Melissa Studdard : part five

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I don’t know if a poem is ever finished. What happens is the poet calls it done and moves on. You could spend your lifetime writing one novel or poetry collection, or a decade writing ten novels or collections. How much of a perfectionist are you? How done do you want to be before you move on? The beauty of doneness in poetry and the other arts is that it’s at least partially subjective. In the best circumstances, I feel an ending. It’s the same feeling as when you finish a life phase. It’s in your bones: Stop. It’s the same feeling that tells you to end a relationship, a night out, a collage. So, I would say to a student of writing, “Listen to yourself; listen to the poem.” In the worst circumstances, I don’t know when to end because I haven’t paid attention well enough, or I’m rushing to move on to something else or I go on for too long because I don’t want to start the next project. Then, I figure it out later. Or someone tells me. The good thing about writing a poem is that you can keep revising until you feel good about it.

Melissa Studdard : part four

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?

I’m part of an accountability group called The Grind. It’s wonderful because it’s all about relentlessly producing something every day. We don’t workshop each other’s poems, and we rarely comment. It works well for me because when I’ve been in groups in the past that involve workshopping and commenting, I’ve become exhausted halfway through the month and barely made it to the end. Now that I’m in The Grind, which I choose to do or not do on a month-to-month basis, I spend eight months out of the year writing a minimum of either one new poem or one new substantial revision per day, and I spend the other four months of the year organizing manuscripts, submitting work, reading voraciously, and doing other writings. So, basically, I do two months on and one month off—that’s the pattern.

Melissa Studdard : part three

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

I’m not sure I fully believe one form can rigidly do something that another absolutely cannot, but I will say that poetry is more likely to break language, soul, heart, staid conventions and patterns—to disassemble and reassemble thought and feeling in ways that we did or didn’t know we needed. It cracks the surface, the superficial, the unexamined, and it hands us back ourselves, more awakened and vibrant and aware.

Melissa Studdard : part two

What are you working on?

A lot of projects, simultaneously—which is how I work best. If I get stalled on one, I can work on another. I have several poetry manuscripts going, and I’m also working on an oratorio for a stage adaptation of Hesse’s Siddhartha. Of the poetry manuscripts, the one I can most easily describe is a series of poems told from the perspective of the severed tongue of the mythological character Philomela. As you might imagine, the project can get heavy at times, even though I’ve built in levity—so it’s a relief to be able to write lighter or comical poems for other projects. Another poetry manuscript I’m just putting the finishing touches on is structured as a job application, with two main sections (“Application” and “Interview”) and several subsections (“Previous Experience,” etc.)—so, much of the pathos, humor, and meaning is derived from the placement of poems within specific sections. All of these projects are so different from each other, and I love that. As Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

Melissa Studdard : part one

Melissa Studdard is the author of five books, including the poetry collection I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast and the poetry chapbook Like a Bird with a Thousand Wings. Her work has been featured by PBS, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and has also appeared in periodicals such as POETRY, Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, New Ohio Review, Harvard Review, Missouri Review, and New England Review. Her Awards include The Penn Review Poetry Prize, the Tom Howard Prize from Winning Writers, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and more. www.melissastuddard.com.

How does a poem begin?

A poem begins in the roof of the mouth or the lower lining of the heart, like a monarch clinging to the underside of a marigold leaf. It spins itself into new being; it demands attention with the coloration of flight. We all have it, the poem. Every human, I mean it, has poems in them, can do this. You just have to open yourself, pay attention, hone your craft.

Here are some of the many ways you can recognize that a poem wants to do its thing in you—

• You hear a phrase that ignites you due to its dexterity of language or unusual syntax or colloquial vibrancy, and you want to write it down.
• You notice something happening, like a caterpillar eating a parsley stem, or a bohemian-looking woman holding the hand of a woman in a business suit, and you want to write it down.
• You feel something, like a sunset or a break up so deeply that you must lay it on the page to relieve yourself of it enough to go about your daily life.
• You read another poem that blows your mind, and holy hell, you HAVE TO WRITE one too.
• You find a great prompt or book of prompts or someone gives you a prompt.
• You feel the frame or structure of it, and you know you want to fill it in.
• You feel the rhythms and sounds, and you find the content to ignite them.
• You encounter something going on in the world that deserves poetic attention, and you decide you must do it.
• You suddenly hear a phrase or see an image in your head.
• You come across an interesting question, and it can only be answered with a poem.