BD Wilson’s Shorts On Survival piece The Hardest Thing appeared in the April 2012 issue of r.kv.r.y.. She is a writer from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada whose work has appeared in the anthology Dark Pages from Blade Red press, Fictitious Force, and Niteblade Fantasy and Horror Magazine among others.

A firm believer in a virtual existence, BD’s home on the Web is located at http://www.bdwilson.ca

• “Coming Home” in Liquid Imagination Online: http://liquid-imagination.com/issue12/li/li-issue-12/stories/coming-home/
  Description: Putting away childish things doesn’t mean they’re lost forever.
• “Dandelion Shine” in The Blinking Anthology (link to PDF download): http://www.lulu.com/shop/samantha-rose/the-blinking-anthology/ebook/product-18896286.html
  Description: Every age has its own challenges.
• “Zalophus Philosophy” in Every Day Ficiton: http://www.everydayfiction.com/zalophus-philosophy-by-bd-wilson/
  Description: It can be hard to see the things that don’t fit until you take a step back.
• “What We Give” in Niteblade Fantasy and Horror Magazine: http://niteblade.com/home/march-2008/2008/03/01/what-we-give/
  Description: Sometimes what we do for love comes as a surprise.

Joan Hanna: Matthew, we were so happy to have A Poem For Today as a part of our April issue. Can you share the inspiration behind this particular poem?

Matthew Gasda: This might seem vaguely melodramatic- but I wrote the poem on the morning of 9/11 this past fall. It was my first 9/11 living in New York and I felt in someway connected to the sense of grief surrounding that day which I hadn’t before. The poem obviously isn’t about 9/11, the title “A Poem for Today “could be applied to any day of grief– but that was the particular day of grief that set me to writing it… But a mood, an inspiration, is largely just the beginning of the poem, and I don’t think I could explain where any of the particulars in the poem came from– a deeper place in my own consciousness, at least, than I could trace in any exact way.

JH: This poem seemed to come from such a personal perspective. Can you tell us a little bit about other themes in your poetry and why you explore these topics?

MG: Well my first book, The Humanist, while it deals with death in a philosophical way, is a much more optimistic book on the whole than “A.P.F.T.” and the other poems that make up what will be my second book, “Memorium” (intentional misspelling). That is to say at least, The Humanist is largely about moments of joy, while Memorium is about moments of sadness. Both offer, however– or I hope they do at least– ideas about the possibility of recovery and healing. To me, poetry, philosophy, fiction, art, music– anything dealing with human existence– is an attempt to make sense on one hand of moments of sensuality in life– literally, the pleasure of being in a body; sex, smelling flowers, et cetera– and on the other hand, of dying– the knowledge and intuition that one will be stripped of one’s consciousness of all those nice, sensual perceptions. So for me, as a poet, it’s heartening to hear that you think a poem is “personal” because to me, these sorts of vast universal facts of birth and death, joy and sadness are deeply personal. The details might shift, but all of us are basically dealing with the same core existential situations and I want my poetry to work through that, both the good and the bad… APFT isn’t about any particular moment I’ve experienced but it’s an amalgamation of my experiences and observations about other people’s experiences that I hope comes together to make something that goes beyond just me, but still retains the sense of deep subjectivity… if that makes sense.

JH: The illustration paired with your poem, The Disintegration of Adam, by Darwin Leon, was a very striking image. How do you feel that this image enhanced A Poem For Today?

MG: The two works share the theme of disintegration, literally to lose integrity. In my poem, what causes disintegration is grief, or loss, presumably the same is true, though in a different way in Leon’s painting. Adam, for instance, is cast out of paradise, which is famously “lost.” The deeper point here, maybe, is that the integrity of our lives, of our sense of self, our ethics, whatever, is largely contingent. Our lives can be shuffled up at any moment for reasons that are way, way beyond our control.

JH: Please share with our readers any links to your book, The Humanist, your website or any current or upcoming publications.

MG: Here’s the link to my book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Humanist-Literary-Laundry-Chapbook/dp/1614182019 and if anyone is interested in my upcoming publications this year– there will be a book of poetry and fiction I believe– they can email me at matthewgasda@gmail.com

JH: Matthew, thank you so much for sharing your poem and other insights into your process. Just one final question: Can you tell us what recovery means to you?

Barbara Ewell: I really like your poem For a Long Time. I like watching change come over the speaker even before it happens. The waiter and the bartender don’t know what the reader does – – how she’s going to move once she leaves that place. I think I have told you before that I love the way you bring me into the scene in your poems- – and in your fiction, too. You let the reader participate, oftentimes more fully than the other people in the piece. Does that make sense? Do you know you’re doing this? It’s as if you’re telling the reader little secrets, like an aside.

B. Chelsea Adams: I don’t consciously think about allowing the reader to participate in my work or about telling the reader secrets; though I’d like to do both. My more selfish motive is that I want to step into the place or situation I’ve created, to breathe the air, step on the grass or gravel, touch the tree. So my motivation is to imagine a place and then to be there, to know what the place is like, to know what the characters are up to, to hear their voices.

BE: You say you are “owned again” by the music. And that audial image wraps itself around you and becomes vapor-like cloth. Caresses the skin. Is that how it “owns” you?

