for in a good poem?
Depth, beauty, spirit, craft, sound, humanity. Sometimes fracturing and remaking of reality, so that I as a reader can see a thing newly. Some news to help me understand my own life and its meaning.
In Duties of the Spirit, you deal with nature and aging--even confronting death. These topics are big and well-traveled, yet you make them your own. I'm sure part of your success comes back to revision. So, how much time do you commit to revision? And how do you know a poem is done?
Revision is, for me, the process by which a poem comes into being. My early drafts are terrible. I often overwrite pushing myself past all the voices in my head that say "Ugh" just in order to get words onto the page where they can be worked at. I then will do maybe 3 or 4 quick revisions and put it away for at least a few days. Then I work at it again. If I can get it into what begins to feel to me like a poem and I'm as far as I can go, I'll bring it to one of my workshops (there are 2; one of them is online). That usually results in another revision. I have what I call my "WP file," which stands for "Working Poems." The revised draft (if I'm still not satisfied which is usually the case) goes into that file...and periodically, I'll pull it up and work some more.
In later drafts, often, I'm picking at single words, or perhaps upping the ante on a phrase that feels flat...or experimenting with shifting the order around or changing line-breaks...that kind of thing. I've often worked this way on a poem for years before I'm satisfied...if I ever am. And even when I send out a poem, I'll later revise it... or even after it's published. I don't know when a poem is done....it's mostly just let go.
I think of revision as being like a sculptor with a block of marble. The poet chips and chips away at the poem until the real poem (hopefully) emerges from the block of words.
Who (or what) have you been reading recently?
I read poetry every day...and not just a little. I have 7 bookcases (3 of them tall ones) in my 2 room apartment and they are all filled with books of poetry. I spend more on poetry than I do on anything else except food and rent. Currently on my bedstand (which means I'm reading them) are: Robert Hass Time and Materials (which I'm reading for the second time); Mary Oliver's New Evidence; Louise Gluck's Averno (also reading for the 2nd time); Borges This Craft of Verse; Rebecca Seiferle, Bitters; BAP, Charles Wright, ed; Henri Coles, Blackbird and Wolf; Charles Bennett's How to Make a Woman Out of Water; Ruth Stone's What Love Comes to; The Making of A Sonnet, Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland; Dante's Divine Comedy; and the current issues of several journals: The Georgia Review, Shenandoah,The Harvard Review and The American Poetry Journal.
On order are Ann Fisher-Wirth's Carta Marina and Jack Gilbert's new book (which I've forgotten the name of).
If you could offer only one piece of advice to your fellow poets, what would it be?
Read, read, read, and support other poets, publishers and the poetry community.
*****
To learn more about Patricia Fargnoli, check out her website at www.patriciafargnoli.com.