I heard you say in an interview conducted at Mesquite High School that your favorite color is white, and you look great in the white dress you’re wearing on the front page of your website. White seems, to me, like an unusual and interesting choice for a favorite color. Why is it your favorite? Does it have a deeper meaning for you, beyond the purely aesthetic?

I can’t help but feel good when I wear it…and, of course, we always like to look our best…but white also holds an aura around it – something beautiful and sacred.

In a weird way, I feel like it is MY colour – and there’s some kind of power; some kind of strength I get from it.

How interesting that no one has ever asked me that before!

In the same interview, you said, “poetry is the link between humanity and God.” This is a wonderfully rich statement, and I wonder if you could elaborate on it for us. How do you understand God, and how can poetry function as this link?

Edward Hirsch says that poetry has the capability to reach out and touch the tenderness that is inside each one of us – that it links us together, and I agree with that.

I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Rome and visit the Sistine Chapel, and there, on one wall, within the paintings of the Creation and Moses, is a painting of Apollo, surrounded by 9 muses and 9 great poets of the day – Dante, Virgil, Sappho, Homer, etc.

I was stunned. How is it possible that they had mixed the godly and the pagan together?
Upon research, I learned that the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that poetry and the arts are so important to humans because they believe arts are the link between man and God.

I believe this. I believe that the God inside of us is that tenderness that Hirsch talks about. We feel greater, deeper things when we witness the beauty of poetry and all forms of art…this is finding God on Earth.

Many of your poems describe the narrator merging with nature in some way, going from a purely human position to the position of something in nature. For example, a dressed onlooker undresses and merges with a flower; a “mountain amateur” turns into an experienced mountaineer tuned into animals; and a woman who startled a fawn merges with the fawn and claims the river. What inspires this theme?

Your questions are fascinating! Thank you!

Poetry is a becoming.

It is not enough for me to see beauty in the world around me…I feel the need to immerse in it –
to find its deeper meaning, and figure out how it relates to not just me, but the world around me.

I am interested in how you think of fear. In an interview on Jayne’s Breast Cancer Blog, you wrote, “It’s fear, I think, that is your worst enemy.” Your poem “Clowns and Dark Water” addresses fear of menacing things that hide. You seem to me like a fighter. What do you understand fear and its effects to be? What do you find to be fearsome? How do you confront fear and the fearsome in your life and in your writing?

Fear is a reaction. It is our physical and emotional reaction to someone or something that is threatening us. What was empowering to me, especially going through my period of battling cancer, was the ability that I didn’t even know I had – the ability to CHOOSE to not be afraid. That is a liberating thing, and it takes the paralyzing fingers fear has, and crushes them.

In Clowns and Dark Water – yes, I am telling the world I fear the dark, the unknown depths where things touch me, but I can’t identify them…and also the masks in the world. Show me your SELF, your real self, not a painted on smile.

I confront fear by pulling on my cowboy boots, and saying “oh no you don’t.” I stand up to it, recognize it, then call it what it is – a big, nasty bully; get mad and shove it aside. Fear is the worst of the emotions, because it can overwhelm you. Don’t let it.

Choose to kick it in the ass.

 

What are you most proud of doing as Texas’s Poet Laureate, and what do you have planned? What does your position entail? In what ways should we encourage the reading and writing of poetry in our communities? What successes have you seen in this regard, and what advice do you have for people who want to benefit the arts?

The cool thing about the State of Texas is that the title of Texas Poet Laureate is a life-time title. They name a Laureate every year, but the title and the work you do is forever, so I feel like I am just getting warmed up!

I’m so excited about the Little Town, Texas Tour I began, in which I traveled to communities underserved in the Arts and paid special attention to the secondary schools. All I asked in return is that they have and judge a poetry and an art contest about their town. I wrote a poem about each place, then chose the kids’ winning poetry and artwork, and TCU Press is putting them all in a book together – that way kids all across Texas have a chance to be published! And you know, nothing inspires writers more than to see their name and work in print!

I’d love to take this concept out across the US as well!

I encourage, also, people to become involved in their local Community Arts organization, such as the one here in Denton – The Greater Denton Arts Council. If you don’t have a local group, then start one! Artists of all kinds need a place to gather, a place to work, a place to show and share their work.

Many cuts have come into the Arts world, but if we all make a commitment to support our local Art Councils, they will not just survive, but they will lift up the entire community!

I think all writers want to see poetry and writing and reading flourish not only in their own home towns, but across the country – across the world! Nothing makes you smarter; nothing brings mankind closer together. It’s good to know we’re not alone, that our human-ness ties us all together. There can’t help but be a greater good that comes from it.