BCA: In a way. For me, music isn’t just about listening. It fills me up and wraps around me, takes me over on the outside as well as on the inside. It sets me moving. Whenever I’m at a concert, I can’t sit still. I look around at the audience, and wonder how some, maybe most, people aren’t moving at all. They sit so quietly. This mystifies me.

BE: The way sound becomes touch in your verse takes me back to Darwin Leon’s accompanying artwork, The Arrival of the Goddess of Consciousness. The poem does bring about an awakening to the consciousness of the senses, of joy— if that makes sense. Do you like the selection?

BCA: I love Darwin Leon’s artwork. I wondered if Mary Akers picked it because of the way the goddess’s flowing fabric is similar to the silky scarf in my poem. I thought too about how the power of the goddess could be compared to the power of the music.

When the goddess arrives, buildings topple; in my poem when the woman finally hears the music, the heaviness disappears, and she can sing to the moon. (The buildings collapsing, and just the look of them, made me think of the deck of cards in Alice as she wakes up back on the riverbank.)

BE: “For a Long Time” is a poem about music, about jazz. I know you love music, but I don’t know how it plays into your creative process. Does listening to music make you want to write? Which comes first, the horse or the cart? The listening or the writing?

BCA: Sometimes the music inspires the words and sometimes the words find their music. The words most often arrive as a phrase I can’t get out of my head. The phrase often comes in silence, on a walk, driving the car with the radio off, sitting on the porch looking into the woods. The phrase keeps repeating until I hear the next line and start to discover whose talking, and where their words are taking me. When I get stuck and can’t find the words that come next in a line or a sentence, I try to find out what music or rhythm is needed. I kind of tap or drum it out. Is it anapest or iambic pentameter? Does it fit the melody in John Lennon’s “Imagine,” Ellington’s “Take the ‘A’ Train,” Ella’s singing of “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” or the tune my husband, a musician, is playing in the other room?

BE: A lot of your poems have the speaker remembering voices. Voices from childhood games and fairytales, like in the Hopscotch manuscript–from lovers and children–as in At Last Light. You use a similar technique in Looking for a Landing and in the Java Poems. So my question is, are those really tapes? Do you “hear” voices, so to speak?

BCA: The voices are always there just at the edges of things. In one poem I wrote, “Parallel Existence,” a speaker is sitting with friends at the same time she is in a memory, hearing voices from the past. Fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and favorite poems are also like songs, tapes in my head. I can’t memorize my own poems, but I have memorized these tales and rhymes from childhood and many songs.

BE: I noticed that several of the writers already interviewed talked about recovery as a theme in their work, as it is, of course, the main theme in r.kv.r.y. Do you see it as a focus in your writing? Is your writing guided by themes? This is another one of my horse and cart questions–which comes first: theme or poem?

BCA: When I first learned about r.kv.r.y, I didn’t think I had written any poems about recovery. But when I went through my work, I saw “For a long time…” and “Music Therapy,” poems where music saves a woman. Then I realized that many of my gardening poems fill the same function; many are poems of healing. And now for the second half of your question, what comes first, theme or poem? For me, the poem comes first or maybe just the phrase, the line. I never know where I’m going. I believe that discovery is what creates the joy of writing. And somewhere in the discovery the theme is found. But certain themes repeat in my work, nursery rhymes and fairy tales that I see speaking to the present, stairways and gardens that help one find oneself, or one’s place; jazz and coffee where I celebrate my addiction to their sound and taste. I’m sure I have other themes in my work as well, but these are obvious ones.

BE: I think every writer I have ever known personally, as well as the ones I have read about, says that their writing began in secret. Oddly enough, as long as we have known each other I have never asked you how you started to write? And why, if there were a why?

BCA: How I started to write; I know it has to do with my mother, grandmother, and my mother’s sisters. They talked about books, bought me books, brought me to the library, wanted to see what I had written and to tell me how I could make it better. But my father’s family was important too. They told stories, family stories but also stories that were utter fictions, which when I was younger I believed. I loved to hear their stories. You asked about whether I wrote in secret, that did happen, but not until college. I think I became afraid, when I read so many wonderful, accomplished authors, that my work wasn’t as good as those others. I filled my drawers with writing, much like Dickinson. It was getting caught in the act of writing by friends that encouraged me to show my work again.

BE: I already know the answer to my next question, but I’d like for your readers to know as well. And I’d like to know more. You know how I love my computer and do everything at keyboard. And I know you do not. “Cannot,” you tell me. So tell me more. How do you draft your work?

BCA: I write longhand, usually in cursive. I can’t seem to write at the computer, though I do sometimes try. When I try, my writing feels clunky, has no voice. I often give up and begin again with pencil and paper. I think it is the difference in pressing keys down one at a time, rather than letting your pencil flow across the page. It is almost as if the words are in the motion of my hand, not in my mind. I just read back over what I’ve written longhand to answer these questions. Ironically, my first sentences are printed. When I get going, find my rhythm, I go to cursive. My writing also gets messier and messier as I go faster and faster. Writing in cursive where the letters are connected and my hand is making circles and swirls, seems to help my ideas connect, help me find out what I think, help me hear the characters’ voices and find the music in them.

BE: I know how much you value the guidance you received at Hollins finishing the MA. Would you like to elaborate on how the program–or any program–can make a writer out of an almost-writer?

