Keith Leonard : part five

How does a poem begin?

For me, it’s always begins with the willingness to get lost. When I’m not willing to just see where the language goes, the poem generally feels flat. If I write about things I am already fairly certain of, I resist allowing myself to be surprised.

Or, it begins with reading and admiration. Lots and lots of poems making a little cobblestone road.

Keith Leonard : part four

Why is poetry important? 

Poetry is important because people are important. Poetry allows us to enter a common space of language to observe all our conflicting emotions, to witness our complexity. Poetry says we matter to each other, that we are not alone in our fear, our grief, our love.

Keith Leonard : part three

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

I tend to read Lewis Hyde’s The Gift once a year. It’s a book that puts poetry in context of gift cultures, rather than capitalist cultures. I find it’s essential for me to be reminded that poems are not commodities to be sold. Or at least they don’t work well as commodities. Rather, poetry is an ethic of living. For some reason, I forget that, and reading Hyde’s The Gift brings me back to writing, encouraging me that the intension of poetry exists outside the way American culture currently affixes value. 

Keith Leonard : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

In school, I assumed a poem was something to be broken down and understood completely. But the longer I’ve been out of the classroom, the more I’ve realized that, for me, I care less about understanding a poem and more about listening to a poem. I think those two things are very different. Understanding a poem can sometimes be rooted in the impulse to possess an object; listening to a poem is just being there and being open to what the poem has to say. Reading poetry and writing poetry are both acts of attention—which, for me, takes conscious work. I get distracted easily. But poetry requires a battling of that impulse towards ease. It requires sitting with a page of words that came from another conscious mind as that person attempted to explain or explore. 

Keith Leonard : part one

Keith Leonard is the author of the poetry collection Ramshackle Ode (Mainer/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in New England Review, Ploughshares, and The Believer. Keith has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I’m afraid I don’t. Not really. It’s generally a vague sensation. I try to lean towards hope in my work—which is always an incomplete gesture, a feeling with a touch of mystery and momentum. For that reason, I try not to over-polish a poem—I want a line or phrase I don’t completely understand in there.