Thank you for your keen insight into my poetry. I believe the balance is derived from simply how I see the world, that horror and beauty are inextricably linked—the yin yang. Beauty cannot exist without horror, and vice versa. If I'm going about my day and encounter something which sparks a potential poem, the inspiration often inherently speaks to this duality. Then when I sit to craft the poem on paper, I'm aware of the need for poetic tension - not necessarily opposition, which is what you need for plot in fiction, but an awareness of duality and the tension between the two. The interplay between form and content is what keeps the tension taut, and if there isn't some sense of this balance from the beginning, when I sit down and compose the first draft, then the poem probably isn't going to get off the ground.

 

 

I'm a woman of childbearing age who has no children, and may or may not, but biology dictates that I only have a few years left to decide. Children aren't a big part of my life, since I run in adult circles and spend most of my time alone, writing and editing, or at a dance studio, so much of my idea of children involves their absence (there's the yin yang again). And although I'm not around children very often, I often relate to them well when I am in their presence, and don't tend to see them as sentimental, cutesy, or limited in their thinking. I remember quite clearly being a child, and resenting adults who were condescending or patronizing toward my intelligence and emotions. So, I tend to see children as the young spiritual beings that they are, but I also write in a female persona which speaks of the anxiety surrounding motherhood for the contemporary, educated American woman. Therefore, in a poem such as "The Land of No Children," the children captured onscreen are real beings, but the predicament—that there are no more of them—causes them to function as imagery more so than characters. They reflect back on the speaker, the quiet but shrill cry of alarm she's sounding at the end.

 

 

I'd say find poets you admire, and really aspire to emulate for one reason or another—perhaps it's the sound of their work, or how they tackle their subject matter. Pay attention to what raises the hairs on your arms as you read. At the same time, be open and push yourself in directions you never would have thought of. I had never tried Asian forms, ghazals and pantoums, before taking a workshop led by my friend, Susan Lilley, another fabulous Florida poet. Those forms have become two of my favorites, and I might not have incorporated them into my work for years had I not pushed myself to try something new.

 

 

If you mean citizens as individuals, then I believe poetry has the power to do that, yes. All great literature does. As far as saving the country, the experiences of those affected readers would have to occur on a more widespread scale—reach a tipping point, if you will, and I don't see that happening, unfortunately, through poetry. Fiction has more potential, I think, to reach the masses on that level, simply because the audience is much bigger, but even then, if you're talking literary fiction, that's still an extremely small audience nationwide. Surprisingly, the writing I've been blown away by recently is that of television series such as "Downton Abbey" and "Boardwalk Empire." I believe great writing is great writing, and the prospect of a future of more "literary" television programming that reaches a vast audience is exciting, indeed.

 

For me, poetry is more the child in all of us, for children are more likely to state things as they are, and not deny what is happening around them like adults do. Kids are unflinchingly honest, and that's what I believe people are desperately searching for.

 

 

I'm not, but expect to return to poetry soon. This fall I fell deeply into an essay-writing phase—some lyrical, so I got my poetic fix there, but I've been blogging and writing book reviews, too. And I've been entrenched in edits on my first novel. Once that's done, I expect to write some poems, as this is the usual cycle for me; I can only work in prose for so long before needing to break out. I have been reading poetry, though: "Setting the World in Order" by Rick Campbell and "Gust" by Greg Alan Brownderville, both excellent reads.

 

 

Do you know there is such a place

as the Land of No Children?

In this place, women float from dishwasher-stocking

to checking email to talking with parents

for two hours a night on the camera phone.

 

The women arise to clock-radios,

the only natural sound the chirp of birds

except for when the gardeners

sweep across the grounds

with their roaring mowers.

 

The women rush through their days

in much the same way—phone calls,

banking, tuna salad, biscotti,

yoga class in the evenings,

or perhaps a bookstore browse.

But without a glimpse, a rumble,

nor a whine,

from children.

 

The women have decided to stop having them.

Children are too much of a burden,

too much money to feed, to nurse,

too much time away from one’s own desires

to do as one pleases.

And so the crop of homo sapiens

appears thinner and thinner

every day,

as if turning into a ghost.

The last children talk and twirl on TVs,

impeccably preserved.

 

And the women, always watching,

have only one thing to say:

 

We wanted to mother.

But we are still children ourselves.

We looked around, and we didn’t see any help.

 

 

 

white bird eats from goddess hands

soldier-maidens yawn the bronze gift

of goat-headed men

 

sun-prince cups a white bird,

disappears into giant ferns

birds eat apple snails, hurl shells

 

children scoop shells, clap them

birds tear snails like the gods their human children

tiny hearts tumbling down temple steps

 

the child’s last glimpse:

a bird,

blue sky,

blinding sunlight

how she will bloody herself

climbing back to the god

who cast her to earth