BCA: Part of it is just the confidence building that comes with getting into a good program. But, and I can only speak for Hollins, having faculty work closely with you, having small classes where everyone has the same goal gives you and your writing the attention it needs for you to learn its strengths and weaknesses. And there you are with people who know how to overcome weaknesses, people willing to let you know their secrets. Students also form long lasting friendships with other writers. I cannot say enough positive things about the Hollins faculty and the time and support they gave. Also, we all know we learn from the example of professional writers.

BE: You like to workshop your poems and fiction. I have been in writing groups with you, and you are a wonderful reader for other writers. Do you have any suggestions about how to handle comments from a writing group? Responses can be quite varied.

BCA: One of the reasons I now am part of two writing groups, one for poetry and one for the novel, is that having a number of readers look at your work gives you a variety of criticisms. One reader is wonderful at telling you when your dialogue doesn’t ring true, another picks up problems with logic or grammar, another points out where you need line breaks or more powerful verbs, and another is gifted in pointing out when you need more about an idea or character or when you need to cut something. You do need to know which criticisms to take, and to trust your instincts about whether what they are saying rings true. Of course, if most of them are saying the same thing, it is time to listen.

BE: You are an inspiring teacher who values the craft of teaching. Did you ever have a student say something or write something that influenced your own writing? We both used to talk about how much we learned from students about the literature we had assigned, but did any of their insights ever spill over into your own writing?

BCA: They always helped me remember that we all are beginning writers. Each new piece needs something different. Also, when a piece of theirs wasn’t quite working, and I had to tell them why it didn’t work, I figured out something I could apply to my own writing. For one thing, it reminded me of things to avoid. But the most important thing was sharing the excitement of seeing a piece come together, of knowing they were excited and knowing they were now more confident writers, who had come to love writing.

BE: What do you read? Poetry? Fiction? History, or science? Do you have favorite writers that you always go to? Do you ever stop reading so you can start writing? Would you rather read or write? Or is that a dumb question?

BCA: I mostly read fiction, novels and short stories, but I read my favorite poets’s new books, Margaret Atwood, Russell Edson, Margaret Gibson. And, of course, there are more. I read my writing groups new poems and chapters, read new poets I discover, and read old favorites over and over. I’m also somewhat of a political junkie, so I read books about politics, history, and the environment. I teach the creative writing component of my granddaughters’ home school curriculum, so one of my joys is reading their work each week. I don’t ever stop reading. I know some writers do stop, especially when they are in the midst of a book. But I need to read always. It’s just part of my day, perhaps, an addiction. As to the last part of your question, I’m addicted to writing as well. These addictions keep my days very busy.

BE: What is the role of Poetry in the Whole Scheme of Things? I realized that that’s a what’s-it-all-about-Alfie question, but I would love it if you’d have a go at it.

BCA: I want to say that poetry is at the center of things, but so many people just don’t put it there, just don’t read poems, even poets. I would guess, most young people loved nursery rhymes, Shel Silverstein and Robert Louis Stevenson, maybe even loved poems right up to high school. Then, if they were asked to read Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Donne, and Keats without the necessary tools to understand the language, the time period, and the issues of those times, they felt stupid, but didn’t know why they didn’t get it, or they might have felt bored for the same reason. We need to be confident readers of poems before we can explore poems that we have to work at to understand. When I am doing a reading, and I’m reading stories, more people will come to listen, than when I read poetry. And yet, I believe my poems are accessible. But I am hopeful that poetry will have a renaissance as I see more and more readings, presentation poetry, and poetry slams, sponsored by local groups. In the small town of Floyd Virginia, once a month readers from 80+ to elementary school age read at a venue dubbed the Spoken Word. In Blacksburg Virginia a group has formed that sponsors readings at the local library and at local pubs. And Barnes and Noble in Christiansburg is sponsoring poetry readings once a month.

BE: What a positive note, Chelsea, to close the interview with–and the pun was unintentional. Thank you for letting me interview you.

Dr. Barbara Ewell, an English professor who also retired from Radford, and B. Chelsea Adams have been sharing poems with one another since 1982. They did a reading, where the poems they read were written as a conversation, first there would be one Barbara had written, and then Chelsea would answer it with one of her own. For over 5 years, they participated in a Round Robin with four other poets. Each poet would choose a line from the poet before them alphabetically, and inspired by that line would write her own poem. Years ago, Barbara began referring to Chelsea as her poetry sister.

Chelsea’s most current poetry chapbook, At Last Light, can be ordered from Finishing Line Press.

Sherry O’Keefe: I enjoyed your poem “Becoming” in this issue, Kelly. Does your life inform your poetry, or does poetry inform your life? This is a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg question, but I’ve been a fan of your poetry since I first read you and I’ve come to realize one of the reasons for this is that I am drawn to the organic sensibility in your work.

Kelly Cockerham: This is a tricky one. I guess, logically speaking (which I don’t excel at), I’d say that my life informs my poetry, but at the same time, I hold to something I heard in a workshop once (but I can’t remember who said it):  I don’t know what to write until I know what I want to say, but I don’t know what I want to say until I write it down. I very often write things that I don’t completely understand. Those are the things I try to keep when editing, sometimes just because they sound good, but most often because I find that when I come back to the poem later, I get it. Then I wonder, how did I know that then? Poetry helps me figure out what I know, what I believe, what I love, what’s important, but I can’t go into the writing of it without knowing all of those things (on some level). It’s a chicken and the egg conundrum. So maybe, poetry helps me refine my life. It helps me pick out those details that rattle the rest of my life. What falls out of all of that rattling are the parts of life that I hold onto the tightest and you’ll see their wrinkles throughout my work.

