MAR Asks, Doug Ramspeck Answers

Doug Ramspeck
Doug Ramspeck

Today, we’re pleased to introduce Doug Ramspeck, whose poem, “Unblessing,” appears in MAR 35.1. Ramspeck is the author of four poetry books. His most recent collection, Original Bodies, was selected for the Michael Waters Poetry Prize and is published by Southern Indiana Review Press. Two earlier books also received awards: Mechanical Fireflies (Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize), and Black Tupelo Country (John Ciardi Prize). Individual poems have appeared in journals that include The Kenyon Review, Slate, The Southern Review, and The Georgia Review. He is an associate professor at The Ohio State University at Lima, where he teaches creative writing.

He also apparently plays tic-tac-toe with chickens. Read on to learn more!

Quick! Summarize your poem in 10 words or fewer.

Cut-up-for-pieces poem (this needs explaining).

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

One of my favorite methods of producing a poem is to take, at random, four or five poems from my “Failed-Poem Folder,” cut them up for pieces, then combine them into what I hope will be a coherent whole. That is how “Unblessing” was produced. Each time I try this approach, I am amazed by how, when I am done, I am able to convince (delude?) myself into imagining that the pieces longed to be together all along, and my role was as simple matchmaker.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

My wife likes to claim that my response to acceptance by any journal is akin to the Groucho Marx quotation: “I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.” In other words, she claims that my evaluation of the journal’s prestige is reduced in my mind because I received the acceptance notice. In truth, though, I was delighted to be included.

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

I like to tell the story about when my first book of poems was published, and I told my daughter about the royalty payment I would receive for each copy that was sold. She did some quick calculations in her head, and said, “That means that if you sell a million copies, you will make _____!” I didn’t have the heart to explain just how many zeroes she was off in that estimate.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

After I had a poem published in Poetry Salzburg Review, I was contacted by a student who was writing a long essay about the poem. She sent me the paper when it was completed, and it was a very nicely-written piece. Of course, it had almost nothing to do with anything I had thought about when writing the poem, which I took to mean that my child was now making its way independently into the world, and didn’t need my guidance any longer. There was something both very gratifying and a little lonely in that. My actual daughter is teaching 9th grade in Micronesia this year, and I feel exactly the same way about her.

Your biggest writing-related regret?

I suffered from horrible and self-inflicted writer’s block as a fiction writer from about age thirty to age fifty, when I began writing poetry.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve writing.

When I tell the story about how my wife once lost at tic-tac-toe to a chicken in San Marcos, Texas, I seem to think that I come off better in the story because I explain that I was able to tie the chicken.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does involve writing.

I don’t like to imagine that I actually write anything I produce. I simply listen to the voices in my head and write down what they say. I am, in short, an amanuensis. This way, it seems to me, I take neither credit nor blame for the work that my fingers transcribe.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

I am a sucker for a beautiful death poem, and “Stillborn Lamb,” by Sarah Burke, is about as beautiful as they come.

Thanks for the interview, Doug!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

MAR Asks, Rebecca Foust Answers

oToday on the blog we have Rebecca Foust, whose poem, “Dynamic Response of Multi-Layered Soil Media in the Frequency Domain,” appears in MAR 35.1 and was recently reprinted in Poetry Daily. Foust’s fifth book, Paradise Drive, wonthe 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry and will be released in April. Here, she discusses living in Robert Frost’s house, writing while miserable, and how proofreading seventy pages of scientific writing inspired her MAR poem.

Quick! Summarize your poem in 10 words or fewer.

Existential musings on geodynamic principles, rendered in long-line couplets.

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

The poetry workshop I attended in the summer of 2013 at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown was part of a consciously-adopted program to wean myself away from writing in form. I’d taught my grad school class three years earlier on the sonnet, and for a time became obsessed with the form. I learned to tell a Miltonic from a conventional volta, a Spenserian from a Shakespearian rhyme pattern, and a curtal from a caudal sonnet (but don’t ask me about any of those things now). I was transfixed by Hopkins, Herbert and Donne. I suffered with Anne Bradstreet and cackled and winced my way through Berryman’s Dream Songs (OK they have 18 lines but I’m not the first reader to see them as variations on the sonnet form). I reveled in Rilke. Gobbled up anthologies (Penguin’s is the best) and ferreted out sonnets written by modern poets, by contemporary poets, and poets (like Pound, Merwin and cummings) who I never in a million years would have guessed were sonneteers. And along the way wrote hundreds of my own fourteen-liners. Some evolved into tolerable sonnets, and 80 of the best went into Paradise Drive, the book that will be released by Press 53 this April. Like many other writers, I found an unexpected freedom a discipline that, in the process of forcing me to choose words for sound rather than sense, unhooked the carabiner of logical thought.

