Visiting with Jeannine Atkins
by Claire Guyton, Art + Life Editor
Do you remember the first poem you ever wrote? What was it about?
I wrote rhyming poems in a blue notebook when I was seven. I also copied and memorized poems by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lewis Carroll to the delight of my second grade teacher, who sent me upstairs to Mrs. Murphy’s third grade class to perform. I don’t think they were all that impressed. I can remember the sheen of that notebook cover, but the artifact is long gone and un-mourned. I don’t remember specific poems but they were about swings, clouds, elves, bears without teeth—all responses to literature, not life. Reading is good, but inspiration from the near world is better.
What’s the hardest thing to get right in a poem?
I usually work on a bunch (to be very unspecific) of poems at a time, and when the going gets rough on a line or stanza, I move to another. This isn’t tidy, but maybe makes the process pleasurable enough so that I can’t locate a singly disturbing place. Maybe what’s hardest is achieving the balance of subtlety. I want to be understood but also leave room for a reader’s guesses.
Name your favorite living writer and tell us why.
I don’t love this question—no offense—but maybe asking me to make a list of favorites, which would be long, would be more unkind. I’m going to go with the “first thought, best thought” beat dictum, though I don’t generally think that’s of great use and never use it with poems. The author that comes to mind is Alice Munro, because for decades I’ve loved and admired how she can find so much in overlooked lives and make it look beautiful in her fiction.
What does your writing space look like?
In May I’m writing on the porch.
*Contact Claire with any questions or suggestions for Hunger Mountain’s Art + Life section at hungermtnal@gmail.com.
