Thanks for agreeing to this interview. I have to say that I am just blown away by
the poems in your book. After this, my
3rd reading I think I’m ready to ask some questions. Your book reads
like a memoir, partly of a time forgotten by many in our affluent and urbanized
society. In fact, for me, the stories
the poems tell personalize, even as they recall, scenes from The Grapes of Wrath. Here are my
questions to you as the poet.
Caroline: Would you speak about any autobiographical
qualities of this book of poems? Do you
regard it as a memoir in verse?
Gayle:
Thank you for the opportunity to address some issues I hope the book raises for
people. I did not think about it as a memoir until the publisher put it in the
double categories of Poetry/Memoir. This caused me to look at the poems
differently. Of course, they are memoir, but I didn't set out to write memoir.
It had never occurred to me to write one because I didn't want to re-live the
pain, the ugliness, the hatefulness of my childhood. The poems began at the
Squaw Valley Writers Conference in July 1991 where I spent the week working
with Galway Kinnell, Lucille Clifton, C.K. Williams, and Sharon Olds. We were
required to have a new poem every morning by 7 a.m. (which we learned after we
arrived). I panicked as I had never written a poem a day. The house I shared
with five other participants had three floors and the top floor had a balcony
just big enough for one chair and a small table. I would sit there and look out
across the valley to the mountains in the distance and let my mind go blank. An
image, a vague memory, an incident would occur to me and I would write. Of the
seven poems I wrote that week, four are in the book, two have been published in
journals, and one I threw away.
Since my childhood is post-WWII, I've never thought
to make a comparison to The Grapes of
Wrath. In my mind, my family was not the Joads. But, of course, we were in
many ways. However, I see your point and you've made me think about the
comparisons. Which, actually, I prefer not to do.
After leaving Squaw I continued to write these poems
over the next several years. What shocked me time after time was how each poem
turned out, what each poem revealed to me. I realized that I had carried a
burden all my life, that these images were constantly in my head and weighed on
me. Since the book has been published, the burden has eased. Unfortunately,
there are many more images; I could probably fill another book with such poems,
and they occur to me frequently, but I need to move on to other content in my
poetry so resist writing them.
Caroline:
Some poems are written in first person,
some in third. Would you say something
about how you chose which voice to write in, and perhaps give us more insight
into that choice by illustrating with a poem from each voice?
Gayle:
I had to write in third person for the childhood poems as a means of gaining
distance. It was much too painful to write them in first person with the
exception of the few more light hearted ones. The adult voice is in first
person because I had both time and geographical distance that allowed me to
cope with the images. By the time these poems began, I had not been to Texas
for 38 years and had been away from my family for 30 years, living 3,000 miles
away in Massachusetts. A good example of a third person poem is:
Suspension
On the porch of broken boards
the child arranges stones into
patterns.
Inside her mother wanders
from room to room. She leaves
the house only to stand
on the porch. Rubs her hands.
With slow feet the child
enters. Dries the dishes,
flowers faded and chipped
as though ants had dined.
Watches the hands. Feels
the first sting on her cheek.
Feels the hard leather
on her legs. Long curls snatched
in the hand. She dances a high
jig against the belt.
Tears and pleas will break
the silence. She refuses.
There is no way I could have written
this poem in first person. I was always told the slaps were love pats, and I
was ridiculed for crying about them. The belt was almost an everyday
occurrence. Hence, my desire to escape, to go find the sheep and rattlesnakes.
An example of a first person poem is
"Heritage". It takes place more than 16 years after leaving home.
Heritage
In the photograph my son and I
stand
in Great-Great-Granddad's corn
crib
built of poles glossy from years
of corn-husk polishing, ears
fresh picked
to age for cattle feed, side by
side
we face the camera, my arm across
his shoulder, my hand rests
lightly there.
We stare beyond, as though to see
the people
in sun-faded overalls walk the
whispery
rows in west Texas heat, and I
like to think,
in his child way, he understands
what we do,
that he hears them call to each
other
down the rows, that he brings
their voices
with him into his music, those
inward
songs children make of their
world.
