by Chuck Salmons
To learn more about Susan, visit her website: www.susanglassmeyer.com
If you haven’t heard by now, OPA member and Cincinnati poet Susan
Glassmeyer is the winner the Ohio Poetry Day Association’s 2018 Poet of the
Year award, for her first full-length collection, Invisible Fish (Dos Madres Press, 2018). On the heels of her winning, I corresponded with
her to find out more about the collection and her writing process.
CS: First of all,
congratulations on the award! Having read Invisible
Fish, I know this is an honor that is well-deserved. How does it feel to
have your name among past winners such as Mary Oliver, David Baker, and David
Citino?
SG: I was truly
surprised to win this award, Chuck. I did some research after the fact and
learned about the history of the award. What an honor to be part of this
venerable Ohio poet lineage! I already own a few of the books on the list, not
realizing the authors had previously won the award. And although I have many of
Mary Oliver’s books, Twelve Moons (winner
in 1980) was not among them. I just purchased a copy and plan to take a closer
look at that collection, especially how it is organized.
CS: As I read the
new collection, I recognized some of the poems from your previous chapbooks, Body Matters and Cook’s Luck. But there were a lot of new poems that I’d never read
before. Powerful poems. Many about your family and childhood. How did you
decide what poems to bring together for Invisible
Fish? How did you approach the organization (the four parts) for the
collection?
SG: Choosing and
organizing the poems in Invisible Fish
was a time-consuming but worthy challenge. I started by reading through the
bulk of my files to take inventory of the poems I’d written over a thirty-year
period, culling those that were well-crafted and finished, or nearly finished.
I paid attention to recurring themes and styles of poems that seemed to work
well together.
At first, I
thought there might be a separate, focused chapbook of “father poems,” but I
soon abandoned that notion when I realized those poems didn’t want to stand
alone in the world. They needed and deserved companionship, so I found a way to
weave them throughout the larger whole, creating a more mature perspective of
my family of origin and childhood. Allowing Invisible
Fish to morph into four parts was a slow and inspired process. Once I
realized these 60 poems clearly belonged together, I literally carried them
around with me, reading and rereading them over many months while I worked on
other projects. I spread the poems on the floor, I taped them to the wall, I
spent a lot of quiet time with them in a nearly meditative state simply
‘listening’ to them, not forcing anything. The poems eventually settled into a
four-part psychophysical storyline: down-up-down-up. Each of the four parts, as
well as the sum of those parts, serve the personal and the universal, the known
and the unknown, the visible and the invisible.
Once I understood
which poems belonged to each of the four independent sections (Don’t Be Afraid, Beyond Geometry, Uninitiated, Crowning the
Injury) I took a more directive role in figuring out their specific order. The
process was like planning four separate dinner parties, determining which poems
would sit where and with whom at the table for the best ‘conversations’ to take
place. That part of the process was quite enjoyable!
CS: Both human
nature and the natural world play a key role in the collection. Many of the
poems are reflections, either an examination of memory or a kind of pondering
of the world and what makes it tick. How do you decide when to write about a
particular memory or idea, or know when you’ve got something worth writing
about?
SG: I seldom run
out of ideas or inspiration for poems unless I am tired or experiencing some
measure of duress in my life. By nature I am a curious and attentive person and
purposely cultivate those attributes which I think help ward off dry spells or
writer’s block. As I’ve matured as a writer, I find that poems more often
choose me rather than me choosing them.
I may start
off down one avenue of poem-making and soon find myself miles away in a
completely different territory. I have even foolishly tried to resist writing
about certain topics that present themselves, topics I’d rather not visit at
all or revisit again. But alas, what resists persists! So I pick up my pen and
honor the muse who is whispering loudly in my ear.
CS: Two of my
favorite poems in the collection are list poems, "Wrench" and "Nameless."
However, their resolutions in each of the final stanzas are so starkly
different. In "Wrench," there is a kind
of resignation, but in "Nameless," there is this statement of taking control or reclaiming power. But each seems
to address the idea, as do several other poems, of masculine vs. feminine
dynamics, especially within families. What purpose does reading and writing
poetry serve for you?
SG: You are an
astute reader, Chuck Salmons! Yes, "Wrench" and "Nameless" do end with starkly
different resolutions. The speaker in "Wrench"
has a young candid voice that describes a painful reality. With a child’s heart
she tells a sharp uncomfortable truth, almost naively. The speaker in "Nameless" is a seasoned elder speaking
from a long perspective, an earned wisdom. Although she too is claiming a
disquieting truth, her wound is neither sharp nor raw.
After you
brought these two particular poems to my attention, I recalled the two forms of
the Mother-Daughter (Buddhist) Goddess Tara: The half-open lotus of the Green
Tara represents a young girl in the flux of activity and wonder—"Wrench." The full-open lotus of the White
Tara is the feminine figure observing life serenely, and with equanimity. She has
no need to take action but, as you say, is “reclaiming power”—"Nameless."
Related to
“masculine vs feminine dynamics” in the so-called family poems, I’ve tried to
write openly and honestly in ways that reflect not only personal experience but
echo the likely experiences of others as well. And just as we wrestle with
masculine and feminine dynamics in the outer world—our family, the workplace,
the culture, etc.—we wrestle internally as well with our own anima and animus.
I try to address the layers of these external and internal relationships in my
poems.
Reading, writing
(and revising) poetry wakes me up to
a fuller sense of myself and serves to connect me in a more meaningful way to others and to life
around me. Poem-study and poem-making both strengthen and tenderize me. It’s
like going to a mental and spiritual gym where I can exercise my psychospiritual
muscles, gain energy, and tone my psyche—which in my opinion is also good for
the health of the body. No separation.
CS: While these
poems don’t take very many strict forms, there are prose poems, couplets, and
the list poems I mentioned before. Do you prefer to write in forms or free
verse? Do you see value in writing in forms, which often are shunned by many
poets?
SG: When I was younger,
I practiced writing in forms—sonnets, pantoums, sestinas, an occasional villanelle—modeling
my pieces after well-known poets’ poems. I value the discipline of working with
forms but I gravitated mostly to free verse. I’ve had some success with the
ghazal and haiku. In recent years, I happily discovered the American Cinquain—a
form consisting of 5 lines of 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / & 2 syllables for a total of
22 syllables. I’ve exchanged a few hundred cinquains with a skilled writing
buddy over the last few years, which has been a very rewarding process.
CS: One of the
things I appreciate most about your work is its concision, which is something I
strive for in my own poems. There is so much packed into every line. Several
times I found myself getting through a poem and then having to take a deep
breath. Is this concision something you are consciously striving for in your
poems?
SG: Yes, it’s
very deliberate, and I recognize that same precision and concision in your poems
too, Chuck. I’ve often thought that a well-crafted poem can be the best short
story ever written. The practice of revision is a labor of love for me, as
important as and equal to the original seed that birthed the poem itself. What
we leave out of a poem is as important as what goes in it. And maybe here’s a
good place to end this interview with a favorite quote by Theodore Roethke:
“May my silences become more accurate.”