{"id":660,"date":"2020-04-06T17:32:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T21:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/?p=660"},"modified":"2022-11-23T10:06:54","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T15:06:54","slug":"sarah-gridley-poetry-as-an-art-of-making-for-interview-by-dylan-ecker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/2020\/04\/sarah-gridley-poetry-as-an-art-of-making-for-interview-by-dylan-ecker\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Gridley – Poetry as an Art of Making For, Interview by Dylan Ecker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

National Poetry Month 2020<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Hello all! March may have felt like years for a lot of us given the current state of affairs, but we have at last made it to April. April, of course, means that it is National Poetry Month! Here on the blog all month long we will be posting a lot <\/em>about poetry. We have interviews, reviews, and some virtual student readings in the works so be sure to tune in regularly! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All best, Lauren Miles (CW Program Apprentice) <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Sarah\nGridley is a poet writing, teaching, living in northeast Ohio. She is the\nauthor of four books: Weather Eye Open<\/em>\n(University of California Press, 2005), Green\nis the Orator<\/em> (University of California Press, 2010), Loom<\/em><\/a> (Omnidawn, 2013), and her newest\ncollection, Insofar<\/em><\/a> (New Issues Press, 2020), which was\nthe winner of the 2019 Green Rose Prize. Her poem, \u201cHousework<\/a>,\u201d won the 2019 Writer\nMagazine\/Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My\ninterest in Sarah\u2019s poetry stems from her expertise in rendering vibrant and\nresonant the quietest of details. She is mindful in her observations of the\nworld, both static and in motion, and she is expansive with a tireless\nattention to inhalations and exhalations. Thanks again to Sarah for taking part\nin this interview. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hi Sarah! Let\u2019s start with the\npresent. You teach poetry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland,\nOhio. Close by are the botanical gardens, down the street is Little Italy. It\u2019s\nnestled in the juncture of downtown and the East Cleveland suburbs. Further\nnorth is Euclid, where I was born, and of course, as of right now, a very\nchilled Lake Erie. Thinking of this I recall a small note you made in the final\npages of Green is the Orator<\/em> for the\npoem \u201cThe Bad Infinity\u201d in which you say it was written \u201cafter a geological\nwalking tour of Lakeview Cemetery.\u201d All this to ask: how would you say the\nplace you\u2019re located within effects\/affects your current writing and writing\nhabits? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hi\nDylan! I\u2019m always curious as to how location and perception go to work on each\nother. Place is a tutor to consciousness, and forms of consciousness shadow and\nilluminate place. Living repeated seasons in one place\u2014my home in the woods\u2014has\ndeepened my sense of this reciprocity. Ohio is where I grew up. I lived away\nfrom here for large stretches of time, but I\u2019ve spent most of the years of my\nlife in northeastern Ohio. Yesterday I visited a small exhibit at the art museum,\n\u201cCharles Burchfield: The Ohio Landscapes 1915-1920.\u201d I could see in his\ndrawings and watercolor paintings the way this region\u2019s light, rain, and flora shaped\nhis sensibility. The way a dying sunflower looks in November. The way a catalpa\ntree filters afternoon sun. Burchfield feels like a sibling sensibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nI was young, I loved to travel. In recent years, I\u2019ve done most of my traveling\nin my garden. There\u2019s more than enough to perceive sitting still and being\nwhere you happen to be. When I think of habits, writing ones or otherwise, I\nthink of William James\u2019s idea that the more we can consign to habit, to\nautomaticity, the freer we are to follow our imagination. I like deepening my\nhabits. Less fuss around my own daily procedures means a less encumbered\nconsciousness, fewer barriers between being and place. Earth is generous. I try\nto remember and give thanks for this every day. I once read an essay on\nbioregionalism that offered a memorable thought experiment: what if our\nconsciousness of borders were not marked by states, nations\u2014i.e., politically\norganized\/recognized territories\u2014but by the micro and macro life systems we\npass through within and across these designations? There\u2019s\na sign that tells me I\u2019m passing out of Ohio into Indiana\u2014but what if my sense\nof regionalism were more informed by biological and spirit-oriented specificities?