Where do these images come from, what significance do they hold? This is a difficult question for me to answer because the process of writing a first draft for me is always at least 90% unconscious. The images come in the same way I suppose thoughts come when one writes in stream of consciousness, or when one dreams. It's true that images from the natural world dominate in my poetry. Part of this, I think, has to do with the fact that the natural world for me is nothing but images (I include sounds, smells, and textures in this as well). I have very little scientific knowledge of that world, so its effect on me is experiential, immediate and impressionistic. Over the years, I guess I've unconsciously gathered the kinds of images that inhabit my poetry, and they've formed and keep forming and reforming in ways that attempt to express those experiences I can't express in the language of ideas. I mean soul experiences. I believe in a soul, and I believe my soul lives a much deeper, wiser, intuitive existence than the "I" that is my conscious self. It pays attention and is constantly gathering from and trying to make meaning of the "exterior things" I'm often too distracted or self-absorbed to notice (though I'm proud to say I'm more likely to be distracted by my own thoughts, daydreams, or worries than I am by my cell phone, which always seems either to be missing or out of juice). So I do want to be carried away by the rhythm of exterior things from time to time. Those moments for me are accidental meditations, brief escapes from myself, and they're deeply connected to both the natural world and to my writing.

 

 

I don't think I've ever written anything creative that isn't about love—healthy love, unhealthy love, love for the Divine, for children, for beauty and mystery. I think it really is our only connection to what lies beyond the limits of our own psyches. No one wants to be alone in the universe, and I believe the desire not to be alone is part of what composes love, and so is the increasing awareness of the fleetingness of things. That desire and that awareness can lead people to do wonderful and terrible things to one another and to themselves, and like most adults, I've experienced and been witness to both, which might account for the many faces love shows in my work. But I also believe love possesses a much deeper quality, and though I can't say for certain what it is, I believe that quality of love is what drives the writer/musician/artist. I believe it must be in part what compelled Rilke to write his Duino Elegies. There is such a profound love for the external world—a terrible, aching love on the part of a consciousness that longs for a connection so deep that both the lover and the object of love might be transformed by it. That transformative quality of love is the one in which I'm most interested.

 

The poems about language/grammar come directly out of my life as a creative writing instructor. "Grammar Lessons" was my response to an exercise I'd given my Introduction to Creative Writing class. "Conjugation I" was my attempt to teach an upper division creative writing major how to conjugate the verb "to lie." The poem just happened, and very quickly. What I like most about the process was that even though I set out to create something I hoped might drive home a grammatical concept (it did, by the way), the poem happened in spite of my intentions and took me by complete surprise. The only intentional parts of the poem are the conjugations themselves.

 

 

I've been working on "Houses of God" for several years when time has allowed. The novel is set in a small town in central Texas (much like the one where I spent my formative years) and centers around an abusive minister and his dysfunctional family. Most of the story focuses on the minister’s stepsister as she struggles to free herself from her stepbrother’s emotional and physical abuse. The first draft came about fairly quickly—within a year, roughly. The current draft on which I'm presently working—what I hope will be the final draft—has been a much slower process for me because it’s a sentence-by-sentence process. I'm listening for rhythms and sounds, searching for the right images, tightening the language. It isn’t so different from revising a poem, except that with this manuscript, I have many, many more words—at least eighty thousand more—with which to contend. So it’s going to take a little longer.

 

I think whether I'm writing prose or poetry, I'm always concerned with the same thing in terms of craft, which is sound, rhythm, and imagery. I think, too, that my poetry and prose deal with the same core issue, which is love—how it has the potential to destroy or transform us, how sometimes a person must be destroyed by love before he or she can be changed by it.

 

 

 

 

1

 

By the abandoned iris beds, I’ve left them--

bones of dead conversations--

 

tongued angels.

 

Today, I can’t even count the rose buds

as hopeful; new irises rock like grieving women,

marigolds shake their yellow fists--

 

 

but two miles away, steel tracks groan under boxcars

heavy with departure.