Since my family no longer lived in Texas
and I would have no interference, I took my son who had just turned six to
visit for the first time. He still remembers some things about the trip and
tells me that these poems help him to recall other aspects. The poem "The Visit"
reflects his ambivalence at the time. The focus of the trip was to show him
locations and to let him know the contrast between the environment of my
childhood and his in western Massachusetts. Also, I wanted him to meet his
quite elderly great-grandparents since by then I could protect him from the
harshness of my maternal grandmother.
Caroline: The poems in Reaching for Air do indeed leave one breathless in the way they
portray the emotional brutality of grinding poverty and a confusingly
duplicitous religious, yet cruel, outlook toward life—particularly from the
child’s point of view. Roughly in what
years are the poems set: for the
young girl in the beginning of the book, for the adult returning with her son
and to visit her aging grandparents?
Gayle:
Most of the poems for the young girl are set in the late 1940s; those of the woman
30-35 years later.
Caroline:
Travel, animals and imagination figure large in these narrative poems. They seem to offer a promise of relief and
escape from the prison of poverty, drought, desert and sex-role
expectations. Would you say that is an
accurate perception, and if so, share your thoughts about it?
Gayle:
Yes, I agree. I took every opportunity to go outside the house, to be on my
own, anything to be away from my mother, and my father when he was not working.
I was 13 when we moved to Seattle and that was definitely a culture shock: from
rural to city, from my Texas twang to the Northwest dialect, from all white
(and a few "Mexicans") schools to a school with a mix of
African-Americans and Asians, very few of which I had ever seen before. And,
worst of all, no space to walk in, no open sky, no horizon to look toward, and
no wild animals to relate to. I felt hemmed in with the tall trees and
mountains. And, worst of all, very little sunshine. My way of leaving the house
was to become involved in many organizations and to sign up for every committee
both at school and with various organizations such as Girl Scouts.
I don't know where it came from, but at that young
age I desired, absolutely craved, something different. It was more a gut
feeling than one I could articulate. I felt there had to be a better life, a
better way of being.
I started writing "poems" when I was nine
and never stopped. These writings mostly expressed my frustration and anger and
feelings of helplessness. I didn't know the word 'power' then but I felt
powerless in the most extreme way.
Caroline:
Despite the harshness of much of the content, compassion rings through for the
various characters in these narrative poems.
How did you, as the writer, find your way to writing in such a factual,
yet non-attacking manner?
Gayle:
I let the facts and images speak for themselves. I try to write poems that tell
a story, that paint a picture. I want the reader, or listener, to see and hear
the story. I want readers to decide for themselves, based on the facts and
images, how they feel and think about the various characters. We all like
stories, whether they make us laugh, cry, or cringe. Stories are what we all
remember. I want my poems to communicate to a broad audience and stories do
that.
Caroline: How long did it take you to write this
book? What did the process of writing it
entail for you?
Gayle:
It was written sporadically over a period of 15 or so years beginning in 1991.
I wasn't trying to write a book, only poems as they occurred. In Massachusetts
I was a member of a critique group that met weekly. Timothy Liu (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/timothy-liu)was
also a member for about 3 years and he was the person who said the poems make a
book. I was surprised, but Tim insisted and created the first arrangement of
the poems. The final arrangement is close to what he suggested although I did
delete some poems and wrote new ones later that are included.
Until recently I have never been able to write
consistently yet never stopped writing. Being a single parent with no money and
poor health, I struggled through graduate school and numerous part-time jobs.
My son also had health issues and between the two of us I spent a lot of time
in doctors' offices. When my own issues were finally diagnosed in 1988, I was then
able to work full time and not worry constantly about money. Writing was a
compulsion, an obsession, something I needed to do that was all mine. I always
wrote in a hurry and, therefore, wrote a lot of bad poems, never having the
time to revise. I have stacks of those poems that I have looked through to
determine what could possibly be salvaged. Very little, yet I hang on to them
because, I think, they remind me of my journey.
Caroline:
Please tell us of your journey to get Reaching
for Air published?
Gayle:
I sent the manuscript to about 40 publishers over some eight or ten years.
