In Jubilee, the speaker of many of the poems is a child. How has it been a challenge for you to write from that perspective?
It was easy to write from that perspective. I really didn’t think about it, the voice of the poems just came out that way. I like to write in other voices, whether it is myself as a child or an historical figure like Edward Stanton or Janis Joplin.
The church that appears in the first section of this collection seems to take on a role as a character itself. Was this intended?
It wasn’t intended. I just wrote. I wanted to write everything I could remember about that time, and so I did. I wrote over 100 poems. It was only when I began to edit the manuscript after it had been completed for over a year that I noticed there were distinct sections, each with its own characteristics. Really, what I want as a writer is the writing to take me over, to be a power greater than myself…and that is what happened with this book. Very little was intended except that I was trying to create a story about my family experience and I wanted it to somehow ring as true as it felt for me to remember it…intensely. I was just trying to write, and to write well.
The family members that appear in Jubilee are crucial elements to the book. Have you always written about family, or was this a new challenge you took on in your poetry?
This was the first time I had written about family. As soon as I started, I couldn’t stop. Before, I had written about mostly (I am embarrassed to say) old boyfriends and abstract things like love and memory. I had a hard time getting to a poem’s moment. It took me many, many years of writing to be able to actually write about “something”. I had a lot of subject-less poems. Really, I don’t know how I got into grad school with my subjectless poems. They must have seen something in me that I couldn’t! Or, maybe I am being too hard on myself…writers usually are.
The title poem, “Jubilee,” seems to speak of death in a way that, if it weren't spoken for, it might “crumble like Communion on my tongue.” Having given this collection the title, do you feel the book is a celebration of what must be said?
Yes, you said that really well and have, actually, finally, articulated it for me! This book is definitely a celebration (of sorts) of what must be said…though it can be hard to find out, creatively, what it is one must say.
In the final poem of this collection, “Letter to my Former Self,” the speaker seems to have matured and found understanding that she may not have had in some of the earlier poems of the book. Were most of the poems written in the order in which they appear? Or did you arrange them to achieve this quality?
That was one of the last poems written for the book, and by the time I wrote it, I had unintentionally transformed myself and my view of my family. I was able to stop demonizing them, and see that they were just trying to make their lives as they went along just like everyone else in the world. I felt some compassion for my parents, my mother in particular. I wrote the poems all out of sequence. I wrote "Company, " "Mulatto," and "Hell" first. The others followed in a sequence I cannot recall. Some of the non-prose poems were written late.
Many of these poems are written in prose. Can you compare the ways in which you approach your prose poems to those of traditional forms, such as your sonnet, “Weeknight Services?”
People always ask me this, and I wish I had something really interesting to say. What I can say is, I approach poems in an intuitive way. I just sit down to write, and the poem either comes out as a prose poem or a different kind of poem. Sometimes I want to play with a particular structure. Right now I am working on a sonnet crown (15 sonnets). I think I chose the sonnet form because it would give me constraints for my ideas, and because it feels more poetic in a way, if that makes sense. I like the prose poem because it gives me a sense of velocity that I like. Prose poems are a good way for me to overwhelm the reader with images which is something I like to do and always like to happen to me as a reader. I want the reader to fall into one of my prose poems and come out changed…either changed enough mentally to inspire their own poem, or to inspire thoughts that will eventually inspire a poem. I aim to dazzle the reader. Dazzle them into some kind of awe, and hopefully the kind that will get them re-thinking their lives which we tend to think of as dull.
Who are some of the poets that have influenced your writing, and in what ways have they done so?
The most influential poets for me have been Anne Sexton, W.S. Merwin and Kim Addonizio. They are just great writers and I tried to write like them and somehow fell into my own style.
From this collection, what was your favorite, or most rewarding poem to write?
The most rewarding poem to write was probably "Letter to My Former Self." I just feel like I really nailed something about my family and myself, about that kind of hardy, survival-focused, fragile yet beautiful quality that runs through all the members of my family on both sides (the Italians as well as the African-Americans). Also, it was rewarding to write about myself and my family with birds being the primary image. Birds, in my family, were so often discussed. Certain birds were bad for crops, other kinds of birds were bad omens if they flew by at a wedding, it was always bad if a bird flew into a building, or if you saw one crippled, certain birds were good signs such as doves which were attributed to Christ. Certain birds such as a crow or a hawk freaked everyone out if they flew into the yard (now, so much more common)…because birds had meaning and you could interpret it, the way someone might read tea leaves or a palm. Yeah, I love that poem. I’m glad it was me who wrote it.
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Be sure to catch Roxane's reading Tuesday, November 13, Room 310, Kent Student Center at 7:30;
As well as her talk "Aunts and Ancestors: Writing poetry about real and imaginary family," Tuesday, November 13th, in the Student Multicultural Center (Room 206 above the Kiva), at 11:00 am.
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