Eventually, though, I began to feel the constriction of writing poems that Annie Finch noted can fit on the palm of the hand and William Drummond likened to “the bed of Procrustes” I wanted more room. I wanted my poems to be bigger, to have room to get up and walk around, to breathe. But no matter how I tried, I still found myself coughing up neat little bundles of bones wrapped up in skin and fur. When I began dreaming in sonnet, I knew it was time to take steps. So I signed up for the generative workshop taught by Victoria Redel, whose fierce, funny poems are mostly in free-verse.

It was one of those rare workshop experiences where the dynamics were just right and the class gelled into a perfection of intimacy, inspiration and late afternoon swims at Herring Cove. Midway through the week, Redel gave us an assignment to write a new poem using long lines all in one-syllable words.

No way was I going to show up the next day without a new poem. But I had a problem. My daughter, a grad student in Structural Engineering, had just emailed me her master’s thesis, asking could I please proofread it by the next day. I also had anotherproblem: no internet connection. So that night I read 70 pages of scientific writing on my phone and also wrote the assigned poem, pretty much at the same time.

It took hours to slog through those pages, which might as well have been written in Greek and one page of which—all equations—actually was. But now and then its language resonated with a weird kind of math-music, and some bits were interesting. Who knew that waves are constantly moving through the ground we stand on and that some of those undulations are called “Love Waves?” Every time I saw something like that, I copied it down.

Later I focused on writing the poem. Because it was 3 am and I was exhausted, I began by throwing in the towel and giving it the same name as the thesis. Then I played around with the extracted lines, rendering the technical jargon into the simplest possible one-syllable vernacular. I got the idea of writing in couplets, using the first line to hold the quoted material and the second its truncated translation. All the time, of course thinking about my daughter—the child she’d been, the young woman and engineer she was about to become.

That first draft ran to three pages and was a holy mess, but I had a new poem that didn’t look anything like a sonnet, and yea the sun was beginning to rise. So I fueled up on espresso at The Wired Puppy and headed over to the FAWC student center to print it out. My memory is that all the poems read in workshop that day were very good first drafts. I know I left feeling like I had something worth working on.

The following week, “Dynamic Response” got put through its paces at a second FAWC workshop led by one of the best teachers on revision I know—Martha Rhodes. It was Martha who, noticing that the epigraph was after “a daughter’s master’s thesis” asked “It’s your daughter, right? Why not just say that? I changed the “a” to “my” and then felt able to allow the speaker to address her daughter directly as “you,” allowing intimacy to offer counterpoint to the extreme impersonality of the lines using technical jargon. Subsequent revisions cut all but the most interesting lines from the thesis, and where insistence on one-syllable words resulted in clunky syntax, I allowed polysyllabic words to sneak back in. Summer ended, and I put the poem away for a few months. When I looked at it in November it seemed ready, so I sent it out to MAR and two other journals.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

That was in July. I was the Dartmouth Poet in Residence at the time, living in Robert Frost’s house in Franconia, NH and picking up my mail once a week from the Frost Place’s administrative offices a few miles away. When handed the fat envelope, I acted nonchalant. But I was elated. For one thing I’m a fan of MAR and have been sending poems there regularly for the past six years. For another, getting a poem accepted on the third try is not exactly my norm. And finally, the acceptance was like earning a chip at AA—something tangible I could hold onto when I felt myself slipping back into the habit of spitting out owl pellets instead of poems that had some meat on their bones and could breathe and bleed.

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

I don’t write it, it writes me, so quit bitching.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

Getting to live alone in Robert Frost’s house all summer before going on to a residency at MacDowell last year was amazing. But the best thing has been to watch the emergence of two poets I’ve been working with over last few years. One, a young man who crossed the Sonoran desert when he was seven in order to reunite with his parents in this country, may be the youngest poet ever to wait tables at Bread Loaf. Last year he graduated with an MFA from NYU, and a few weeks ago he received an NEA grant. My other mentee lives in a retirement home and won’t tell me her age. But she just published her first chapbook, a moving and delicately-wrought slave narrative called Unicorn in Captivity. These things feel bigger than anything that’s happened to me.

Your biggest writing-related regret?

I’m supposed to say here that I regret not taking my writing seriously until I was in my fifties, but that’s not true. Things have happened exactly as and when they should have. Sometimes I regret the decision, made in 2007, to start publishing my work. Writing was more fun—and pure—when I was doing it without any expectation of seeing it in print. On the other hand I was writing like one poem a year, and not really trying very hard.

