Martha Silano (Poet) with E.C. Murray
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Martha, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview to inform readers, writers, and struggling poets. We at Writers Connection have appreciated your poetry not only in your published books, but in magazines and periodicals over the years. Let’s start at the beginning. When did you decide you wanted to be a poet?
In Miss Everett’s class, age seven, second grade, where we learned about Haiku, and read poems by Poe, R L Stevenson, and Dickinson. I was quite taken by her poem “The Morn’s Are Meeker than they were …” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56590/the-morns-are-meeker-than-they-were-32 (Readers can follow this link)
My first poems were published in high school and I won the literary award for the high school’s literary magazine at age 17. My first ‘national’ publication, Denali, was 7 years later in Amaranth Review, Lane Community College’s (Eugene, Oregon) literary magazine.
Since our editor, Norma Sax, and I both met in Eugene, we’re especially appreciative of that being your Amaranth Review publishing your first poem. Congratulations. Who was/is your mentor/inspiration?
Initially, I read no one – just kept writing haiku! Then, early inspirations included John Whitcomb Riley (my mom read to me), lyrics of Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, then poems by Robert Bly, and Anne Sexton. I tried Plath but didn’t find her poetry as accessible as Sexton’s work. Also, I was inspired by William Stafford who lived in Oregon. I heard him read dozens of times and took workshops with him. I also studyied with Henry Carlile which was key to my applying to the University of Washington’s Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) program in Creative Writing.
My most inspirational instructor, David Wagoner, taught me things no one else had about rhythm and syntax and about how sound and sense needed to match up. We read and analyzed all the greats, and then he would take a blow torch to our feeble attempts, or should I say MY feeble attempts … I ‘audited’ his class (he snuck me in), so I had not yet been deemed worthy of attending grad school. My poems were, well, nascent, but I learned enough in that class to put together a decent enough portfolio of poems to be admitted to the MFA program where I studied more with David, along with Heather McHugh, Linda Bierds and Rick Kenney.
Years ago I studied with Olga Broumas at the University of Oregon (soon after she won at the Yale Younger Poet award.) As a result, I have a stack of maudlin poetry from that era. I came to respect poets through her class, but not to understand exactly why one poem is considered “good” and one “not good.” Heaven help me if I can make heads or tails of many New Yorker poems. How is it determined if a poem is worthy or not?
Well, a lot is in the eyes of the beholder, for sure. If one of your criteria is musicality, or if you value rhythm over content, what’s being said, if you like accessible poems or poems that make the reader grab for the dictionary, or if you like poems that require subsequent readings, and the list goes on and on. If you ask ME, though: I like to be wowed. Whether it’s as if the poem is pumped upon red bull or very quietly destroying me with heartbreak and misery, I want to be MOVED. I want to be completely riveted, unable to look away – to be struck as if by lighting. I want to get to the last line and immediately go back to the beginning … to be delighted again, but also to read in amazement and wonder –perhaps trying to figure out how they pulled it off. And, of course, to steal whatever I can – the syntax, the nouns, the verbs, the lightening bolt.
I was randomly reading a poem by Ted Hughes this morning – Plath’s hubby - never did fancy his work, it was impenetrable to me in my 20s and 30s and prob 40s, but picking up the book CROW today, one of the poems completely surprised and amazed me: It’s called “Crow Improvises”:
“There was this man
Who took the sun in one hand, a leaf in the other—
The spark that jumped burned out his name.
…So he rested a dead vole in one hand
And grasped relativity in the other—
The spark that gored through gouged out his wordage.”
..So in one hand he held a sham-dead spider,
With the other he reached for the Bible—
The spark that thunderbolted blanched his every whisker.”
I mean, talk about “thunder bolted.” The reader is “thunder bolted.” If I were an editor, oh boy, how I’d be glad to publish this poem.
How has your poetry evolved?
This is a pretty big question! When I was 7, it was haiku. I was trying to write about a grasshopper, say – 5-7-5. Then I was listening to a lot of rock lyrics, and reading Robert Bly and anthologies of the 1970s – so it probably sounded like a mixture of Gary Snyder and Denise Levertov and Diane Wakowski. I was trying things out, writing poems of heartbreak and probably, they were sappy. I wrote a lot of really bad poems, and then sometimes I would write a good poem – but hey, when I think about it, that is pretty much the case today. I do still write a lot of not-so-good poems. I try and try to fix them, but they still won’t fly.
