Wendy, when did you start writing poetry?

I started writing seriously five years ago. I mean, I wrote poetry in high school, like everybody else, but I really started, poetry really suggested itself, around five years ago. In the seventies, I would hang out with the writers in the writer's program at the University of Arkansas. There were a lot of big writers there, like Jim Whitehead, and Miller Williams. I hung out with them, but I never tried to publish anything myself.

Why were you hanging out with that crowd?

I don't know, affinity, I guess. I was working through graduate school in history at the time. And historians are not notably wacky people. We had some fairly wacky ones at the U. of A., but the English people, they were way out there.

So I took a summer workshop on poetry, and hung out, but that was it.

And you say poetry suggested itself?

Yeah. At that time, my son had been in a life-threatening accident, and I spent six months living in an apartment in Manhattan, where he lives. When I came back, I went back to charity meetings and committees and realized that that was not how I wanted to spend my rapidly declining years. So I started thinking about poetry. And I went to some summer courses, college courses, and I thought, "Well, hell, I can do this."

The first eight months it was great. I was writing poetry twelve to fourteen hours a day. I stopped cooking, even. And I was still very bad, but by then I had a couple of little credits in the kind of ooky magazines that you're not supposed to send anything to, that no serious writers are supposed to admit to having sent anything to, and by then I was off. I was studying writing.

So did you quit conventional work?

Sure. Yes, I did. I don't work, I just write. I write and I study writing. I am supported in this enterprise by a really generous husband who believes in my work.

What sort of differences do you find between the things you were writing then and the things you are writing now?

I just have a clue, now. I mean, I was clueless, I wrote one or two things that were OK, really quite alright, but it was by sheer accident, or a gift of the muse.

I've never really learned when a poem is finished. I over-revise, I revise constantly. I have hit a rhythm where I write something and go back to it later, but I used to revise those puppies until they were bleeding in a ditch, I would just flog them. I recently found a poem that was a very good idea initially, but I had just flogged it to death, until there was nothing left to save. I wish I had the first one to go back to.

So I've learned a lot about poetics, I've learned a lot about form, and I've learned about the island of poetry, and there is one.

You know, if you're a web person, you think of poetry as being as big as the web, and it is. But the world of serious and academic poetry is a very small one. I mean, everybody kind of knows everybody else, or at least is aware of everybody. I don't know that there are really many dark horses. It's a community, a community unified through interest. It's true on the web, too, you know how people have web reputations.

But people on the web are surprising me. I'll stumble onto somebody's work and I'll just have no words to describe what I'm seeing, how it affects me. It's beyond what I know how to say. That still does happen to me when reading academic poetry, but not as often.

So how is it an island?

Well, it's a small town, and like all small towns, it has its own rules and regulations, values and mores. It has its eccentrics. At first, I was surprised that everybody knows everybody else, but I shouldn't have been. It's all six degrees of separation, only in the world of poetry it's more like two degrees of separation. It's just a little world.

When did you begin seeking publication for your work?

As soon as I started writing. I really wish I could say that no, I held back, but I didn't. My friend Andrea wrote poems for five years before she sent anything to publishers, but then she sent it to Ploughshares, and they accepted it. Me, I have no forbearance.

It takes a lot of work, you know. Tons of work. Buying stamps, getting envelopes, sending out the same letter over and over again. You know, the one that says, "Here are four poems for your consideration, thank you," not the one that says, "My great-grandfather was Lighthorse Harry Lee so I think you should accept these poems." You get rid of that second one pretty quick.

Eighty to ninety percent of everything you send out gets rejected. I have a wall full of rejection letters. Most everything you get is "Thank you, not at this time," and those are the kind ones.

Is it worth it?

I don't know. Let me really think about that for a minute instead of just saying that it's some sort of completion. Poets are fond of saying, "write for yourself," and I certainly write for myself. The only thing that could chain you to your word processor like this is yourself, because you're not making any money. I mean, even the most prestigious poets don't make any money. Lucille Clifton is a giant and nine out of ten poets don't know who she is.

Well, some guy wrote me one day and said, "Hey, I'm a sculptor, I liked your poem about Rodin," when I wrote that poem about Rilke, and how he felt. So that just made my day. Confirmed my idea that everybody sees what they want to see.

I guess I seek publication for a sense of completion, after all. I'll tell you why I published that damn chapbook, I did it to put it all down so that I'd stop fiddling with those poems.

Your work and commentary can be found in many serious literary publications; you attend classes with Lucille Clifton. Obviously, poetry is something that you take very seriously, as a career. What can you tell us about such a lifestyle?

