Q & A with Poet Barbara Crooker on the Magic of VCCA, Reading, and Her Poetry

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Guest-blogger Christina Baker Kline: 5 Quotes that Influenced the Writing of a Novel

What fun it was to run into my fellow VCCA resident, novelist Christina Baker Kline, at the recent Women's National Book Association Reading Group panel in New York City. Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University and the author of several novels, she has just published the intriguing Bird in Hand, which opens with a horrifying accident and then delves into the intricacies of betrayal. Read on!

Five Quotes that Influenced the Writing of a Novel

When I’m working on a novel I become obsessed with its themes, and look for inspiration anywhere I can find it. Paintings, photographs, films, poems, essays, novels – everything I take in is filtered through the lens of my current obsession. (I’ve written about some of the visual inspiration for my new novel, Bird in Hand, here and here.)

Recently I opened a file I kept while working on Bird in Hand. It’s filled with newspaper clippings, handwritten and typed pages, poems torn out of magazines, Post-it notes in soft yellow and acid green. One 2”x2” fragment – the bottom of a “To Do” list – has only this, in my handwriting: Don’t worry about starting. Just begin. No story is too large to tell. (Did I write these words, or was I quoting someone? Either way, I must have found them inspiring.)

Leafing through this file, I can trace the genesis of my ideas. The scrap of paper, for example, with phone numbers on one side and Four danger signs for a marriage: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, emotional withdrawal scrawled in black pen on the other. Below this I wrote, “Is [Bird in Hand] a love story or a tale of betrayal? Is it about finding your soul mate, or losing everything you hold sacred? How can the two stories be the same?”

Below are some passages I found in the file that shaped my novel-in-progress –- and why:

1) “I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or at least an unfortunate accident. I hadn’t learned that it can happen so gradually you don’t lose your stomach or hurt yourself in the landing. You don’t necessarily sense the motion. I’ve found it takes at least two and generally three things to alter the course of a life: You slip around the truth once, and then again, and one more time, and there you are, feeling, for a moment, that it was sudden, your arrival at the bottom of the heap.” -- Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

This novel-– which, like Bird in Hand, is about the accidental death of a child that sets in motion a series of events that changes the lives of the main characters-– had a huge impact on me. My own opening paragraph, I later realized, echoes the beginning of Hamilton’s powerful book.

2) “Those of us who claim exclusivity in love do so with a liar’s courage: there are a hundred opportunities, thousands over the years, for a sense of falsehood to seep in, for all that we imagine as inevitable to become arbitrary, for our history together to reveal itself only as a matter of chance and happenstance, nothing irrepeatable, or irreplaceable, the circumstantial mingling of just one of the so many million with just one more.” -- Alice McDermott, Charming Billy

Bird in Hand is about four people, two of whom betray their spouses. I was interested in writing about moral ambiguity, which McDermott so brilliantly parses in this novel. If you truly believe that your spouse is not your soulmate, and that your own happiness is vitally important, what do you do?

3) “Close to the body of things, there can be heard a stir that makes us and destroys us.”-- D. H. Lawrence, Study of Thomas Hardy

That people’s deepest feelings cannot be constrained by social norms or boundaries is an idea I wanted to explore in this book (and an idea that preoccupied Lawrence). Though two of my characters disrupt - and arguably destroy - other lives in their quest to be together, they are oblivious to all but their own happiness.

4) “It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can’t people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.” -- Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier

My four characters are constantly at odds. Their preoccupations, passions, and dreams are often in conflict. In developing this story, I wanted to give equal weight to each perspective. I was fascinated by the complexity of The Good Soldier, and at how skillfully Ford got to the core of his characters' motivations.

5) In truth, I did not read Chekhov’s short story “The Lady with the Dog” until after Bird in Hand was published. But this quote (from the Norton edition) is uncanny in its precise application to my story – down to the reference to birds:

“It seemed to them that fate had intended them for one another, and they could not understand why she should have a husband, and he a wife. They were like two migrating birds, the male and the female, who had been caught and put in separate cages. They forgave one another all that they were ashamed of in the past and in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both.”

At the end of the story, as at the end of Bird in Hand, the characters are on a precipice. Chekhov writes:

“And it seemed to them that they were within an inch of arriving at a decision, and that then a new, beautiful life would begin. And they both realized that the end was still far, far away, and that the hardest, the most complicated part was only just beginning.”

--- Christina Baker Kline

P.S. Baker Kline also hosts a blog, A Writing Life, for which Yours Truly recently provided this guest-blog post. Among Baker Kline's most popular posts: "My 10 Year Overnight Success."

---> For the archive of Madam Mayo guestblog posts, click here.

Guest-blogger Sandra Beasley on 5 Poets Turned Prose Writers

One of the myriad delights of a stay at an artists's colony is meeting the other artists. A couple of years ago, I met Washington DC-based poet Sandra Beasley at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (aka Not the Real World). Sandra gave a reading of her poetry--- such brilliant work that I was not in the least surprised when I later learned she'd won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize for her book, Theories of Falling. Read more about her poetry on her website, www.sandrabeasley.com and check in with her doings and thoughts and recommendations on her blog, one of the best "po-blogs" in the Blogosphere, Chicks Dig Poetry. Over to you, Sandra!

