Take the A Train: The Angeline Interview

[Tzara]

As I mentioned last week, Angeline has consented to let me start a thread in the poet interview series devoted to her poetry, her love of jazz, and whatever else we can get her to talk about. Angie has been part of Lit for a long time—over eleven years—and has not only been a prolific and brilliant poet, but also a long-time moderator, Challenge Mistress, reviewer, critiquer, and general Good Person To Have Around. She was picked as Lit’s Most Influential Poet in 2002, and nominated for that title virtually every year the contest was held. Her submissions page is chock-a-block with H’s, several E’s (Editor’s Choice selections), and a Best of the Year W (for “Memory Like Glass”).

I would guess that most of us think of her as writing either poems about jazz (like the excellent “Blue Lester,” based on her favorite jazz musician, Lester Young) or smoothly lyrical pieces somewhat reminiscent of one of her favorite poets, W. B. Yeats (“Winter Harbor,” for example), but she also writes lovely form poems (“Terzanelle Terzanelle” or “Time Glosa,” for example) and elegantly subtle erotic poetry (check out the ending of “Bibliobliss”).

And she’s not always the sweet-tempered lyricist, anyway. In poems like the wonderful “Kate Smith Talks Back to the Mirror,” her lyrical sense is used to further a satirical purpose:

America? Remember when
we were young and I could still
jump high enough to catch
lightning bugs in a jar
without straining my knees?​

OK, OK. She’s a good poet. So what does she think about poetry, who are her favorite poets, influences, techniques? What’s her favorite color? Comfort food? Beatles song? (One sung by John I’ll bet.)

That’s the point of this thread—we can ask her. So here’s your chance to get all Oprah and ask the Divine Miss A. whatever you’re dying to know about her writing, her musical interests, her life. Do a little random reading through her submissions and check out her more recent work on the 2013 Weekly Challenge or Annie’s Teach-in threads, then ask away.

I’ll start the questions by asking Angie to give us some background information—the obvious questions like “How did you find Lit’s Poetry Forum?”, “Who are your favorite poets—both non-Lit poets and Lit poets?”, and that most basic one—“How the heck did you get started writing poetry in the first place?”

Oh, and “Why Lester Young and not, say, Dexter Gordon or Charlie Parker?” I’m especially curious about that one.

We’re open for questions, people. Fire away.

 

[Angeline]

So. All you poet people that I cajoled into doing this? Now I know how it feels. Exciting and a little skeery. When I was a very young poette I used to play in Cadwalader Park in Trenton, New Jersey. There was a bandshell in the park and I'd go up on it all alone and sing and dance. And I'm not sure anyone was listening. This time though I know there's somebody out there.

First thank you, Tzara. I know it's work to put an intro together and I am fascinated to revisit the poems you chose to mention...and now I want to edit most of them.

Let me start with why poetry, at least why I think poetry is my art and obsession. I grew up in a working-class family in a city of ethnic neighborhoods. Picture Archie Bunker's house and you have it about right. I should add that we were the only Jewish family in a sea of Catholics. I was the only Jewish kid in my elementary school. It was isolating and I felt different from a very early age (sometimes even now I feel more Catholic than Jewish. Weird, huh?). However there were two things that were always rich and exciting in my family and they were books and music. We didn't go to temple much but we went to the library every week and books and records were treasured gifts. My dad loved classical music and opera and I heard a lot of it. And because he was from NYC we went into the city all the time. We had family there and we'd go see shows on Broadway, go to the ballet, symphonies, Radio City Music Hall. I even got to see Leonard Bernstein conduct one of his Young People's Symphonies (Peter and the Wolf and Danny Kaye did the reading--it was wonderful!).

And then we'd go home and someone would remind me that I killed some guy named Jesus. So immersion in words and music plus a lot of alone time equaled writing for me. And poetry is words that act like music. So to me it seems natural. I can remember trying to write little stories and poems as early as second and third grade. And the older I got, the more I wanted to write.

The other really momentous musical influence for me was rock and roll. I loved all of it (and my poor old dad never quite recovered from losing his baby to the downbeat). In fact--and I'm tawkin to yoo, Tzara--one of the reasons I so love Lester Young is because I love the original Count Basie Orchestra which had a Kansas City jump blues style of playing. I swooned from the moment I heard them and I believe that sound is very close to early rock and roll. Just listen and you'll see what I mean.

There is more about Lester and I didn't get to the other questions yet, but I need an intermission!

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I'm going to start off with a compliment You've never made me anything other than welcome here and I'm so glad to call you friend, away from Lit too even though I don't get the Jazz thing Now enough of that slush, you are also one of the people who pushed me hard to learn (and write) in ways I didn't know I could. You folks that weren't around then I do mean push, including kicks up the backside when I said I couldn't do it. In fact along with others like Eve and Tess they did a lot of kicking!
I'll be back

 

[Angeline]

Ok, some easy answers.

My favorite poet list tends to vary depending on the time of day I'm asked, but the short list always includes William Butler Yeats, Ted Berrigan, Adrienne Rich, Langston Hughes and Forugh Farrokhzad. Lately I've been in love with Wallace Stevens and John Ashberry, though Ashberry is making me a little crazy because he is so difficult to understand. Beyond them it might be easier to answer who I don't like. I will admit that I've never been able to get past my high school distaste for Coleridge. I had to memorize great swaths of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I'm still traumatized.

My favorite Lit poets are smithpeter, Wicked Eve and Annaswirls.

I have never met anyone else who writes like smithpeter. To me, his poetry feels like looking at paintings. He somehow transcends words. And he had zero formal training, yet was incredibly prolific and could turn out one gem after another. Also he was just a weirdly delightful guy. I once asked him what he thought was the best love poem he ever wrote and he said this one. And he was not joking.

Wicked Eve's poems are strange and quirky and kinky and without a wasted word. Like ever. She is also possibly the funniest person on the planet.

Annaswirls is an incredibly talented writer. Her poems feel painfully honest and edgy to me and she has written some of the best erotic poetry I've ever seen here.

After that there are too many to mention. So many people here over the years have helped me be a better writer just from reading their poems and what they have to say in posts. I don't mean to sound like an idiot here but I am humbled by much of what I read here. You people are just amazing. Not always, but you are.

Oh and it goes without saying that I love the poetry of one eagleyez. When we met here in 2003 I was so attracted to him and I prayed "Oh please let him not be a crappy writer lol because then I won't be able to love him!" (Yeah I'm a word snob but we all have our standards.) And he sent me all this stuff he wrote and it was gooood. So that worked out.

 

[wakingDown]

Hello Angeline. I would like to put my thanks into what is sure to be a large pile soon enough. As one of the writers that you have encouraged, I suppose my first question would probably be how much of the task of moderating feels like work, and how much like fun? It cannot all be tip toeing through the tulips to keep this place an orderly and welcoming environment. In the course of reading through all that is posted here every day, how often do you find works that inspire you to write new works of your own? I will leave with these for now, but I believe I will have more more questions yet. Thank you again for all your hard work here, it is not unappreciated.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

This thread is in danger of becoming gooey but what's wrong with a honest-to-goodness love-fest and if anyone deserves one it's you, Ange! You have put so much of your time and effort into this forum and have been devoted to improving it, including and encouraging new poets and old-er alike.

I have yet to formulate my question, that'll come later, but in the mean time my personal thanks for all the many times you have encouraged and helped me.

 

[champagne1982]

Well, as you know, I love you. You also know I live in Redneckville, Alberta - home of the lesser known, below ground tarsands. I am wondering if you're a bit of an eco-minded citizen of the planet and support guys like Neil Y. and Paul McC in their misinformed crusade against bitumen crude but to a lesser extent than I am curious about whatever happened to your Nanowrimo offerings and are you going to try the novel or the poems again this year.

 

[todski28]

Hey, I have wandered through a few of the much older threads here and you have always offered help, encouragement and insight to new and old poets alike, it is clear your love and affinity for words and their authors is a passion. I would like to extend my thanks for making me feel welcome here and for the insights on my own work, which is what those that want to improve as writers need. You give of yourself very freely in encouragement and time which is commendable in every respect. Hats off to you for your patience with us new aspiring poets.

So my question, is there a poem or number of poems that you can't seem to get right and have to keep re-working to the point it drives you to the verge of insanity

 

[Ashesh9]

Ok, some easy answers.

My favorite poet list tends to vary depending on the time of day I'm asked, but the short list always includes William Butler Yeats, Ted Berrigan, Adrienne Rich, Langston Hughes and Forugh Farrokhzad. Lately I've been in love with Wallace Stevens and John Ashberry, though Ashberry is making me a little crazy because he is so difficult to understand. Beyond them it might be easier to answer who I don't like. I will admit that I've never been able to get past my high school distaste for Coleridge. I had to memorize great swaths of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I'm still traumatized.

My favorite Lit poets are smithpeter, Wicked Eve and Annaswirls.

I have never met anyone else who writes like smithpeter. To me, his poetry feels like looking at paintings. He somehow transcends words. And he had zero formal training, yet was incredibly prolific and could turn out one gem after another. Also he was just a weirdly delightful guy. I once asked him what he thought was the best love poem he ever wrote and he said this one. And he was not joking.

Wicked Eve's poems are strange and quirky and kinky and without a wasted word. Like ever. She is also possibly the funniest person on the planet.

Annaswirls is an incredibly talented writer. Her poems feel painfully honest and edgy to me and she has written some of the best erotic poetry I've ever seen here.

After that there are too many to mention. So many people here over the years have helped me be a better writer just from reading their poems and what they have to say in posts. I don't mean to sound like an idiot here but I am humbled by much of what I read here. You people are just amazing. Not always, but you are.

Oh and it goes without saying that I love the poetry of one eagleyez. When we met here in 2003 I was so attracted to him and I prayed "Oh please let him not be a crappy writer lol because then I won't be able to love him!" (Yeah I'm a word snob but we all have our standards.) And he sent me all this stuff he wrote and it was gooood. So that worked out.

we also had Rime of the Ancient Mariner but thankfully never had to memorize same : some of my fave lines are ......." a Sadder & a Wiser man , he rose the morrow morn ..." it subconsciously made us think Sorrow is a great Teacher !
Life-in-Death was a wildly popular Lady with my classmates --neither Alive nor Dead perhaps a Freudian predecessor to todays' Vampires , Werewolves & Undead ! also the concept of the weight of a dead Albatross round one's neck like a subconscious Guilt doggin' a person thru-out his/her Adult life ; Angie i guess i liked Samuel Taylor Coleridge , opium addictted as he was , forgive me .....--A9

 

[butters]

back later on in the proceedings with my questions - looks like you've a few on your plate to work through already

whilst here, though, a huge thankyou and for all your hard work, patience and input as moderator.

 

[Angeline]

I'm going to start off with a compliment You've never made me anything other than welcome here and I'm so glad to call you friend, away from Lit too even though I don't get the Jazz thing Now enough of that slush, you are also one of the people who pushed me hard to learn (and write) in ways I didn't know I could. You folks that weren't around then I do mean push, including kicks up the backside when I said I couldn't do it. In fact along with others like Eve and Tess they did a lot of kicking!
I'll be back

This thread is in danger of becoming gooey but what's wrong with a honest-to-goodness love-fest and if anyone deserves one it's you, Ange! You have put so much of your time and effort into this forum and have been devoted to improving it, including and encouraging new poets and old-er alike.

I have yet to formulate my question, that'll come later, but in the mean time my personal thanks for all the many times you have encouraged and helped me.

I love you both, too, as I do Champ, Tzara, Neo-Jamis and all of us who have written together for so long we've become like a family. And I believe one of the things that makes this poetry forum different from others I've experienced is that people genuinely do want to help each other and the newbies who discover this place. And it's not really a competitive thing: people here seem to love helping because they love poetry. Of course the little secret behind that is when you help someone else by giving them constructive criticism or even just pointing out what you think they did right in a poem, you are learning, too.

I didn't start that here. That's how I was treated when I first found this place. I discovered Lit because I was reading erotic stories. I expect that's how most of us found it. Then I found the chat rooms and boy was that an eye-opener lol. I got all this attention (cause I'm female duh but I was innocent of Lit's evil ways at first). After a week or two of wading through frightening requests to chat privately from guys with names like BIGDICK4U69, I started to see that there were some pretty smart and interesting people there. I would hang out in the main chat area and trade insults and quote poetry or go to "Syd's Hot Tub" room, where I had my first torrid cyber relationship with a guy who followed me around quoting Shakespeare (ever a fool for poetry), and then got into a big Literotica catfight with the guy's other (!) cyber-girlfriend. That woman was Boo Merengue. We discovered we shared a love of writing, jettisoned the guy and became real friends. Then someone introduced me to Lauren Hynde and we became inseparable. We even got the chat moderators to create a room called the Literary Salon. That's where I first met Champ. Then two big things happened. The first is that I wrote this poem called Disposa Girl. Awful title, huh? Sounds like an ad for Depends! But er no, it was a poem about women online being disposable to men who would then "turn off the pc and kiss your wife." It got a lot of attention. Lauren then invited me to the poetry forum.

The day I came to the forum, another lit writer posted here about my poem and called me a genius. I was prepared to be hated. Who wants to be introduced as a genius? That kind of hyperbole I can do without! But what happened instead is that people here were really kind to me. Smithpeter and Judo and Wicked Eve, along with Lauren, made me feel so welcome and gave me feedback and helped me learn. And for the first time in many years I was around people that felt the same way about writing as I do. Their example always stayed with me and I believe it's the spirit of this place: we help each other so we can all improve.

Anyway who doesn't love a love fest? Maybe someone can bring a lava lamp. We do have lava lamp poems here at Lit, you know.

 

[Angeline]

Well, as you know, I love you. You also know I live in Redneckville, Alberta - home of the lesser known, below ground tarsands. I am wondering if you're a bit of an eco-minded citizen of the planet and support guys like Neil Y. and Paul McC in their misinformed crusade against bitumen crude but to a lesser extent than I am curious about whatever happened to your Nanowrimo offerings and are you going to try the novel or the poems again this year.

You may live in Redneckville but now I live about two hours south of the town on which the Andy Griffiths Show was based. Really. Two hours south of Mayberry, which is still really strange to me. And I'm about two hours north of where Deliverance was filmed. I'm in a city in the boonies, babe! But yes you know me for the liberal, lefty, humanist hippie that I am who recycles and freaks out about global warming and what it will mean for my kids, so I would like, in general, to see less emphasis on fossil fuels and more on renewable resources. I don't want to see jobs lost but I also believe we can create jobs and improve our respective economies in the long run by creating a grid of alternate energy sources. So yeah count me with Neil and Paul though I am willing to listen and potentially be convinced of my wrongness. I'm a poet, not a scientist!

I attempted to write a novel at Nanowrimo a few years ago. It was, imho, a total belly flop. Writing a long story, I discovered, is way harder for me than writing poems. I wrote 50k plus words of this happened, then that happened and on and on. And it took me eight chapters to get to what really should have been the place where the story started. I guess the big thing I learned is that you don't tell your protagonist's life story first.

I don't know that I'll try it again. I'm doing ok working on my poetry here for now. But maybe I will in the future. I'm a "never say never" kind of person.

 

[Angeline]

Hello Angeline. I would like to put my thanks into what is sure to be a large pile soon enough. As one of the writers that you have encouraged, I suppose my first question would probably be how much of the task of moderating feels like work, and how much like fun? It cannot all be tip toeing through the tulips to keep this place an orderly and welcoming environment. In the course of reading through all that is posted here every day, how often do you find works that inspire you to write new works of your own? I will leave with these for now, but I believe I will have more more questions yet. Thank you again for all your hard work here, it is not unappreciated.

Hi wD.

I'm glad you stopped in this thread and I appreciate your thanks. When someone new like you comes to Lit and I read their poems and see the talent there, well that is my favorite thing about being here: the opportunity to meet and learn with new people who bring fresh and different perspectives to writing. So thank you.

I have never been a moderator anywhere but here so I can only speak to this experience. For the most part I love it because while it is work it is also work that is my passion, you know? If I can help get new people to come here and write or "old" people to come back I know it's good for everyone here, including me. And that gets to your question about inspiration. I am definitely inspired by reading other poems here as well as by challenges (thank you Annie!). I read something that excites me or gets me thinking and then I'm writing. There is a wonderful synergy that develops when a large group of people are writing here and reading each others' poems, commenting on them. I look at some of the poems that have been written here lately, stuff from Tess and Harry, Remec, Neonurotic and even people like you who write and submit rather than write here on the forum and I see everyone's writing taking leaps forward. Harry wrote a poem here about his trip that is a tour de force. Tess just writes one gorgeous poem after another. And you have been taking chances, imo, in some of your poems, exploring new territory that is making your poetry more nuanced and complex. That is all inspiring to me.

I love being a moderator enough that I will make a fool of myself and start goofy threads or act like a cheerleader, schmaltz it up, whatever if it helps make poetry happen here. I'm a little nutty about that but ok with it. I do not like being a cop (oh how I don't like it) or telling people what to do, but this is a moderated forum and sometimes I have to go there to try to keep the forum from degenerating into people yelling at each other. My experience is that when that happens it makes everyone feel uncomfortable and distracts from writing. Of course sometimes I lose my temper, too. I have a long fuse but I'm human like the rest of you. I regret some of the things I've said in anger or things I've done here that seemed like a good idea at first but turned out not to be. I've made some dumb mistakes that resulted in my losing the friendship of a few people I really love here. That hurts. But, overall, I like doing this and I know my heart is in the right place about it.

 

[Angeline]

Hey, I have wandered through a few of the much older threads here and you have always offered help, encouragement and insight to new and old poets alike, it is clear your love and affinity for words and their authors is a passion. I would like to extend my thanks for making me feel welcome here and for the insights on my own work, which is what those that want to improve as writers need. You give of yourself very freely in encouragement and time which is commendable in every respect. Hats off to you for your patience with us new aspiring poets.

So my question, is there a poem or number of poems that you can't seem to get right and have to keep re-working to the point it drives you to the verge of insanity

I kind of hate to tell you this because I know it'll make you groan, but I almost never think my poems are finished. Some poems I have to put away for years at a time because I've reworked them so much I can't stand to look at them again. The problem is that I grow and change as a writer and I go and reread a poem and see problems that I did not when I last worked on it. So the poems evolve as I do. Not all of them though. Some, like the poem Blue Lester that Tzara linked, I like as is. Well maybe I'd change a few words. See what I mean? It's like a disease.

Usually though when I write a poem I simultaneously edit it and at first I think it's perfection. Then a half hour later or so I start seeing things I need to fix and it goes from there. And yes it can make me crazy but when I am writing it's an oddly happy kind of crazy. Mostly...

 

[todski28]

I kind of hate to tell you this because I know it'll make you groan, but I almost never think my poems are finished. Some poems I have to put away for years at a time because I've reworked them so much I can't stand to look at them again. The problem is that I grow and change as a writer and I go and reread a poem and see problems that I did not when I last worked on it. So the poems evolve as I do. Not all of them though. Some, like the poem Blue Lester that Tzara linked, I like as is. Well maybe I'd change a few words. See what I mean? It's like a disease.

Usually though when I write a poem I simultaneously edit it and at first I think it's perfection. Then a half hour later or so I start seeing things I need to fix and it goes from there. And yes it can make me crazy but when I am writing it's an oddly happy kind of crazy. Mostly...

Don't lie I can sense the sadistic smile in your first line passion is a hard task master/mistress

 

[Angeline]

we also had Rime of the Ancient Mariner but thankfully never had to memorize same : some of my fave lines are ......." a Sadder & a Wiser man , he rose the morrow morn ..." it subconsciously made us think Sorrow is a great Teacher !
Life-in-Death was a wildly popular Lady with my classmates --neither Alive nor Dead perhaps a Freudian predecessor to todays' Vampires , Werewolves & Undead ! also the concept of the weight of a dead Albatross round one's neck like a subconscious Guilt doggin' a person thru-out his/her Adult life ; Angie i guess i liked Samuel Taylor Coleridge , opium addictted as he was , forgive me .....--A9

Oh I have been chastised for not loving Coleridge. I think the problem is with me, not the poem. I didn't understand poetry then, not that kind of poetry, so it just seemed like a useless exercise at the time. And the funny thing is that in college I loved the Romantic English poets, especially Keats and Shelley. But I never did warm up to Coleridge.

Same kind of thing happened to me with the novel Moby Dick. I know it's a great novel that depicts elemental struggles between man and nature, good and evil. And yet...all that whaling talk just put me to sleep. It is the only book I was ever assigned in school that I didn't finish. I got the Cliff Notes and got an A+ on the report I had to write. I still have mild flashes of guilt about it (but not enough to reread it lol). And I like Melville. Bartleby the Scrivener is one of my favorite short stories. I just was not into the endless describing of the ship and the whale and the ship and the whale and the blah blah blah! Made me seasick.

 

[Angeline]

Don't lie I can sense the sadistic smile in your first line passion is a hard task master/mistress

Well misery does love company.

 

[Angeline]

back later on in the proceddings with my questions - looks like you've a few on your plate to work through already

whilst here, though, a huge thankyou and for all your hard work, patience and input as moderator.

Thank you. I know you understand. You took good care of this place.

 

[todski28]

Well misery does love company.

And if its leather clad all the better

(waits for underyourspell and her cane)

How many poems are you tinkering with that haven't seen the light of day?

 

[Angeline]

And if its leather clad all the better

(waits for underyourspell and her cane)

How many poems are you tinkering with that haven't seen the light of day?

Very few. I have a huge backlog of poems, at least 1k on various hard drives and cds, but if I'm actively tinkering with something it's usually happening here. There's good energy here for me, I guess.

I rarely cane anyone. Here.

 

[Ashesh9]

Oh I have been chastised for not loving Coleridge. I think the problem is with me, not the poem. I didn't understand poetry then, not that kind of poetry, so it just seemed like a useless exercise at the time. And the funny thing is that in college I loved the Romantic English poets, especially Keats and Shelley. But I never did warm up to Coleridge.

Same kind of thing happened to me with the novel Moby Dick. I know it's a great novel that depicts elemental struggles between man and nature, good and evil. And yet...all that whaling talk just put me to sleep. It is the only book I was ever assigned in school that I didn't finish. I got the Cliff Notes and got an A+ on the report I had to write. I still have mild flashes of guilt about it (but not enough to reread it lol). And I like Melville. Bartleby the Scrivener is one of my favorite short stories. I just was not into the endless describing of the ship and the whale and the ship and the whale and the blah blah blah! Made me seasick.

No, no Angie there's no problem with you : you cannot like or not like @ the flip of a switch ! A very huge Thank You for being an encouraging Den Mother to all Poets here : many times i have come back to this board after reading your encouragement . So once again thank you very much .

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Well misery does love company.

This brings me to my question. In your opinion does unhappiness help the poetic juices to run? It seems to me your poetry is often laced with sadness, now I maybe projecting and have it all quite wrong but I'd like your in-put please.

 

[champagne1982]

This brings me to my question. In your opinion does unhappiness help the poetic juices to run? It seems to me your poetry is often laced with sadness, now I maybe projecting and have it all quite wrong but I'd like your in-put please.

Tess brings up a really interesting topic; the melancholia I'm sure only poets find a way to express in such a manner that we're all driven to tears and catharsis through reading mere words!

I second the question about unhappiness related "juice flow" and add: I know you write to answer literotica-based challenges, personal emotions or current events. I've read your jazz, your political liberal leftiness take and so much more that (although even I didn't realize this until just now) I've been drawn to write my view of your view many times. So, inspirational you, what draws you to write a poem as opposed to a rant?

 

[UnderYourSpell]

You talk of bringing poets back, so who would you if you could?I would like to point out to readers that she once more kicked my backside to come back Some alas we can't get back but if you had a magic wand?

 

[Angeline]

This brings me to my question. In your opinion does unhappiness help the poetic juices to run? It seems to me your poetry is often laced with sadness, now I maybe projecting and have it all quite wrong but I'd like your in-put please.

I don't know, my friend. It reminds me of a Woody Allen joke I love. Two women are dining at a Catskills resort and the first one says "Uch the food here is terrible." And the other one says, "Yes, and such small portions."

I've had a fair amount of trauma in my life. Many people here know that my only sibling was murdered when I was a teenager and there's not much worse that can happen to someone short of being an actual victim. One of my best friends also died that same day, after a long illness. A few years later my parents' store was robbed with a gun at my father's head and a knife at my mother's throat. And the robbers were caught because they were stuck in rush hour traffic which is a hilarious end to a horrible story. See why I identify with the Woody Allen stuff?!

I think after my sister died, being the only child left I was driven to do everything right for my parents--whose loss I saw as even greater than mine. That drive made me excel academically and have a high-powered career. That was sort of an upside as I'm not particularly ambitious. But it also drove me into a marriage I wasn't ready for (with someone as ill-suited to the relationship as I was) that was a twenty year car wreck. Except for my kids. By some miracle I have two great kids. Now I feel that I live more honestly and without fear of what might happen next. It isn't always easy, but I'm a happier, more centered person and that is good for me and the people I love.

I know all this comes out in my poems. It's a constructive way for me to deal with it. I think pain does bring clarity but it's hard won and if I write something that's better as a result of what I've experienced, it sometimes seems like a Faustian kind of bargain. I think I would be a writer no matter what though. I'd just have a different focus.

I had the very strange experience about a year ago of discovering I have a half- aunt and cousins I never knew about before. Three of them are writers and one is a pretty well known writer, so maybe it's all more nature than nurture anyway. At least the impulse if not the focus.