It takes precedence over almost everything. My husband is an exception. Sometimes. I write and read every day. I spend some time on line. This is what all I do. I like to cook, and I'm a film fanatic, but everything in my life would be jettisoned before I'd let go of poetry. I read poets to the exclusion of mostly everything. Well, except for a magazine or two, mostly literary, but one of my great delights was to discover that Lucille Clifton and I share a lust for People magazine. (I didn't ask her about Esquire, though.)

How would you advise poets seeking publication?

You have to have a hide like a buffalo and the patience of Job. 90% of everything you send out comes back---and often not for months and months. My favorite story is from a friend who submitted a poem which was rejected, then he resubmitted it to the same magazine (same editor) a year later (no revisions) and was accepted. So, it's a crapshoot. Get a copy of Poet's Market or Poets and Writers and keep good records. No Chatty Cathy cover letters. If you simultaneously submit--fess' up.

[Ed. Note: While many web-editors are rapidly becoming as anal as their print counterparts, I still don't give a shit if you simultaneously submit or not.]

So what poets do you read?

How many do you want? I read a lot of poetry because I got started so late-- I'd only read ones required for school and the ones I knew before I started writing-- and there are so many good ones & so little time. Right now I'm reading William Matthews, Thomas Lux (I'm going to study with him as well as Naomi Nye this month) & Thomas Hardy, but G.M. Hopkins is a consistent favorite. Susan Mitchell has incredibly luscious language. I read books about writing like Richard Hugo's Triggering Town and William Stafford's Writing the Australian Crawl, just now it's Chase Twitchell's book. I go back to Dacey's work again and again, and to Hugo's. Billy Collins has just the right observer's distance from life and art. I adore Sharon Olds and Dorianne Laux. Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular knocks me out. Wislawa Szymborska & Anna Swir engage me in different ways and I keep Czeslaw Milosz's Collected in the bathroom. I read some every day, as you might imagine--but don't go there.

I like Russell Edson, too. And, Lawsy, Miller Williams for his wit...anybody who's got wit gets my vote.

What the poets I love have in common is they don't lie and weasel about what's up, they don't pull punches. They take poetry seriously, not themselves.

What other works of literature do you enjoy?

Well, like I said, People magazine. Then A.A. Milne, Shakespeare and the Bible, the King James Bible. These three are a poet's best friends -- for the rhythms, the sense of the sound of English. Beyond that, who remembers? I haven't read many novels in the last five years -- all of Peter Hoeg and some Ondaatje (although his Cinnamon Peelers --poetry-- is a fave).

Getting back to your poetry, and how it has developed; How have your sources for inspiration changed over the past five years?

They've widened. The more I read, the more my sources widen. And I keep discovering new people, new poets.

So would you cite poets as primary sources of inspiration?

Absolutely. I mean, everything, whatever happens to you becomes a source of inspiration. Listening to people, in restaurants, you know, public conveyances, but mostly reading. I'm pretty much just reading poetry now. I used to refrain from reading poetry, and I'm paying for it now by not being able to read anything else.

You know, if an editor wants to change something I've written, or if a friend thinks I should change something around, I will always consider it, at least. I would never say, to a careful and considerate reader, "No, I won't do that, this poem is sacrosanct." I will always at least try whatever they suggest. Sometimes I'll change it back, but that's OK.

I once wrote to a person, suggesting that he make a change to one of his poems. He wrote back that he had studied poetry for many years and wasn't interested in suggestions. I thought, "OK, great. That's one less competitor for the tiny turf of fame that is poetry." Here's a guy that, at whatever age he was at, decided that there was nothing left for him to learn, that he knew all there is to know.

But if you're permeable, if you'll allow feedback, you are also open to people who want for you to write like they do, who think that they write properly and that you should become more like them. You know, if you're in a poetry class, you'll sometimes find that the people who do well are the ones that write the most like the teacher. And that's OK, too.

But yeah, I imitate the writers that I'm reading. Like, I'll write just a few poems mimicking someone else's style, and I won't necessarily publish them, but I'll have them, and I'll say, for example, "Yeah, that was my Susan Mitchell period."

The lady with the luscious language?

That's her. Unfortunately, I've never actually managed a full-blown Susan Mitchell period, because I'll never be that good, but I live and hope.

It's just that I really don't think it's all that terrible, if you're studying someone's work, and paying attention to what you're reading, to sound like them for a while. It's just not that serious. And I'm sure that poets who have been writing for a very long time don't do that. I do have my own style, that is uniquely mine, but I don't mind borrowing. It's a big, wild world.

I mean, even if it's true that none of us have new ideas, we really do have new ways of saying things. Like, when I got my copy of Don Hall's Without, I just sat down and cried, it just overwhelmed me. And he didn't say anything that I haven't heard before, but the way that he said it!