SO: Writers are often natural observers, and good poets take that to a heightened level. Your poetry is a good example of the poet tuning into finer details. The price for this, though, often removes the writer/poet from the more immediate participation in life. So: are you outside looking in? Or are you inside looking out? And how do you balance this in your daily life when you are away from pen and paper?

KC: I think I’ve spent most of my life on the outside looking in. Growing up, I didn’t feel like I ‘fit’ anywhere, and so I spent most of my time, I’d say, content to sit back and observe, just watching everyone around me. I find people fascinating—what makes them do the things they do, say the things they say, feel the way they feel. If ten different me’s started out in the same place but made slightly different decisions through the years, how far away from the me that I am now would I be?  I try not to dwell on that in the fatalistic sense, the sense that I am not the person I should’ve / could’ve been had certain things not happened and I’ve found it a bit easier to do as I’ve gotten older. I think I’ve gotten better at accepting that everyone has lives they can’t completely control and things happen that change us. I’m extraordinarily lucky to be where I am now no matter where or how things started off, but sometimes I do wish I could live two or three lives simultaneously.

I think now, I’m more able to be on the inside but it takes a conscious effort to get there. I’m naturally an introvert, so having children and moving around a bit has forced me to step outside of myself more and join the fray. I’m not a large group person though; I prefer small, intimate gatherings with just a few friends. I find it much easier to step out of myself with just a few people at a time.

In either setting though, something in me tunes in to those moments that count, those ‘poet’ moments. Something says, this is important. And it’s at those times that I make myself step back, no matter the situation, and start studying people, paying more attention, and the poet starts taking notes. The poet opens the door to that other place and somehow the words, the moment, the people all start to blend together into /images and words, into language.

What I love about poetry, and what has always connected me to it, are the details. It’s all in the details, really. Life is in the details. I always tell people that I don’t write fiction because I don’t do plot, which is true, but fiction is just too big for me. What I love are those little things that tell a big story, how one word can buckle someone’s knees, one image can make people gasp in recognition. I did a poetry workshop once in a battered women’s shelter and I took in some poetry by Lucille Clifton. After we read “if I should,” one of the women raised her hand and asked what imploding meant (“the small imploding girl”), and when I explained it, she suddenly started to cry. I could see this room full of women crack on that one word. I love that about poetry, and that need to be specific, to make someone know exactly what I mean was as important to me when I started writing as a child as it is today.

SO: Let’s say you are in a canoe and it’s going to be a bit before you reach any shoreline. Very likely a poem will come to you on this water, and yet you are not allowed to be alone. That’s right—you are required to have someone in the canoe with you but not someone in your immediate life. Who would you hope would be in that canoe with you? (The usual lack of restrictions applies. Any universe, any century, any number of people.)

KC: I think I’d want Jason Shinder in my canoe. I don’t know if he’d be much help rowing but he’d be a pure joy to drift with. Jason was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. There was something about being in his presence that was calming to me, that lifted me. He always made me smile, and I learned more from him than probably any other teacher. And somehow, he always made me feel like I already knew it. How did he do that?

I worked with Jason through The Writer’s Voice for years, and then I was blessed enough to have him as my teacher at Bennington. The world lost a little of its light with Jason. I can’t tell you how often his words come back to me when I’m writing, submitting work, despairing over having no time to write. “What gets in the way of the work is the work,” he always said. I repeat this like a mantra all the time.

The first time I ever felt my son move I was in a workshop with Jason. It was a bit early in my pregnancy to feel movement but I think Jason just drew people to him. Even unborn children.:) I’d love to welcome a new poem into the world, drifting along in a canoe with Jason. He’d probably give up his seat to make room.

SO: Recently a poet told me he avoided writing from his life because once on paper the reality would change. What happens to your reality when you write? How do you address the blur between what is remembered, what is real, what is recalled? And how does that affect you?

KC: I don’t know how not to write about my life. Is that even possible? When I write, it’s definitely a case of everywhere I go, there I am. Does the reality change? Yes, I’d never thought of it that way before, but I guess it does. I think that often the world of the poem seems more real to me than the event that inspired it, especially in a poem like Becoming because so much of the writing that I do about abuse is a sort of filling in the blanks. Those memories are scattered, fragmented, and often take on a kind of dream quality that makes them really difficult to pin down. The details that I think I have the firmest hold on are the ones I created in those moments of ‘going away.’ I think that’s what I was trying to capture in Becoming. I think a writer is always writing, whether the pen is in hand or not, and in those times of leaving myself, my body behind, I entered a world that was much more real and immediate. It’s the details of that world that come back to me so sharply; it’s the memory of the words I would say over and over, the room I built in my mind that I entered through the top shelf of the linen closet; it’s the words really, and that writer mind that saved me. I thought they deserved some credit, some props, for the role they played. I wonder too though, back to the chicken and the egg, would the words still have come for me without the abuse. I hope so, but I don’t know. Is this, for lack of a better word, ‘artistic’ quality in a person innate or born of necessity? I think it’s an interesting question but in the end, I’m just grateful. Being able to write a poem that pulls those memories together in one concrete place is important, it makes them real for me in a way that they haven’t been before I mixed their colors.