In mid-July I will be making a foray into the world of prose writing when my column, "The Art of the Bluff," appears in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine. This new feature in the magazine, called "The XX Files," will be comprise short essays written by a rotating set of urban, female writers. During my initial drafts I found myself struggling to develop the "muscles" it takes to turn life material into a 750-word essay instead of a lyric poem. I turned to other poets-turned-prose-writers for inspiration. So I would like to use this space to share the work of 5 poets who have branched out into writing elegant, funny, scorching, or heartbreaking works of prose as well.

#1. Alfred Corn
I met Alfred during a stint at Virginia Center for Creative Arts. I was impressed by his thoughtfulness and his ability to discern and articulate both the legacies and the failures of his fellow poets. Listening to his stories as we wandered the grounds of Sweet Briar, I realized that he is one of those rare souls who understands a poetry "community" in the real-time context of everyday interactions, travels, loves. Most of the poet-bloggers I know are still in the "building" stages, and their blogs become a platform for their careers; Alfred, with ten books to his name, certainly doesn't need the exposure. Instead, you can enjoy his blogposts as complete mini-essays--most recently on trips through Budapest and Warsaw.

#2. Lucia Perillo
With her fourth collection, Luck is Luck, which won the Kingsley Tufts Award, Perillo vaulted to the forefront of contemporary poetry. But only those with the opportunity to meet her in person realized that her success came while she was confronting the severe wheelchair-bound stages of Multiple Sclerosis-- a particularly painful diagnosis given her previous identity was as a park ranger in the Cascade Mountains, a lover and wanderer of nature in all its rigors. In her 2007 essay collection I've Heard the Vultures Singing, Perillo confronts the hard truths of living with chronic illness in spare, unsentimental essays that should be read by anyone who has considered writing about medical issues.

#3. John Lundberg
I have no idea how John (who I have a faint but fond memory of from UVA days) ended up writing for the Huffington Post. But ever since discovering his work there, I've been fascinated. Lundberg spins off minor pop-culture references to poetry (as in when Obama was accused of being "a poet, not a fighter," or when teenage vandals broke into Robert Frost's home) into full-blown discussions of the myths, trends and politics that constitute today's poetry world. I wish more of the bloggers at Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog, took up the challenge to write such complete and timely essays.

#4. Katha Pollitt
Pollitt also writes in a political sphere, as a longtime contributor to The Nation, and she is known primarily for her views on feminism. She has a knack for expressing a distinct and persuasive opinion in a brief space-- of all of these writers, she is the one with the power to Change Your Mind on a pressing issue. But the poet lives: her 1982 poetry collection from Knopf, Antarctic Traveller, has a cult following and she continues to be a lively contributor to the Women's Poetics Listserv. She has also branched into straight memoir, with the fall 2007 release of Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories.

#5. Richard McCann
Richard is That One Professor--the one who pokes and pokes at your work until the truth comes out of hiding. I came to my MFA program at American University infatuated with Ghost Letters, his poetry collection that won the 1994 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books, only to realize that Richard had found even greater impact as a prose writer. Mother of Sorrows, a 2005 collection of short stories, gave hope to DC writers that there was still a market for lean, witty, sensitive tales of childhood. His individual essays from The Resurrectionist, a manuscript-in-progress on the topic of living with a liver transplant, have made appearances in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine and elsewhere.

--- Sandra Beasley

---For the archive of Madam Mayo guest blog posts, click here.

Nicky Enright (D.J. Lightbolt) and Obama '08

I met Nicky Enright a few years ago at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where I was working on my novel and he was working on his "big hands" series--- we were all amazed as he covered an entire wall in the studios in the back barn. So he sends me this link to a "Lightbolt" video he made for Obama. It's fun--- I think it gives the spirit of the campaign. Whoever wins, when the history of this presidential campaign is written, a key part of it will be the participatory nature of Obama's campaign. This isn't a slick, expensive TV commercial; it's fun, upbeat, and it cost the campaign nothing. Nicky made it on his own. It's on his website, on youtube, and I'm sure I'm not the only one posting it on a blog. The same story will be told about the financing of the campaign. Obama isn't building a war chest out of PAC money and intimate little $5,000 a head dinner parties in Georgetown. For an idea of how Obama is bringing in money, and by the trailer-load, check out my friend J's Personal Fundraising for Obama website--- which is but one of thousands and thousands. The official Obama website is incredibly user friendly--- constructed for lickety-split navigation, to not only impart information, but to capture your e-mail and your donation and, above all, your participation. The same cannot be said for most of the other candidates's websites. Interesting, no? And in Mexico, too, whoever figures out this new game will do very well... More anon.

The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens: Monday October 29th at Politics and Prose

If you're anywhere near Washington DC on Monday October 29th, don't miss this one at the venerable Politics and Prose (5015 Connecticut Ave NW) at 7:30 pm: Peter Behrens will be reading from and signing his sweeping, years-in-the-making novel about the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, The Law of Dreams. I had the privilege of reading with Peter at Yaddo back in 1998 (he read a section from this book and I read from Miraculous Air). Years later, our residencies happened to coincide at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), and again, we shared a reading. He finished the novel at VCCA--- a great inspiration for me, as at that time, I was on page 150 of what has turned out to be a 510 page historical novel of my own. The Law of Dreams has gotten rave rewiews--- check out the one in the New York Times and www.peterbehrens.org for more info. about this splendid novel. More anon.