One thing I do more of now is research – I collect factoids, and I try to fit them into poems. Or, I decide I want to write a poem about Titan – one of Saturn’s moons – because it has liquid on it, but it’s liquid methane … but then I don’t write that poem, though I mention in a poem that there’s a planet where it’s raining diamonds. I didn’t used to do this until the past 20 years, but now I use thesaurus.com all the time. I like to find better words, ones that sound better. I have also tried to write in just about every form. Haven’t tried to write a duplex yet (Jericho Brown’s invented form), and I am still trying to write a successful villanelle, but I have published pantoums, a glosa, sonnets, haiku, … I like the challenge of form, though I’m most comfortable writing in free verse.
I would hope my poetry has grown to be wilder, more leaping, and strange, less predictable. I enjoy the surrealist poets, poems that change direction suddenly and do not follow a logical/narrative sequence, and sometimes I push that envelope pretty hard – Charles Simic is one I look to when I want to be pushed that way. James Tate. And the French wild men – Baudelaire and Rimbaud, especially in the past few months. I read a few of their poems, and then sit down to write. Have you heard of The Book of Surrealist Games? The poet Anna Maria Hong told me about it … well, it has an exercise in there where you answer a series of questions .. and when you’re done, you have a draft. I used it to write a poem about my baby daughter:
What Little Girls Are Made of
Tapir, pure tapir—all wide,
delicious ass. Herbivorous
to the core, union of fly rod
and shad roe. After hiking all the way up,
then all the way back down Mount Kinabalu.
In the month of pastels, fluorescent pink grass.
As American as a forest fire enveloping
your god-given home on the range.
With wheat berry eyebrows, resides
in the batter of Proust's madeline.
Also of the sorrowful women of Durer.
Of cantaloupe rind, of gargantuan zucchini.
Of Athena—all brains from the get-go, over-
brimming, teeming, full of knowing
hare-bell from bluebell, every genus
and every species, all brushed up
on conifer know-how, reminding us
spruces have papery cones.
Of granite, with meteor shower
skin, her nose, when it sniffs,
pre- and just- rainfall, her voice
a synthesis of Ginsberg and Plath—
"A Supermarket in London," amalgam
of nasty boy love and honey,
Lorca chasing her down the aisles hissing
Bees! You must devote yourself to bees!
"Babies in the tomatoes," yes,
but also of baby tomatoes. Of those believing
the world held up by a turtle. She's
the Thinker, Ye Olde Tick Tock.
She's the patch of geraniums
in full throttle, all wrists and sucking fists.
She's what glows and glow
What was your path to publication?
I submitted my manuscript, The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, to Saturnalia Press’ contest and Campbell McGrath chose it as the winner. That was about 10 years ago. I’d been working on that book about 5 years. What a happy day – I screamed. Fell onto the floor. Then we went out for Vietnamese food. We didn’t usually go out to lunch (my hubby and I both were working from home), but we did that day! It was a 2-book contract, so I also published Reckless Lovely with Saturnalia. Last year they released Gravity Assist. I feel lucky to have found a press that’s willing to publish my work – the contest route gets a little old (and expensive).
What do you say to people who say “I don't understand what you mean” with a particular poem?
Hmmm .. I guess I would try to summarize what the poem is “about,” though I know that is frowned upon (summarizing poems has gotten a bad rap these past 20 years, as has ”‘message hunting” a poem – though thank goodness for that!). In fact, I don’t think anyone has ever asked me what I mean in a poem. I don’t know why that is – maybe it’s because no one is actually reading my poems! Or maybe they don’t care what it means, or they think it’s not supposed to mean anything, or they don’t want to commit a social blunder, or admit they don’t know what a poem means and thereby expose their ignorance, which isn’t ignorance at all, but probably that the poem isn’t working – for them or for most people. Maybe it’s a bad poem!
What is your dream/goal/the highest achievement you hope for?
Pulitzer Prize? National Book Award? Though I always forget to submit to those – Pulitzer costs $75, and I ponied up for Gravity Assist-my most recent collection, but big surprise, it didn’t win. Poet Laureate of the United States? That would be cool but a lot of work/travel. It would be nice to publish two-three or maybe four more books before I shuffle off to my next incarnation. I also want to backpack a few sections of the Pacific Crest Trail, hike the Enchantments (Washington), the Wind River Range in Wyoming, get my French up to a level that a French person can actually understand me, spend a lot of time in Italy, France, and Spain—on long hiking adventures. Visit the Prada/Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. See the Taj Mahal …
How long does it usually take you to complete a poem? Do you work on several at once?
Some poems take 20+ years to get them right, or as right as they will ever be. Some get written in a matter of weeks. Yes, I work on several at once usually. I try to write a few new poems a week, set them aside, then start working on them after they’ve cooled a little. It’s easier to revise poems a few days or ideally weeks after you’ve written them – when you’ve started to fall out of love with them but are still very interested in hanging out with them – sort of like an ex you have grown to love as a friend but can see all their faults!
