*This was first published on April 4, 2018.
Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I was privileged to be on a professional writing retreat in Auvillar, France, October, 2015. My goal was to write new poems. The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts owns property in Auvillar; in Southwest France, on the pilgrimage route of St. Jacques of Compostelle.
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
They built a modern studio for writers and painters. Two doors down, in a rehabbed 17th century house, they lodge writers and artists. My first visit there as VCCA Fellow was decisive. My studio overlooked the shape-shifting Garonne River, and I fell in love. That was 2017.
I proposed a workshop to VCCA: “O Taste & See: Writing the Senses in Deep France.” This year marks my tenth year of leading the workshop. Warning: the place, people, food and wine are addictive.
Over the years, the University of Tennessee has often helped to foot the bill for my writing residencies. The Professional Development grant program has provided travel and research grants; the English Department’s Hodges Fund has been even more generous. In short, I’ve been spoiled!
The University of Tennessee
https://english.utk.edu/people/marilyn-kallet/
I was sitting in “my” studio in Auvillar, on October 30, 2015, ready to click on the email from the Graduate Office that hosts the PD grants. The Garonne was green and gold and snaky. The plane trees and poplars along the riverside were turning bright gold.
I opened the email, and it began, “The committee has decided not to fund your professional development grant.” Then there was a line about giving newer applicants a chance. I went into shock for about three minutes, then started to write my poem! The committee’s line of rejection is obviously the opening line of my poem. After that, I made up the rest of the letter’s wording.
Neruda (BELOW) is one of my literary companions. I have read his odes over and over. Often I travel with a volume of his work. He wrote odes––praise poems––to everything: his socks, his critics, his solitude. The art of writing praise poems to disappointments came from him. It’s a good skill for a writer to have!
Pablo Neruda’s Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/Pablo-Neruda-9145618103/
The poem was published by Plume, in their Anthology 4, 2016. And this month it will appear in my new book, How Our Bodies Learned, Black Widow Press. Sweet revenge!
Plume Anthology Web Page
Black Widow Press Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/blackwidowpress/
Black Widow Press Web Page
http://www.blackwidowpress.com
The ability to transform life’s blows––big and small––into song, into story, and art––that’s a poet’s alchemy!
What month and year did you start writing this poem? October, 2015. The turning leaves were uplifting. As Shakespeare wrote, “That time of year that mayst in me behold…” Perfect set-up for a disappointment, no?
William Shakespeare Web Page
https://www.williamshakespeare.net
What the light tone of the poem doesn’t tell the reader is that the poet will be going to Paris in November. That the second night of her stay in Paris, November 13, there will be a terror attack. That all the days and nights in Auvillar prior to Paris will indeed be paradise, compared to what will hit the fan in November. My poems in Auvillar, and the ones from the time of the Paris attacks, are in the new book. We poets compose lyrics, yes. But sometimes we are called upon to bear witness. Then our writing is closer to journalism than to songwriting. We must be ready for those times, too.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34821813
http://metro.co.uk/2015/11/17/paris-attacks-who-were-the-victims-5504314/
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/11/world/paris-victims/
How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?) Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us? I composed this poem in two drafts. The body of the poem came out whole. There was an extra phrase in the original. After the line, “We suspect it touches itself,” I originally included “Private parts.” Not necessary, as that is implicit in the self-touching. And the line about Keats, “He mined his own sources,” originally read, “He had his own sources.” Revision often involves tightening and revving up the verbs.
John Keats Web Page
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? Poetry can be a consolation, an antidote––whether it sings about a personal disappointment––or a national political disaster. Poetry bears witness and transforms. The blues have always embodied both sorrow and laughter.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? “Other applicants may be newer,” suggests that they may also be younger. Ouch!
Your biography? I was born in Montgomery, Alabama. My mother was from Alabama. She met my Brooklyn-born father when he was stationed at Maxwell Field, during WWII. I was three years’old when they moved to New York. My mother never forgave my father for the move. She was always cold in New York. The minute my father died, she moved back to Montgomery.
They made the mistake of sending me to Tufts University in Boston, during the 1960’s. I came home radicalized and critical of their politics.
Tufts University
I went to Rutgers for my MA and PhD in Comparative Literature. Back in those days, Comp. Lit at Rutgers was a patriarchal haven. Our program director had a poster of himself fighting the bulls at Pamplona. He said he had only ever enjoyed fighting bulls and being captain of a submarine. Once, he asked me for a drink to the Harvard Club. He opened the conversation by saying, “Robert will always be a better poet than Elizabeth.” (Below: Marilyn Kallet in the 1960s. Copyright by Marilyn Kallet)
Rutgers Web Page
Elizabeth Bishop
https://www.poetrysoup.com/elizabeth_bishop/biography
Elizabeth Bishop
https://www.poetrysoup.com/elizabeth_bishop/biography
Robert Lowell Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-Lowell/104042519630991
With Judith Ortiz Cofer (BELOW LEFT), I edited a book of essays about the obstacles that women writers faced: Sleeping With One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival, U of Georgia Press, 1996. My essay was about surviving Rutgers!
The University of Georgia Press
Judith Ortiz Cofer
http://judithortizcofer.english.uga.edu
I have been teaching at the University of Tennessee since 1981. When I arrived here, I met my husband, Lou Gross, a nice Jewish boy from Philadelphia. He directs NimBios, the National Institute for Math and Biological Sciences. Our daughter, Heather, lives in Atlanta with her husband, Mark Hanselman. She’s the best copy editor I know and Mark is an engineer. They rescue animals
Marilyn Kallet’s Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/mkallet
Marilyn Kallet’s Web Page