From The Columbian
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Poet Laux celebrates reprint of first book
Book release parties are common, but a re-release fete years after initial publication speaks volumes about a work's longevity. It's been 17 years since contemporary bard Dorianne Laux published her first book of poetry, and now she's coming to Vancouver for a reading and signing to celebrate "Awake's" being reprinted by Eastern Washington University Press.
Laux, 55, who also wrote the poetry collections "Smoke," "What We Carry" and "Facts about the Moon," and co-authored the textbook "The Poet's Companion," has received an Oregon Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
A professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon in Eugene and faculty member at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore., Laux will share poems from "Facts about the Moon" at a Barnes & Noble Booksellers' event this week. She may also have a few copies of her latest book of poetry, "Superman: The Chapbook," on hand. "Superman" is being published by Red Dragonfly Press and will be widely available in January.
The Columbian recently talked with Laux about poetry. The interview, edited for space and clarity, delves into Laux's philosophy on imagery, form and symbolism, and offers an idea of what to expect at her reading.
How did you get started writing poetry?
I started writing poetry when I was 12, but it was really terrible. It was all rhymed, and I didn't show it to anyone. I hid it under the bed. But when I was much older, after I'd had my daughter Tristem, who's now 31, I started taking community college classes in San Diego. The teacher really encouraged me to write and wanted to me to do open-mike readings in town, and eventually I published my first poem in a local magazine. From there, I began getting involved with the poet community. I started taking as many evening writing classes as I could. I was working as a waitress at the time and would take classes after my shift ended. Then I moved up to the San Francisco Bay Area and eventually applied to Mills College in Oakland. They gave me a grant to go, specific to older women returning to school. I started publishing poems in local magazines there, and that caught the attention of the poet Philip Levine. Eventually, we became friends and he helped me get my first book, "Awake," published.
Do you have a favorite line from "Awake"?
The title poem, "Awake," is about having a feeling of loneliness in the world. And the final poem, called "Sunday Morning," is about the same thing. How does a disbeliever live in a world of believers? The final lines of "Awake" are about the sax player playing the saxophone next door, and how by playing this music he's making us aware of how beautiful the world is. It ends with, "The garden. The hard blue sky. The sweet apple of light." I'm saying the Earth is the Garden of Eden and our ordinary lives are sacred. It's the old heaven-on-Earth. That is really what my vision is, finding beauty in things that are ordinary, and finding faith and holiness in things that are of this world.
Do you employ specific rhyme schemes and meters when crafting poetry, or do you write free verse?
When I was very young, I did employ rhyme scheme. My poems were purely iambic. Then when I started taking these community college classes, I was exposed to contemporary American poetry as well as world poetry in translation, and I realized poetry didn't have to rhyme. Now I primarily work in free verse, which has been the style of American poetry for quite some years beginning with Walt Whitman. He was a huge influence on the advent of a much more open poetry and a much more passionate poetry that springs from the heart, as opposed to poetry confined by a strict form.
In addition to Walt Whitman, which poets inspire you?
Philip Levine was a great inspiration to me, as well as a mentor. His poems are really about the working class in America. Like Whitman, he sees the beauty of people going to work every day and the people working in the fields and women raising their children. Whitman had this image of America almost like a hive of workers, and how beautiful it was. Philip Levine is sort of a contemporary version of Walt Whitman and has a great respect for the dignity of the working person. Wallace Stevens wrote more about the existential dilemma. He was a much more metaphysical poet. His poems were filled with beautiful language and imagery. He was an inspiration specifically for my poem "Sunday Morning" because he was struggling with something I was struggling with, which was how to live in a world of believers if you don't believe in the afterlife or God or you don't belong to a specific religion.
When you write poetry, are there particular metaphors you find yourself returning to time and again?
There aren't particular metaphors I return to but rather metaphors I find that are unique to what I'm trying to talk about in the poem. But certainly some of the images I return to over and over again are domestic images, images of women. I spent most of my life being a mother and a wife, so what I had to look at were images around the house. The moon to me looks like a dinner plate broken in half, and the clouds look like a dish towel. In "Facts about the Moon," I use a lot of moon imagery and symbolism. Earth is a bad child who has done bad things, but the moon is a mother who loves the Earth anyway. And of course the moon has been a symbol for women for centuries and a poetic image forever. But I try to do something new with it. That's what a poet does, try to avoid cliches and reissue a traditional image in a contemporary way and find a new way to look at an old thing.
You have another collection of poetry, "Superman: The Chapbook," coming out soon. How did you come up with that title, and what themes do you touch on in that book?
I've written a lot of poems about pop culture. A lot of people are doing that right now. The poet Denise Duhamel has a whole book of poems about Barbie dolls. On the one hand it's about Barbie dolls, but on the other hand it sort of becomes a statement about feminism and being a woman in the 21st century. One of the poems I've written is about Superman. He's been infected by kryptonite, and it's like he's dying of cancer. I've written a poem about Cher. I have a poem about the OxiClean guy, a poem about The Beatles. Jeannine Hall Gailey is another West Coast poet who writes a lot about pop culture. You can delve into a society's feelings about itself and the social conditions of the time through a pop icon.
Your husband, Joseph Millar, also is a poet. What's it like being a poet married to a poet?
Actually there are quite a few poet marriages, famous ones like Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher. We really love it. As long as we have our own studios, our own writing space, it's fine. We share our work all the time. We don't collaborate on poems, but we're always each other's first reader on poems, and we help each other a lot and inspire each other a lot.
If you go
What: Dorianne Laux's poetry reading, book signing and "Awake" re-release party, along with an open microphone session and refreshments.
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Where: Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Vancouver Plaza, 7700 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd., Vancouver.
Cost: Free.
Information: Call 360-253-9007.
—Mary Ann Albright Columbian staff writer
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