Many people believe poetry is especially important during this COVID season. Do you think so? Why?
YES. Reading poetry, writing it, listening to it, supporting it by writing reviews and sharing favorite poems on social media, and supporting indy bookstores and small presses! I think I’ve been writing more than I ever have in my life the past five months. Poetry is definitely one of the things that is saving me.
How has writing poetry changed for you since we first began to shelter in place during the pandemic? How have your work habits changed?
I am writing more, but also I am writing more political poems, and a larger percentage of my poems are dealing with loss and grief. I’m trying to write about whiteness, white privilege, white silence, and related subjects—but mostly without great success, not that I have given up.
11. Have you worked collaboratively with other poets? With whom?
Yes, I have! I have written and published collaborative poems with poets Molly Tenenbaum and Kelli Russell Agodon. I’ve also written a book of writing prompts called The Daily Poet – we split up the year and each wrote 187 exercises. We are currently working on Daily Poet 2, and this time we are alternating days. It has been an incredible experience working with Kelli – it was all her idea, she founded Two Syvlias Press to publish it, and the best part is we ‘test out’ the writing exercises, so we’ve written a lot of poems while hanging out together.
12. What tips do you have for aspiring writers?
My tips are probably ones you’ve heard before – read contemporary poetry – lots of it. Read lit mags and support them—subscribe if you can afford it. Attend poetry readings. Take classes or form a writing group where you write from prompts or critique each other’s work. Be open to whatever feedback you are given, and especially thankful to those who are willing to tell you your poem is one big cliché, or that they can’t figure out what’s going on sonically in your poem/s. I remember what I heard Robert Bly say: So, you want to be a poet? Are you willing to work at it for 50 years? Some poets catch on faster. It took me longer than most, but I wanted it badly. I think you have to want it very badly – to write a good poem, whatever that means. You must trust that your voice will develop, that if you listen to feedback you will improve. But it helps to surround yourself with writers who will be frank about what is lacking in your poems, but also what’s working. Praise is so important! Finally, trust your hunches. If you think a poem is unclear or the pivotal metaphor is faulty, or it’s sappy … it probably is! Go home and revise some more before you ask for a critique. Usually, but not always, our hunches are correct.
Thanks so much, Martha. Will you please share one the favorite poems that you’ve written and why it's a favorite?
I think right now my favorite would be “When I Began to Dig” – I like it because it’s about poetry.
When I began to dig
this is what I found: from the Latin, vertere,
to turn, from the Lithuanian, versti, to overturn,
from the Sanskrit, vartate, he turns. Vers, fers:
turning, turning and bending, having planted
a length of beans or corn, having reached a furrow’s
end. Like a plowman, versing, this breaking up
of sod, this fashioning into tidy rows, helping the singers
recall their lines. When the need to memorize
disappeared, verse remained like the typewriter keys
spelling QWERTY, slowing the typist down. When I began
to dig, I found turn, turn back, be turned, convert, transform,
be changed. From wert: to wind, its cognate weard
(turned toward). When I began to dig I unearthed
wyrd (destiny, fate), found what befalls one, reached
down, pulled up Turn! Turn! Turn! A Pete Seeger tune,
a psalm. From Slovenia to Wales, from Greece
to Ireland: turn, turn, stir, ladle, become. This verse,
this versus, likened to conversion, a breather,
a fresh start. Poet, like a plowman in a field
with his furrowed words, looking for a good excuse
to put up his brow, wipe his feet, reward herself
for making it this far. When I dug I found porridge,
bread (barley and rye), lentils, peas, eggs. Not much
meat. Small amount of vegetables and fruit. I found
oats; I found ale. What the digging revealed
was a single word meaning destiny and clean
slate, befalling fate yoked to the notion of free will.
To translate, become someone or something else.
In that plowman’s act, an apparent contradiction
as great as any yin and yang, koan-like conundrum,
that when we don binoculars to study a common
word, English sparrow of the lexicon, we find the link
between poetry and confrontations large and small—
tournaments, showdowns, battles—between a book
of poems, and Sunday’s nail-biting match-up
between the Seahawks and the Panthers. Versus,
a word connecting whatever force, power, or god
handed Marshawn Lynch his strength, his knack
for eluding the tackle, his Shakespearean grace,
and the task of the poet: to bury the weeds;
to disembalm the knotted, entwining roots,
the richest loam. To make, of the oldest question,
a song: are we free or are we not?