Becoming is its own reality, born of a flash of visual memory, a painful somatic memory, and this peaceful slipping away from reality in order to keep going. It sat in my files for quite a while next to lots of other poems that I thought no one wanted to read. Who wants to know about this? I wish I didn’t know about this, sometimes. That’s what I always thought, but that voice is still there, saying, tell the story, and she doesn’t shut up until it’s told. I’m grateful that a magazine like r.kv.r.y. is in the world and that Becoming found a home there.

SO: The mountain or the river? The wing-beat or the soar? The forest or the trees? (Ha, sorry, but could not resist.) The eyes or the touch?

KC: The river, for the movement, for the speed, for the traveling. The soar for the opportunity to watch in rest and take in rather than the fight for flight. Though maybe the poem is in the fight? Sometimes I’d like to sit back and watch someone else’s fight though.:) the trees because every one is different and tells its own story. I’m all about the individual as part of the whole, as representative of the collected work. Eyes or the touch? You’ve got me. They’re just too intertwined to separate or choose.

SO: If you could ask any bird any question, what bird, what question?

KC: That’s a tough one. I’m not sure I’d want their answers so much as their eyes and ears, to borrow their bodies for a bit. I’d want to be a mockingbird to know what it feels like to possess that form. There’s something so elegant just in their shape. I’m not so elegant, not very coordinated, so I love them; every time one comes to my feeder, I get a rush of oh! Something beautiful just flew through my life!

Or the gray catbird. It’s maybe a bit dull looking but it spends the winter way down south eating fruit and singing someone else’s songs. I want to know what they see, where they’ve been. Every year they come back to my yard and nest, eat the grape jelly and seeds that I put out, and generally entertain me, but I always wonder—where have you been? It seems like there must be a world out there with the birds that I can’t see and I want to see it. I want to go through their portal.

Sherry O’Keefe is the author of Making Good Use of August and The Peppermint Bottle. Her most current work can be found in Camas, Switched-on Gutenberg, THEMA, Terrain. Org., PANK, Avatar Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Prick of the Spindle, and Escape into Life. She is the poetry editor for IthacaLit and is an assistant editor for YB Poetry Journal and Fifth Wednesday Journal. Her next book, On the Corner of First and Prairie, is soon to be released by BW Books. Visit her here: http://www.toomuchaugust.wordpress.com

We were honored to have Michael Milburn’s wonderful, unique essay “Hot Glass” appear in the Spring 2012 issue of r.kv.r.y. He currently teaches high school English in New Haven, CT and his book of essays, Odd Man In, was published by MidList Press in 2005.

His forthcoming book, Carpe Something, is a collection of poems and will be available sometime this spring.

Here are links to some of Michael’s other fine work:

“Tenants of the House,” in Readerville Journal.

Description: Buying a house once owned by a favorite author leads to some educational epiphanies.

“The Sunlight of a Suggestion,” in Brink.
Description: College teaching always seemed like the goal, until the author found himself among poetry loving sixth graders.

“The Second Education,” in Hippocampus.
Description: There’s more to teaching than “information that walks through the door and announces itself by light of day.”

“Jack’s Room,” in The Montreal Review.
Description: An older sibling’s childhood bedroom embodies a world of influence and rebellion.

His personal website containing links to and Pdfs of his published essays can be found here: http://www.michael-milburn.com.

Stefanie’s story “In the Basement” appears in our April 2011 issue.

Andrew Stancek: Stefanie, congratulations on your new collection Surrounded by Water. I loved your first collection, Feeding Strays, and have been reading you all over the Net. I am so looking forward to the new one. Can you tell us a bit about putting a collection together: is there a commonality between the stories, do you try to include only similar thematic preoccupations or do you aim for a canvas as varied as possible? Are there stories you decided to not put in? Are they arranged in a particular way?

Stefanie Freele: Andrew, I think my canvas is fairly varied; however, if one pays close attention, there are a few characters who do cameo appearances in other stories, a couple from Feeding Strays that show up again in Surrounded by Water. I like to do that – let my characters live on. I love symbolism also, so there are places and objects that appear here or there that mean something. Arranging a collection is a daunting task, especially if there are many stories – Surrounded by Water has over 40. I’m assuming that people who have six stories maybe have an easier time organizing them. I tried to begin and end with a story that wasn’t too somber, too dark. I wanted the reader to end feeling pleased, not troubled. I made a big chart and tried not to get too many pieces in first person in a row, or third, not too many stories that were sort of slip-stream in a bunch and then a long row of more realist stories. And, length too – I wanted to scatter the longer stories. My goal was to mix them up. The collection went through many versions and I did yank a few stories out and fussed around with replacements. I would find myself removing that one story or another was the weakest link or too far different than the others, or a story I wasn’t as excited about. Finally, it just felt right.

AS: In the latest issue of Glimmer Train, Spring 2012, you have a story called “While Surrounded by Water” which just blows me away. I assume that story is in the collection. I love the characters in it, especially Janis. Her lines such as “That’s what river living is all about.” and “It’s something to look forward to – cleansing.” immediately made me think of Faulkner’s Dilsey and her “Endure.” Can you talk a bit about that particular story?

SF: I have experienced three situations of flooding along the Russian River. When one goes through a disaster, one never forgets it. A flood will change a person for life. I’ve taken many details from those experiences and inserted them into my stories. In Feeding Strays, the flood begins with “The Flood of ’09” and later, “While Surrounded by Water” the story continues. It is quite possible I may have more flooding to write about yet. Janis is right, when you’ve lived so close to a river, you realize and accept: the river will cleanse its banks now and then.