\nWhat might that map look like?<\/a> What sense of belonging might a finer-tuned\nrelation to place create? There are maps here that predate and call up deeper\nforms of relation than \u201cOhio.\u201d I love this part of the world, and more than\never I recognize its role in my poetry. I want a relationship between place and\nwriting to be one of continued discovery and gratitude. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we\u2019re on the subject of northeast\nOhio, what is the poetry (or more generally, writing) scene like? How is the\ncommunity making itself heard? Have you noticed any changes over time?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nwish I could offer you a helpful response on this subject, but pretty much\neverything in me leans away from writing scenes, actual or virtual. I know\nthere\u2019s a lot of good work\u2014support networks, reading series, community\ninitiatives\u2014being done in and around Cleveland. I think we need all kinds of\nwriters: socially fluid ones, reclusive ones, and everyone in between. I lean\ntoward the far end of the reclusion spectrum. From their inception, social\nmedia platforms felt harmful to me. I know I miss out on a lot of information\nand networking this way, but networking is a word that has always made me\nflinch. I am not good at moving seamlessly between social worlds and solitude.\nI don\u2019t reject poetry scenes so much as lack the constitution to move in and\nout of them gracefully. I do notice that poets are far more adept at forms of self-promotion\nthan we used to be. Poetry draws parallel to the art of marketing. Some of this\nis good news for poetry, increasing its reach and meaningfulness; some of it\nfeels confusingly capitalistic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m drawn to your poetry because of\nits attentiveness and sensitivity\u2014fixated on particular sounds and syllabic\ndynamics, almost as if a seismograph. Does form and prosody offer us anything\nwhen it comes to being in productive or healthful conversation with ourselves,\nothers, our environment?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank\nyou. I love this concept of a compositional seismograph. I think healthful\nconversation is critical to these areas of attention you outline, and I think\nwe have to work at it every day, whatever our occupation may be. The longer I\npractice poetry, the more I see it as a living form, akin to a martial art, or\na religious practice. For me, poetry springs from the tension between\nregulation and deregulation, \u201cruliness\u201d and unruliness. Clearer dispositions\nand intentions do emerge from sustained engagement with these dynamics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My\nfather is from Wales, and the first poet I really knew and loved was Dylan\nThomas. Thomas worked quite a bit in syllabics, and while I\u2019ve never done so\nconsciously myself, I think I might have absorbed some of his obsession with\nmeasure, the tensions one can create by measuring sonic exuberance against\nsilence. Dylan, as you likely already know (J) means \u201cson of the wave.\u201d With\ntheir great lunar sensitivity, rising and falling oceans are our paramount\nexample of formal organization in tension with fluid, biotic life. You can hear\nthis exact tension in the last lines of \u201cFern Hill\u201d: \u201cTime held me green and\ndying\/Though I sang in my chains like the sea.\u201d Another British poet, Charles Tomlinson,\nprovides this beautiful mini-treatise on measure: \u201cTo handle measure\u2026seems a human thing to do: your recurrences are\nnever so pat as to seem simply mechanical, your outgrowths never so rambling or\nbrambled as to spread to mere vegetation. A human measure, surrounded by\nsurprises, impenetrables, and unknowables, but always reasserting itself, this\ncould be a salutary aim\u2014one in which rhythm and tone are both allies\u2014, faced as\nwe always are by the temptation to exaggerate and to overvalue the claims of\nself.\u201d I recently discovered that the etymology of \u201cfathom\u201d ties this\nmeasurement back to a human arm-span. It\u2019s curious to think that the term\n\u201cunfathomable\u201d expresses that which exceeds our grasp while also embodying it\u2014particularly\nnow, in the face of environmental crisis. I have a philosopher friend who\nargues for the term \u201cthe age of anthroponomy\u201d in place of the trending term,\nAnthropocene. Anthroponomy puts the emphasis on human responsibility in a\nforward-leaning direction. In its compound we get the call to manage (nemein<\/em>), to self-regulate. This friend\nand I were part of a reading group called \u201cLiving Forms.