During that time I continued to revise. In 2013 I took a workshop with Louise
Gluck whose help and support were invaluable and gave me the courage to force
the issue and self-publish. Over the years of this journey I began to realize
from the comments that editors made, that they either didn't understand the
poems or were in denial about the issues of class the poems raise. As a country
we love to talk about, lament about, debate about, rant about racism. But we
don't like to even mention class. I've noticed that when it is mentioned on the
news, it is quickly passed over. As a child, I was painfully aware of the
difference between my home and that of a few friends whose middle or upper
middle class homes I was invited into, but I did not understand that this was
part of the class difference. People don't like to admit that white people are
poor. In 1976 I was invited to apply for a Danforth Foundation Grant for Women
to help finance work on a graduate degree. The application form was lengthy and
required several in-depth essays. On the third line of one of the essays I
stated that I am white. Yet, when I arrived at Harvard University for an
interview, the self-satisfied pompous white woman who had summoned me took one
look at me and said "I thought you were black". End of interview. She
couldn't imagine a white person having the experiences I had had.
In 1967 I was living in Nashville where my husband
taught at Fisk University. We lived in the faculty housing that surrounded the
campus that sits in the midst of the poorest part of the black ghetto (I don't
know if anything has changed since I've never returned there). A few houses up
the street Robert Hayden resided with his family. He asked to see my poems and
I invited him for tea. Sitting in the living room the conversation turned to
the location of the campus in the midst of such poverty. I'll never forget
Bob's words as he gestured to the surrounding area "I have nothing to do
with these people". That was my first instruction that class crosses
racial and ethnic lines.
He was a wonderful man with whom I had a number of
stimulating conversations. I was extremely pleased for him when he was named
U.S. Poet Laureate. And, I will always be grateful to him for being the first
to publish my poems. At the time he was poetry editor of the Baha'i journal World Order. About a year later two of my
poems appeared in the journal.
Later that spring I had further instruction in the
vagaries of class when I participated in a door-to-door survey conducted by a
group of doctors who were determining whether to build a low-cost or free health
clinic in either the poor black ghetto or the poor white ghetto. The
questionnaire required about 45 minutes to ask people questions and record
their responses. I was assigned homes in both ghettos. The residents had no
idea I would be knocking on their doors. What a revelation! For the most part
the white homes were a mess with clothes thrown everywhere and dishes piled up
in the sink. The rooms were often filthy. The people spent a lot of time
ranting about how they were better than the blacks (of course they used a
different word) because they were white. By contrast, the black homes were
poor, sometimes no better than shacks, but neat with clothes hung up on wooden
pegs on the walls and everything clean. The people were polite and gracious
although a bit uncomfortable with the white lady who came calling. These
experiences reflected my own uneasy but not yet fully acknowledged awareness of
and experience of the class divide.
Thanks to the pervasive denial about class in our
society, I don't think Reaching for Air
would ever have seen the light of day unless I published it myself. I was
gratified when it was named a Finalist for the Best First Book of Poetry by the
Texas Institute of Letters.
Caroline:
What are you working on now?
Gayle:
My second poetry manuscript is completed and looking for a publisher. The title
is All the Wild and Holy: a Life of
Eunice Williams, 1696-1785, a book-length narrative poem in the voice of
the historical figure of Eunice Williams. I was pleased that it received an
Honorable Mention for the May Sarton Poetry Prize by Bauhan Publishing. Currently,
I am writing a series of travel poems to reflect my passion for travelling to
learn about the world and other peoples in more than a superficial manner. Another
project is to write poems about the pre-historic Greek goddesses who were
worshipped before the northern patriarchal invaders arrived and destroyed the
power of women that threatened the warriors.
I have a number of poems stashed away that I've long
thought of as singletons. Recently I pulled them all together and discovered
that about 50 of them could comprise a manuscript. Over the next few months
I'll be revising these and writing a few more that fit into the three sections
I've divided them into.
On a completely different tack, I'm excited about writing
my first novel. Since it is such a different process from writing poetry, it is
a very steep learning curve. But I am enjoying it as well as the frustrations
involved. The story is set in the late 18th century in the Scottish Highlands,
then, through many misadventures, proceeds to Iceland, and ends in the Boston. It
follows the woman's journey based on Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. It is
the first book in a trilogy.
Caroline: Thanks for your time,
Gayle. I look forward to seeing your
manuscripts in script.