AS: What are you working on now? Is there a novel lurking?

SF: I would like to think there is a novel lurking, at least I keep hoping one emerges, however in the meantime, stories keep rising up, yelling at me to write them.

AS: You have a young son. Can you tell us how you arrange your day between motherhood and writing and editing, when you find the time to write?

SF: There is no arranging. I’ve mentioned before to people that motherhood has helped my writing in that, my time is limited and I jam and write when I can. My immediate family is very supportive. They know, when Mama (or Kitten as my son call me) is on a story, leave her alone. I think if I had more time, I might write less, because I’d stretch it out more. You hear about people who rent a cabin for the winter to write their novel and spend most of it staring out the window.

AS: Can you talk about your process? Do you outline? Do you try to complete a draft before revising or do you revise continually? How many drafts, how much time elapses before you start feeling the story is ready to send out?

SF: I have never outlined in my life. Occasionally, I see an end and write furiously to get to that end. I’d like to give you an easy answer about this, but I really can’t. Each story takes a different path. Some come out fairly finished and I revise a few times. Some have taken years to play with till I get it to a point I feel satisfied. “While Surrounded by Water” the story that won the Glimmer Train Fiction Open, took about four months of rearranging, editing, revising. Sometimes I revise as I go, sometimes later.

AS: Who are the writers who inspire you?

SF: So many! I will tell you some authors off my shelf of favorites: Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, Annie Proulx, Lydia Davis. Ray Vukcevich, Nancy Lord, Bruce Holland Rogers, David Wagoner, Russell Edson etc…

AS: I have a fascination with dreams. Much of my own writing, and the writing of others that particularly intrigues me, deals with dreams in some fashion. Can you talk about the role of dreams in your writing?

SF: I have always been an extremely vivid epic-long dreamer. However, I don’t think my dreams show up in my writing all that often. One of the reasons maybe they don’t is because I don’t usually write them down, but I wish I would take up that practice.

AS: Thanks so much for your illuminating answers, Stefanie, and I wish you mega-sales of the new collection.

Andrew Stancek’s story “Elephants and Banana Leaves” appears in the July 2012 issue of r.kv.r.y. His story “Nothing Left to Lose,” won the annual Flash Fiction Chronicles contest. Some of his recent work has appeared in The Linnet’s Wings, Thunderclap Magazine, River Poets Journal, In Between Altered States, Lost in Thought Magazine, Pure Slush, Prime Number Magazine, Istanbul Literary Review, Wilderness House Literary Review and others. THIS Literary Magazine nominated him for a Pushcart Prize for “The Year of the Dog.”

Joan Hanna: We were delighted to have your short story “My Own Private Wind” in our April issue. This story deals with a woman moving on in the aftermath of the death of her husband. Can you share your inspiration for this story?

Lori D’Angelo: I wrote this story last year (in 2011) at a time in our lives when we were going through a lot of changes. We had just moved, and the same week we moved, our cat got really sick, and we had to put him to sleep. His death was so sudden and unexpected that it was really devastating. And then I started thinking about people I had known who had died suddenly and unexpectedly. And then the movie Ghost happened to be playing on TV. The story contains several very specific references to that movie, including in the opening line. So I guess it was a collision of various life forces coming together to inspire this story.

JH: Along with those serendipitous collisions, I’m sure there’s a certain amount of research that goes into your fiction. Would you talk a little bit about how you research your stories?

LD: For this particular story, I didn’t have to do much research. My aunt works at a bank, and I used to go there with her when I was little. Also, I have visited very sick people at various times in my life. When I can, I try to draw on experiences I already have. However, sometimes I will deliberately do research. For example, in March, I attended a gun show because I wanted to learn what that was like and better understand the mindset of one of my characters. I also use reader feedback or ask people who know about a particular subject to read it and see if I’m getting it right. I tend to worry about research. As a former journalist, I don’t want to get anything wrong.

JH: You received a grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation. How has receiving this grant affected your writing?

LD: I think the main thing is motivation. It’s really awesome to know that someone else believes in my writing enough to fund it. So that motivates me to think, I have to do this. I’m going to do this. I’m not going to give up.

JH: I understand you’re working on a novel. How different is approaching a novel from writing a short story?

LD: A novel is challenging. But it’s a challenge I think, I hope, I’m up for. When I was an MFA student, I tried to write a novel. Before I applied to my MFA program, I attempted a novel-in-stories. But I kept having problems with plot and building tension. With a novel, you need to keep introducing new characters and new plot points whereas with a story you can follow one plot point, one arc from beginning to end.

The Path of Irony, oil on canvas, by Darwin Leon.

JH: Do you have any links to your website or other work you would like to share with our readers?

LD: Yes, these are some stories that I’m particularly proud of:

“Mary Rice” from Stone’s Throw Magazine:

“I Met Death at the Patteson Drive Kroger” in Forge:

“Balloon Ride” in Drunken Boat:

JH: Lori, thank you for taking the time to discuss your writing with us today. I just have one final question, on a personal level, what does recovery mean to you?