\u201d Think about how many\ndisciplines can lean into conversation with this heading. Poetry included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, I\u2019d like to get specific. A\npoem of yours I love very much is \u201cSecond Inspirations of the Nitrous Oxide.\u201d The\nvoice of the poem reads a bit different than the rest of the collection as if\nit\u2019s driven by an urge to catalogue like a historian would, but at the same\ntime it wants to wander. It also proposes a sort of continual processing and\nadjusting in our languages, communities, memories. That when thinking of\n\u201cgreenness\u201d we are also thinking of the space around it. The poem begins in a\npeculiar and small scene from the life of Peter Roget, so I\u2019d like to know what\noriginally drew you to this story and did its role alter as you examined it\nfurther? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank\nyou. I\u2019m glad you get something from this poem. And I think you\u2019re exactly\nright that it wants to wander\u2014perhaps in resistance to Roget\u2019s desire for an organized\ncompendium. If you look at a thesaurus for sale today, it will be making claims\nto being the most \u201ccomprehensive,\u201d \u201cdefinitive,\u201d and \u201cup-to-date.\u201d But the\nlikelihood of revised editions makes these claims provisional, perhaps even a\nbit comical. When I read about it, Roget\u2019s thesaurus project seemed both\nhubristic and endearing. When I learned that the root meaning of thesaurus is\ntreasure or storehouse, I began thinking of Roget\u2019s work as a kind of heroic descent\ninto the underworld, since Pluto, Latinized from the Greek Plouton, also means\nwealth or riches. I think of Heraclitus\u2019 fragment #45: \u201cYou could not find the\nboundaries of soul though you travelled every way, so deep is its logos.\u201d I\nlove your idea that when thinking of \u201cgreenness,\u201d we are also thinking of a\nspace around it. That circumambient space can be threatening, promising, or anything\nin between\u2014a space into which to branch, flower, leaf\u2014or a space that consumes\nhabitat, closing in on inhabitable and expressible greenness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\ncan\u2019t remember what first drew me to reading about Roget. Perhaps it was\nlearning that he\u2019d participated in experiments with nitrous oxide. One of the\nfunniest memories I have from my childhood is being high on laughing gas with\nmy brother. We\u2019d both been given dental nitrous oxide for teeth pulling and\nwere put in a shared recovery room to \u201csober up.\u201d As kids, we were good at\negging each other on and making each other laugh under any circumstances, but\nbeing under the influence of laughing gas took our comedic interplay to new\nlevels. Roget\u2019s dispassionate report to the Pneumatic Institute (\u201cI cannot\nremember that I experienced the least pleasure from any of these sensations\u2026\u201d)\nmade me think, What a party pooper!<\/em> Though\nhe was contemporary with Romantic poets, Roget seemed a throwback to\nEnlightenment values and methods. That he set his sights on language for the\napplication of these methods and aims seems farcical, elaborately doomed.\nLanguage was his Hydra, the regenerative water-snake that resists the cut-up\nwork of analysis, even as it calls us to this form of attention and control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given our current political and\ncultural landscape in the United States, I would be understating it by saying\nthings are dire. What role does ecopoetics serve in enacting change?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nagree that things are dire. But a wise woman told me this summer, in response\nto my catalogues of worry, that we can\u2019t do the work of repair while miring\nourselves in despair. Despair is incapacitating. What we need now is a sense of\nhuman capability. Culpability is there, most certainly. But capability, in the\nsense of receptivity or capaciousness, is where paradigm shifts come from. The\nother sense of capability\u2014able to grasp or hold\u2014has to do with the kind of\nhuman self-regulation my friend in philosophy terms anthroponomy. I used to\nteach a course I termed eco-poetics, but I have decided to drop that term\nbecause of the implications of the Greek term, oikos<\/em>. This was a term for the family, the family\u2019s property, the\nhouse\u2014one\u2019s estate. In its original use, this \u201cholding\u201d would include slaves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While\neco- has become ubiquitous as a prefix expressing \u201cgreen\u201d thinking, I think the\nmore accurate Greek borrowing would be nostos<\/em>,\ni.e., the long and difficult act of homecoming, an orientation that is\nfundamentally shared as opposed to myopically privatized. I think the critical\npiece in this homecoming effort will be coming to our senses. I do think poetry\ncan be helpful in that effort. Look at Robert Frost\u2019s \u201cDirective.