Your biggest non-writing-related regret?

Wasting three years in law school? Or maybe moving, 36 years ago, so far away from my family in Pennsylvania? But relocating to CA is also one of the best things I did in my life so it’s hard to say.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve writing.

I collected rocks, fossils, and artifacts obsessively for the first 25 years of my life, and then carried that collection around with me from house to house for three decades. Last year we moved again, and when the guy finished loading it onto his truck, I gave it to him—just like that.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does involve writing.

I write best when I am miserable. It can be emotional or physical. The corollary is that when I feel great, my writing pretty much sucks.

Can you show us a photo of you holding your MAR contributor’s copy?

R
Thanks for the interview, Rebecca!

Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

MAR Asks, Molly Spencer Answers

molly spencer
Molly Spencer (photo © 2013 Ted Weinstein)

Everyone watches a girl unfold
into a woman, and I hid
in the shade

of my thorn-dark hair
when my father’s friends looked at me
too long.

This is the the opening of Molly Spencer’s poem, “Aubade with Book and Angel,” which appears in our latest issue of MAR 35.1. Molly’s here to today to answer some questions about the poem and talk about revision, writing and motherhood, and persistence.

Molly Spencer’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Linebreak, New England Review, Quarterly West, and other journals. She’s an MFA student at the Rainier Writing Workshop and a teaching artist with California Poets in the Schools. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Find her online at https://mollyspencer.wordpress.com/.

Quick! Summarize your story/poem/essay in 10 words or fewer. Extra points if your answer rhymes.

Portrait of adolescence as Luke Chapter 1

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

I wrote the first draft in early 2009 after having read some of Mary Szybist’s work in The Iowa Review (those poems later appeared in her book Incarnadine). Szybist’s poems were, like mine, reinterpretations of the Annunciation. I interpreted it fairly widely — annunciation as the onset of womanhood.

What was the worst/best feedback you received on this piece (either in the writing/critiquing process, post-publication, or otherwise)?

At one point I brought it to my writing group with the line, “All girls learn to fight, to flee.” A person in the group really took issue with that. She argued that not all girls learn to fight; that some girls learn to just “take it.” Changing that line to “Some girls learn to fight, to flee” complicated the poem and its speaker, and is truer, I think. Another big shift occurred when I decided to give this poem a contemporary setting, rather than an historical setting.”

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

Verbatim every time (though mostly with other moms on the playground rather than with long lost relatives):

  • Yes I’ve been published.
  • I haven’t kept track of how many times.
  • No I don’t have a book yet.
  • Yes, I’m working on one.
  • It’s about the body, memory, motherhood, and language.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

Keeping at it.

Your biggest writing-related regret?

When I was younger, I thought I had to make a choice between motherhood and the writing life. I didn’t think I could manage both since both are so intense and all-consuming. I had my babies and tried to avoid poetry’s allure for several years – but of course it didn’t work. I wish I had those lost years back. I wish I had done both all along.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

I really love Sarah Burke’s poem “The Rock Has No Children” for all of its beautiful, rough images and its oblique approach to infertility. Her lines “But you refused / to lie down, little one” really touched me. For me, these words speak to all the things in our lives that take root in poor soil, that hold on in spite of it.

Can you show us a photo of you holding your MAR contributor’s copy?

Molly Spencer (2)

Thanks for the interview, Molly!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

MAR Asks, Melissa Stephenson Answers

Melissa_StephensonWe have quite a few new contributor interviews for issue 35.1 in the hopper, but until then, let’s focus on this fun, witty interview with Melissa Stephenson. Her poem, “After Mating for Life,” appears in 34.2.

Melissa Stephenson lives, plays, and writes in Missoula, Montana. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals, including Cutbank, Other Voices, The Chattahoochee Review, New South, Memoir (and),  and Passages North. She holds a B.A. in English from University of Montana and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Texas State University. She is currently at work completing a collection of poems and revising her first book-length work, a memoir.

Quick! Summarize your story/poem/essay in 10 words or fewer.

Divorce sucks. Divorcing with kids is worse.

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

This poem was born more or less intact. It bubbled up one morning as I was struggling to meet a deadline for writing textbook materials. Cheating on paid work is a great motivator and time-saver for me. I stole a half hour, banged it out, set it aside, and tweaked it a few months later.