LD: I’ve known a lot of people who have died. I think that as we become adults, this is obviously part of the process of life, losing people, grieving. When I was 21, I lost my grandmother. And this was a really hard loss for me. So with subsequent losses, I remember that one. I remember how I thought nothing would ever be the same again. I remember how I thought that nothing would ever be good. But then, eventually, it was. Even though life wasn’t the same, I was able to find joy in it after a time. I think that’s what “My Own Private Wind” is very much about–the ability to find life after death, which is also, coincidentally, one of the themes that I’m writing about in my novel. I guess I write about recovery a lot.  It’s something that really interests me.

Elizabeth Glixman: Bev, I’ve always enjoyed reading your poetry. I am glad I have this opportunity to ask you questions about your work. The Red Car, your poem in the spring 2012 issue has different imagery and a different tone than the poems in your chapbook Every Burning Thing  (Pudding House Publications, 2008). Burning Thing’s poems were confessional to me. The Red Car doesn’t read that way. The imagery is surreal even magical. The women in the red car work at a sex factory. They are old and toothless with labias for mouths (amazing image) and there is a desert beneath their skirt (a powerful comparison). The traffic lights are not green, red, and yellow but all black moons (evocative image). The car is not moving. The /images elicit feelings of decay, stagnation, loss, aged women and their sexuality, economic exploitation and history. Do you agree that this poem is not like others you’ve written? What was your intention when writing it? Is it part of a larger group of poems?

Beverly Jackson: Thanks, Elizabeth. I do agree that this poem is a little different. I don’t think it’s too off the mark of a theme that’s developed in my later work. A bit of surrealism seems to creep into many of my poems, especially those dealing with age. The first poem in my chapbook (borrowing from Rilke’s angels) is called Resurrection:

My own terrifying angels reappear after years of silence…
.. they dip into the bowl of my brain to wash their long white fingers…

The Red Car, however, is a more in your face with sexual imagery. Aging is this slowly evolving phenomenon that ultimately shocks most of us, I think. We still feel like our younger selves inside, but all has changed. Many adults who have been sexual beings feel suddenly like discards and unloved. Viagra has been developed for men, but women are mostly shelved for younger sexual versions of themselves. But for both genders, loss of sexuality is the taboo subject/the unaddressed grief of aging.

You mentioned that you found Every Burning Thing to be confessional. I’m guilty. I worry that it’s become an accusation these days to critique poetry as “confessional,” that it dismisses work as subjective self-indulgence. Do you, yourself a poet, worry about that?

It seems to me that all poets must be guilty, and I think it might account for the veiling of meaning and inaccessibility of much poetry. Just to avoid the accusation. However I don’t understand how anyone writes decent poetry at all without pulling out their own insides through their fingertips, trying not to leave blood on the page. So, I write what I feel—whether it’s about me personally or about others, it’s coming from some depths of me that I don’t tackle the same way in prose or painting. I guess The Red Car might be
considered confessional as well.

EG: I hear what you’re saying about the confessional poet label. I’ve had similar thoughts. I think a “confessional” poem can transform a personal experience into a universal one. I don’t think this is self-indulgent at all: “pulling out their own insides through their fingertips, trying not to leave blood on the page.” That communication of feeling is what poetry is about IMO. I find it hard to keep the “I” out of poems.

As to the veiling of meaning and inaccessibility of much poetry some people seem to like reading poems where things are not clear, they like to work at getting it. I can see how other readers might get turned off by that and look for poets whose work is easily accessible. Each to his or her own. Sometimes the “veiled” poems do seem like a form of hiding. Then again poets often think in terms of symbols so perhaps it isn’t hiding at all.

What poets have influenced you?

BJ: My first influence at a very girlish age was Edna St. Vincent Millay. She is still a flower in my heart. Today I am enamored of Dorianne Laux, Thomas Lux, Chase Twitchell, and so many more. I’m not sure that my work is directly influenced by these fine poets, but they always inspire me to write.

EG: Along with being a talented poet you also write fiction and non-fiction are an artist and you were the editor of a print and online-lit magazine. How do you juggle all these activities and where is writing poems on your daily creative “to do” list?

BJ: Ha. I do all these things over decades, I’m afraid. Not all at once, at all. I can barely juggle lunch and a nap these days. I haven’t painted for a couple of years, and poetry is on the back burner until I finish the memoir I’m working on. So it’s sort of my own crazies that drive me from one endeavor to another. I have always felt there is not enough time to do all the things in this world that I want to do, and I’m cramming them in as fast as I can – including quilting, macramé, needlepoint, sculpting, collage, decoupage, and encaustics, tournament backgammon, to name only a few. I really do hope we all reincarnate because I’d like to have one lifetime to tackle just one endeavor and master it, for once.

EG: Do you think being a visual artist is an asset in writing poetry?

BJ: I don’t really know. They seem totally different to me. Painting comes from a place that doesn’t have words, so I hold it differently than the art of language. Emotionally they don’t even feel the same. I think there’s more joy in painting for me. It’s a kind of ‘dance’ and release. But my life doesn’t seem to want to focus on joy. Even though I have a very good time, writing seems more natural, and somehow (to me) more important.

EG The Loose Fish Chronicles is your memoir in the works. http://www.echapbook.com/memoir/jackson/ At this link are excerpts from the book and a quote by Herman Melville from Moby Dick of which the following is a part:

“What are all men’s minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish too?”

If this quote is from the book, please explain the choice and relevance of the Loose-Fish and Fast-Fish idea in the memoir.