You know, the stuff in Without is as old as love and sorrow. And there are a lot of poems about love and sorrow.

The point is that I'm not jaded about poetry. Despite the limited number of topics that we have to work with, we can still bring people to laughter or tears. If stuff like that is going on, we don't have to have any new ideas.

Do you think of the heavily sexual themes often featured in your work as controversial, or have you encountered difficulty because of them?

I've encountered some difficulty because of the heavily sexual themes of my life---but so far the art's no prob.

Wendy, tell us about your religious beliefs. Your poetry implies atheism. Is that an accurate description of your beliefs?

What about my poetry implies atheism?

I see recurring themes of finality in death.

Oh, yeah. I have a deep and abiding distrust of religion, but I am a deeply spiritual person. I can't believe that there's not something larger out there. I mean, can you imagine thinking that you're the biggest thing out there?

Who was it that said that the biggest problem with Christianity is that it's never been tried? I tend to think that's right, that the goal in being Christian or Buddhist or whatever is not to stand on a bloody spot and kill everyone that doesn't agree, but to try to practice more of what people like Jesus and Buddha said.

Do you believe that death is final, then?

No. Of course not. I believe you'll do it until you get it right.

But no one is more amazed than I by how much I write about death. And I have a friend that used to be a psychologist, she's a metalworker now, but she said, "Well, why wouldn't you write about death all the time, when you've experienced such a series of losses." Which is true, I've experienced this series of deaths and departures. People will tell me that I've had a hard life, but of course from the inside, there's no way for me to judge something like that. All I can say is that my life has been insanely interesting. I've met a bazillion people. I've been married four times, and every time I married someone, I became them.

Except this time. And I think that came with sobriety. Sobriety convinced me that no matter how flimsy I find this little construct that is me, it's still worth hanging on to.

Tell us about your children.

I have two sons. They're grown. One is an artist in Manhattan. The other is an investment banker in California. He also plays a mean rock and roll guitar.

How have they influenced your work?

My kids have really had a great deal of influence on me. They taught me bravery and they taught me how to love. They taught me responsibility. They went for their dreams, and in so doing, taught me to, so that I could, when it was my turn. What they got wasn't necessarily what they were shooting for, but they made out all right.

They're pretty amazing kids. I really like them. We chat. I have a grandson that's a lot like them.

I married the man that's the father of my son, and we stayed married for twelve years. I married a lot of people, though, and I want it known that I'm not to be blamed for all my mistakes in that regard. So it just made it a little more difficult to do things, it was all really fairly unorthodox.

And I was such a kid, Jonathan, I didn't know how to keep from getting pregnant. You know, back then we had good girls and bad girls, two separate worlds, and the first time we made love I must have gotten knocked up. And I loved him, and I married him, and that was it. It was kind of sad, because I was scheduled in the early enrollment program in college and stuff, but that was all.

People are arrogant. I was so arrogant, you know. And when you're seventeen, and people criticize you and insult you, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you, it's something about them. But when you're seventeen, you can't know that. I disappointed a lot of people, we were kids having kids, as they say, and eventually I was able to discuss this with my sons, and they understand that we did the best we could, not always the best that could have been. And in that, we opened a dialogue that hasn't gone away.

I'm sure I was just an awful mother, a complete beast, self-centered and loud, but I did the best I could, and now they're my friends, so it's worked out fine. People say that it ruins your life, but I would never say so. Never ever. My life is very different from what it would have been, but believe me, I know how to ruin my life, and that's not the way.

Do you often find yourself writing about your children?

No. They are not the subject, nor do they creep into my poems, as far as I'm aware. I don't know what to tell you, about the things that cause me to write. The Bird of Paradise flies up my nose, or something. My inspiration comes from too many years of living. Everything that's happened to me. I have a very bad poem about my eldest son, that I wrote about the day he was born. It might be an OK poem someday, but now it's just bad.

Do you discuss poetry with them?

Not really. I mean, they're aware of it, they know I'm a poet. It's a me-thing, they're not really into it, except to the degree that it makes me happy. It's not the family business.

What other forms of artistic expression do you work with?

Cooking.

No, seriously.

Seriously, cooking.

OK. So what do you do when you're not an artist?

Sleep.

OK....

You know, I have time to be monomaniacal about poetry. It's really all I think about. You know, I have this book that's been sitting on my night stand for six months, by Kay Redfield Jamison, Fire something, where is that...

That would be Touched by Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.

Oh, I see. Yeah, that. Anyway, I haven't read it yet. I just buy more poetry books. It's OK. I can read Jamison later.

But I think about it constantly. Hey, I've had a life. I can afford to just study poetry now.