\u201d I think\npoetry is an art of discernment joined to a posture of longing. I think poetry\ncan effect social change and environmental change because it operates on\nspirit. We need all our forms of optimism and commitment now. There\u2019s another\nGreek word I like to invoke with my students: xenia<\/em>, meaning guest-friendship, or hospitality. I\u2019m curious about\nthe experiences that poetry is capable of hosting, the worlds it asks people to\ninhabit. Rudolf Steiner believed that the thoughts of people today will\ndetermine earth\u2019s physical properties in the future. That makes for a lot of\nresponsibility, but also a lot of opportunity. At its best, poetry is an art of\nmaking for<\/em>: in the navigational\nsense, and in the sense of dedication. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, an encompassing question\nfrom a poet starting out: how do you feel your poetry has evolved? What kind of\nadaptations has it made? Oftentimes I think this is the appropriate time to ask\nwhat book or poem was most formative, and you can answer that if you\u2019d like,\nbut I want to veer somewhere else and ask what encounter, conversation, or even\nmoment of solitude do you return to the most?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nthink we all start out as poets, that is, as children. I was lucky to have\nparents who made reading a joy to me, a communal and a self-directed practice\nof discovery and aesthetic development. I think when I started my formal\ntraining in poetry, at the University of Montana, I was still rollicking around\nin language joy, not very cognizant of what sort of spaces I wanted to host for\nreaders. I had a wonderful teacher at Montana who gently suggested I didn\u2019t\nneed to \u201cflash my trash\u201d so much, linguistically speaking. I think I have been\ngrowing into that realization for a very long time. While I will always be\ndrawn to poets who make language fly and sing\u2014Thomas and Hopkins are so near to\nmy heart\u2014in middle age, I am wanting to understand the power of silence, to\ninvestigate the tonal and conceptual complexities built up from quiet diction.\nI teach a first-year seminar on silence, and I think the reading I\u2019ve done to\nstructure this course put good kinds of pressure on my practice. My last book, Loom<\/em>, was deeply concerned with forms of\nsolitude, taking Tennyson\u2019s treatment of the Lady of Shalott legend as its\nfocal point. And my newest book, Insofar<\/em>\n(forthcoming from New Issues Press in spring 2020), extends that meditation,\nconsiders the forms of thinking available to us when we are willing to be alone\nand listen to our thoughts. Solitude has always been very important to me. I\ndon\u2019t recall single, touchstone moments of solitude so much as a general\ndisposition to being contemplative. I do love conversation. Friendship is the\nvitalizing form of relationship in my life. But I also love being at home with\nbooks, pencils, trees, dog, and cat, listening for what happens next. Adaptation\nis one of the key promises that poetry makes to its practitioners. I quote an\naphorism (attributed to Rousseau) in my new book: \u201cPatience is bitter but its\nfruit is sweet.\u201d Here\u2019s to that sweetness. Here\u2019s wishing it to you, and to all\nof us who keep at it faithfully over time. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

National Poetry Month 2020 Hello all! March may have felt like years for a lot of us given the current state of affairs, but we have at last made it to April. April, of course, means that it is National Poetry Month! Here on the blog all month long we will be posting a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2819,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[210,1],"tags":[25,151,156],"class_list":["post-660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-uncategorized","tag-interview","tag-national-poetry-month","tag-sarah-gridley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2819"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":774,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions\/774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}