BJ: In Melville’s time, when whalers threw a harpoon and it stuck in the hide of the fish, they had “dibs” on that whale and would chase it down without fear of another
boat stealing it because they had encountered it first, thus the harpoon held it “fast.” A loose fish was a whale that nobody had hooked, so it was fair game, anybody’s for the
taking. Melville pointed this up as a metaphor, and when reading Moby Dick, I instantly identified with it, since I have never been held fast to anyone or anything for very long. I’ve lived in dozens of different cities, countries, houses. I am without husband, children, parents, so truly a “loose fish.” So much of my writing has chronicled this loner lifestyle that I thought it was a fitting title and theme for the memoir.

EG: When will The Loose Fish Chronicles be finished?

BJ: Hopefully while I’m still alive. It feels like the endless project. But I’m guessing by the end of 2012.

EG: You’ve written your memoir as a series of short stories. I am not familiar with this manner of writing a memoir. I know of linked short story collections. Are there any linked memoir collections you know of on the market that may have influenced you? Why did you decide to write your memoir in this form?

BJ: No, I don’t know if it’s been done, though I’m sure it probably has. I had many short stories that were fictionalized versions of personal experiences. I decided to remove the fiction and let the truth stand alone. The truth is a loose fish too. I wondered if I was made of stern enough stuff to just tell it like it is, to be fearless It’s been a wonderful process. It’s very challenging to weed out the rationalizations, distortions and downright self-lies in telling a true story. In fiction, it doesn’t matter, so I find non-fiction much more difficult.

EG: I read on your blog that you are learning stock option trading. How does stock option trading compare to writing? Why stock option trading?

BJ: It doesn’t compare to writing. It’s the side of my brain that pays the rent and feeds the dogs and pays for the ink cartridges. I do it to make money. When I get good at it, I
hope to make a lot of money. Wall Street and stocks and bonds were always terrifying to me. Just to look at the Wall Street Journal pages of tiny lists of stocks with their secret
abbreviations and acronyms would make my eyes cross. But all the things that used to terrify me went on my Bucket List. I love conquering my fears. I didn’t have enough money to invest in stocks, but options are an inexpensive way to play the market. It requires much skill, so I’ve worked hard at it. I’m starting to understand investments now. (I used to be afraid of guns too. When I lived in North Carolina, I bought two of them, learned how to shoot them, and I just sold them the other day. I don’t need them anymore. I’m not afraid. Another item off the Bucket List.)

EG: I know you’ve done a lot of different things in your life: writer, artist, traveler, editor of Ink Pot, Literary Potpourri literary magazine. I imagine the memoir will be very interesting. Was it easy to know what to include or leave out about your life while writing it?

BJ: The memoir hasn’t been edited yet. Still a work in progress. I’m hoping an agent or editor will help cull what doesn’t belong in the book eventually. But yes there’s much to
write about. When you’re a loose fish, there’s lots to explore, and my life has stretched from 9 to 5 jobs to the New York stage and a stint on the Ed Sullivan show to fighting a
bull in Madrid, to say nothing of two failed marriages, myriad relationships and assorted dramas that they entailed. I’ve lived in North Africa, Trinidad, and Spain. I worked in the movie industry in Hollywood and rubbed elbows with celebrities. There’s more than enough material to use for the ‘bones’ of short stories, but the fabric covering them is the stuff of bildungsroman. And that’s what the book is really about. That journey which is so different for each of us, and yet somehow so much the same.

EG: rkvry is a magazine with a recovery theme. Recovery is defined in the magazine as “an act, process, or instance of recovering; a return to normal conditions; something gained or restored in recovering; obtaining usable substances from unusable sources.” How does The Red Car fit into this recovery theme?

BJ: When I submitted this poem to rkvry, I felt it was a fit because it was about misfits. Old women waiting to die, women who once “fit” and now they don’t.

Such people cry for resolution, for acceptance, for transformation. All of which can be generally encompassed in recovery.

There is no recovery unless there is an unhealthy or uncomfortable condition preceding it. For me, this is life. I feel like I have been recovering my entire lifetime from conditions of dysfunction, discomfort or dismay. The very fact of being born Homo sapiens is the condition. I would guess that most of my energies have been used in this lifetime to improve my condition, whatever level it may have attained. There has always been the next level, the next rung on the ladder of experience to be scaled. To me, it is a process – moving tirelessly from darkness to light for lack of a better image. Always waiting/hoping for the blacks lights to turn red, yellow, green. A recovery of sorts.

EG: Your take on recovery is a powerfully constructive perspective. It reminds me of this quote by life coach Michael Pritchard, “Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.” You are changing the negatives in the dark room. That is inspiring.

BJ: Thanks very much, Elizabeth. Your questions and observations are very much appreciated. As a poet yourself, it’s lovely having you do this interview. I’m also very grateful to r.kv.ry for taking the poem and inviting us to this conversation.

Elizabeth P. Glixman is a poet, writer and artist. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks A White Girl Lynching, 2008; Cowboy Writes a Letter & Other Love Poems, 2010; both published by Pudding House Publications and The Wonder of It All, 2011 published by Propaganda Pressl.  Her latest chapbook  I Am the Flame is in the works at Finishing Line Press. Her author interviews, articles, book reviews and  non-fiction have appeared in Whole Life Times, Hadassah Magazine, and the anthology Chocolate for A Woman’s Soul II.  Visit her at http://elizabeth-inthemoment.blogspot.com/