 

 

2

 

I would like to say yes, now I am

 

Once, while walking the fence line, I thought

I saw her at the wood’s edge, threshing light

from her wings. But change washes down

 

slowly in this broken light. Already

 

I’ve forgotten how to live by an open field

and all that tenderness. To be carried away

by the rhythm of exterior things—

lilacs’ dark perfume, the cattails gathering

their bells of silence—

 

these gifts I would place

on the tongues of my children.

 

 

3

 

Maybe the past will bury itself

cleanly, without art.

 

Still, there are those days, hurts

that can’t be ground down or sewn shut, and

what remains stays broken.

 

 

4

 

This morning, the lake stirs

from a foggy sleep. I force windows open

just to hear the pines sigh like old men

drunk with new light.

 

Such days feel like wanting to die,

listening to the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

Never love the period, that bitterest end

to all good beginnings. Refuse those hard

seamless walls, the cold articulation

of shuttered windows.

 

 

Give yourself to the comma instead, the curved

sliver of moon and everything

that fills her, or, better yet, make love

 

to the question mark—so sexual, so

innocent (remember how it felt to be

that innocent, so perfectly still

and blue?) like a feather that trembles on the edge

of the restless sea . . .

 

 

 

 

 

The sky drags its pink boa across the black hills,

hills so strong and massive, I want to woo them, to shake myself free

of hair and skin, to put on a hat of wind

and dogwood leaves.  It isn’t sex I’m after,

but then again, maybe it is.

 

Look at this room, its wilted lilac curtains,

the sadness of afternoon light

on mottled carpet. This is where love

has brought us, stealing heat and whispers

while the baby sleeps on sheets worn

to onion-skin thinness.  Outside,

 

the thirty-dollars-a-day silence,

whiskeyed-up men with black tar breaths

shuffling across the gravel lot

to the last bar in town.  Soon you’ll shed your sleep to join them

 

because really it’s all about the end of the day, the clumsy

dash to forgetting everything you have

is nothing you want.  Maybe you’ll go,

saying to yourself, “No turning back this time.”

 

I step outside to watch the hills,

how their shadows reach into the valley

with such tenderness, even this hard light can sing.

 

 

 

 

 

Suddenly we left you dreaming,

wanting to tell us how, when moonlight sits

on our fields’ winter stubble,

souls of blackbirds and field mice

crawl under stones to sleep.

 

You might say “Look, sometimes

it’s easier, this falling towards midnight

like rain on a winter-black river.”

 

Even after you go, friend, something

insists on staying—

a particular sorrow, a tree,

and always the flame between.

 

 

 

 

 

Look how your diamond hooves have trampled

my night gardens. You’ve pulled up all

my secret lilies, those thin, quiet girls

 

weeping by the shed. Now the lark will never

grow wings and the landscape painter?

 

His eyes have sailed to a happier country.

 

*

 

Every night, I’ve tried to raise the dead

just long enough to let them breathe,

maybe laugh once more like fat, drunken uncles,

from deep in the belly.

 

But you’ve closed their mouths

with bitterness. Why are your hooves

so violent? Your face so broken?

 

Listen, old friend. I think it’s best if you hurry home

to your rooms of ice.

 

Take whatever you want—

the crooked aster, pale waxflowers,

and foxglove bells. Take it all,

 

but at least have the kindness to give the lark

his wings back.

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine a pearl, its pearly layers

pearled around an infant’s

fingernail, and imagine the sea

that lies just under—murmurs

just under—the paper-thin nail

and how yesterday the sea, this very

same sea, lay down (oh, remember

her dress! The whisper of blue

against your skin, the blue silk

of her dress!) between your image

of the moon and my image

of the moon, and yes, yes,

I mean this sea—this infant’s

sea, blue like milk—and all her pearls

lying on the blue tongues of angels

who love her as only angels can.