Before the poem was published, I also had the random luck to come into contact with the creator of one of the films that inspired my draft. The title of my poem, “After Mating for Life” is based on a misreading of a local film festival schedule. Cindy Stillwell, the maker of a documentary on bird migration called “Mating for Life,” read my poem and enjoyed it. Her film contrasted her choice to stay single with the mating and migration patterns of the sandhill crane. It was deeply satisfying to me to see how her art inspired mine, and how both our stories were acts of mid-life reckoning with the romantic choices we’d made.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

I texted my ex-husband and offered him one of the two contributor’s copies to honor our 50/50 divorce agreement about intellectual property created within the marriage. (We were still legally married when I wrote the poem.) A year before, he’d made a similar call to me, only his coup was a hefty advance on his first novel, which we both shared.

He laughed when I called. We share a similarly dark shade of funny bone.

What was the worst/best feedback you received on this piece?

In the past few years, I returned to writing poetry after a 15-year break, so I have no poet-friend readers. I am not a Master of Poetry. I received no feedback before publication. But afterwards, a friend called it “wonderfully dark.” This tickled me and bummed me out at the same time, since I thought of “After Mating for Life” as my almost-funny poem.

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

“I’ve become a poet.” This usually stops the questions.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

Finishing a full draft of my memoir-in-progress while raising two young kids 98% on my own.

Your biggest writing-related regret?

Taking years to realize that trying to please the majority with your writing will leave you with a pile of bright, shiny, lifeless words.

Your biggest non-writing-related regret?

Not becoming an auto mechanic that summer I was in Anchorage and had the chance.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve writing.

I was raised to believe myself a distant relative-by-marriage of the silent film actor Lon Chaney and have recently researched enough to find out this can’t be true.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does involve writing.

Running long distances does more for my creative self than my MFA in Fiction ever did.

Can you show us a photo of you holding your MAR contributor’s copy?

I wish. My close friend and my ex-husband’s aunt have both absconded with my contributor’s copies. I think MAR being theft-worthy is high praise.

Thanks for the interview, Melissa!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

MAR Asks, Estanislao Lopez Answers

Estanislao Lopez
Estanislao Lopez

Our first contributor interview for 2015 will also be our penultimate contributor interview from Vol. XXXIV, Number 2. Turn to page 150 of that issue, and you’ll find Estanislao Lopez’s haunting  poem, “The Politics of Rivers.” From the opening lines (“Behind brown sheets of dust, my grandfather’s voice / ripened with stories he thought forgotten”) to the stunning conclusion, this poem is about memory, cultural identity, homesickness, time, and so much more.

Estanislao Lopez studied philosophy and creative writing at the University of Houston. After graduating, he began teaching literature and creative writing at the secondary level. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Meridian, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives, works, and flounders in Houston.

Quick! Summarize your poem in 10 words or fewer.

Water (fluid) demarcates cultural identity (static?)—turmoil ensues.

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

This is my first relatively successful poem to tackle ethno-cultural themes. Most attempts previous to this poem (and following) fail to achieve the kind of nuance I think the issue deserves. As a second-gen Latino writer on the assimilated side of the spectrum, I find it difficult to pin the speaker right between those two worlds, struggling with a sense of alienation from both.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

I took back what I said about never getting published again.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

My first publication appeared in an issue with two wonderful mentors of mine, Tony Hoagland and Ange Mlinko, both of whom (along with my primary advisor, Kevin Prufer) guided me in my undergraduate senior thesis. Seeing their names beside mine is still kind of surreal. Definitely a high point.

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

I pretend I primarily write fiction.

Your biggest writing-related regret?

The same as every writer I’ve ever talked with: not writing more. I have very poor executive function, so this might be a bigger problem for me than most. Once I start writing, the world hushes, but getting to that start point requires a Herculean effort. I had a regular schedule going at one point about a year ago, but eventually I started to rebuke my own authority. Hopefully, I can bring sexy discipline back.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve writing.

I often meander from room to room, forgetting any initial motive for walking in there (related to the poor executive function).

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does involve writing.

I am an obsessive revisionist. At one point, I believe I was revising a single poem at least nine times a day for a month. I definitely can find myself over-editing a poem—chiseling out its soul. Luckily, I can spot this error after creating some distance for a while and then checking back—or when someone else clues me in on the fact.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

My favorite piece in this issue would have to be “Panacea” by Philip Jason. This short story rivets us with its authoritative imagination. The unsettling humor provides just enough buoyancy to counterbalance those heavier, epiphanic moments. I find this story is one of those sparkling few pieces of writing that harnesses the true power of surrealist/absurdist stylization, which is to reach sincerity through them. The sincerity juxtaposed against the playfulness of style makes for one hell of a moving piece of literature.

Can you show us a photo of you holding your MAR contributor’s copy?

Lopez2

Thanks for the interview, Estanislao!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor