The Habitual Poet: Lesley Wheeler

Installment #20

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The Habitual Poet is an ongoing series of contributor interviews. If you are a Poemeleon contributor and would like to participate copy & paste the Q's from below and e-mail your answers to: editor@poemeleon.org.

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Reading

Q: Where do you prefer to get your books?

I love to browse conference bookfairs. My very small town also has two independent bookstores, and one of them, The Bookery, has a shelf of used poetry books—I keep an eye on it to see what turns up.

Q: How many poetry books do you think you own, and what percentage of these have you actually read?

I have about 500 poetry books, not including all the poets’ biographies, collected letters, etc.; I give handfuls away to students periodically. I’ve browsed all of them and read most of them.

Q: When, where and how do you usually read?(i.e. at bedtime under the covers, cover to cover, etc.) 

I read all over the place—in my office, on my sofa, on airplanes, wherever there’s light. When I decide a volume of poems looks good, I’ll read it straight through in one sitting, in order.

Q: What books of poetry have you read this month?

A lot of early modernist volumes—I’m trying to get a handle on how poets put together their books in that period. These include Louise Bogan’s Body of This Death, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Renascence and Other Poems, T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations, Marianne Moore’s Observations, William Carlos Williams’ The Tempers and Al Que Quiere!, Yeats’ Responsibilities, and Robert Frost’s A Boy’s Will and North of Boston. I’ve only read contemporary poetry in magazines this month, although at the end of June I was reading Jane Satterfield, Ned Balbo, Kathrine Varnes, Julie Kane, and Jill Essbaum.   

Q: What other books/magazines/backs of cereal boxes have you read recently?

I’ve read recent issues of Poetry, Field, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, and Kestrel; Annie Finch’s criticism, including her Harriet blog; parts of a book called Broadcasting Modernism; a host of books and essays related to service-learning and capstone courses in undergraduate teaching; lots of newspapers; and way too much email. I’m also reading Ursula Le Guin’s The Language of the Night. I read lots of novels in the summer but I forget them promptly.

Writing

Q: When, where, how do you write, and why?(i.e. at dusk on a dock, longhand in a notebook, because...)

I write poetry in stolen time: late afternoon is the best time for me, right on the computer if possible, but I’ll take what I can get.

Q: How many first drafts do you think you complete in a week? A month?

Some weeks I’ll draft multiple poems, but I have long weeks of little or nothing, too. I must draft at least forty poems per year, but that includes some really bad ones.

Q: How long do you wait before revising a poem?

I usually put it aside for a few months.

Q: When do you know a poem is done?

I’m never sure. I do the best I can, and eventually I hit a point where I shouldn’t revise it anymore because I just can’t re-enter it.

Q: Have you ever given up an invitation so you could stay home and write?

I neglect work obligations all the time, but “staying home to write” doesn’t work well when you have two lively kids.

Publishing:

Q: What is your system for sending out work?

I organize the work into batches of five similar poems, and I’ll often start that batch by sending to a high-prestige magazine that doesn’t accept simultaneous submissions. After a few tries at that, if nothing hits, I’ll send the batch to 4-5 journals that have more open policies. I always have several batches going, so I keep detailed lists and notes and revisit them every 6-8 weeks or so. When I work on submissions, it tends to be in a 24 hour flurry, all at once.

Q: What have you more recently received: a rejection notice or an acceptance? W as it what you expected?

An acceptance yesterday! I was hopeful for that one because the editor had asked me to send work.

Q: Where do you generally publish: online, in print, or a mix, and do you have a preference?

I like a mix of both—having a physical magazine is satisfying, but it’s also helpful that people can Google me and find a few things.

Q: What is the worst (or weirdest, or best) experience you’ve had with a journal/magazine/press & its editor(s)? (No names, please!) 

Spookiest: I submitted a poem that describes a penny that keeps turning up in odd places. The editor told me that although he’s obsessive about keeping his change organized, he came home and there was a penny sitting in the middle of his living room floor. He stared at it, mystified, and then opened his mail, and my poem was on top. Of course, he felt cosmically obligated to accept the poem.

Q: Have you ever received any fan (or hate) mail? If so, what was that like? 

A couple of years ago a stranger contacted me about a poem that I had published in our undergraduate literary magazine at Rutgers; he had kept it in his wallet for almost 20 years, and then lost it. He asked if I could dig up a copy. I was astonished and moved.



Practical considerations:

Q: What is your day job, and how does it affect your writing?

I’m a professor of 20th and 21st century poetry, so it means I read a lot in the field. I have bouts of obsessively imitating certain poets when I’m teaching them or writing about them, which can be bad—I think my Merrill phase, for instance, was unfortunate.

Q: How does your significant other’s occupation affect your writing life?

He’s a fiction writer and a dramatist named Chris Gavaler, and he teaches part-time at the same college as I do. I’ve always been able to talk about writing with him. His willingness to work part-time really makes my life possible—he does the lion’s share of the family chores.

Q: Have there been periods in your life when you couldn't write?

Yes, or at least periods when I knew I was writing badly and couldn’t see a way out. I used to feel terribly about that, but now I know that my poem-engine just needs to rest. The writing comes back.

Q: Do you have a poetry budget?

I spend a lot of money on poetry but try not to count it up until tax time. When I’m through, I instantly hypnotize myself into forgetting the figure.

Q: Have you ever suffered (or made someone else suffer) in the name of your art? (i.e. picked up your kids late from school so you could finish a poem, forgone lunch to buy a book, left a relationship because the other person just didn't understand, etc.)

I’ve definitely ignored my spouse (who doesn’t mind) and my kids (who sometimes mind very much) to get a poem down, and I often hide from my students to do so. I get annoyed with writers, though, who declare that you have to put art first. You have to respect the work and the people dearest to you have to respect it, but sometimes life has to trump art. Anyone who says otherwise is a jerk.

Random nonsense:

Q: Do you have any superhuman abilities? (i.e. can you tie a cherry stem in a knot with your tongue, or write a double sestina with both hands tied behind your back?)

I know who’s calling when the phone rings, which is why I never answer it.

Q: You write a scathing poem about your mother and she learns about it. You: 

d.) Do none of the above; instead you:

don’t answer the phone. My relatives and I can repress any conflict if you give us enough time. 
Seriously: I’ve written some mean poems about other people and tried to publish them, but it doesn’t work. I’ve come to think that a good poem has to have some love in it as well as the harder-to-admit feelings.

Q: If the best medical specialists in the world told you that if you didn’t give up your poetry habit today you would die in six months, would you get your affairs in order or would you leave that up to your family?

I would give up poetry and take up another art that didn’t cause organ failure.

Q: If you could be a vowel, which one would you be and why?

I’m not as bold as an I or as certain of myself as an A.  I’d like to be an O and wield its magical powers, but truly, I identify with the hard-working E—look at my name.

Q: Finally write a couplet for a collaborative ghazal using the following kaafiyaa and radif: said the poet. 
 
She spoke from the heart of the wineberry bush.
“I fall upon the thorns of life,” bled the poet.
 
OR
 
The master declared: “You must cross the river and dwell
where vultures restlessly wheel, Fred the Poet.”

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Lesley Wheeler’s books include Heathen (C&R Press, http://crpress.org/) and Voicing American Poetry: Sound and Performance from the 1920s to the Present. She co-edited Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-Po Listserv with Moira Richards and Rosemary Starace. She teaches at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.