BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY: A PASSIONATE AND DEVOTED POET
By Katherine J. Chen
The room in which CWR 301 was held alternated weekly between freezing cold and scorching hot. A water pitcher, which I initially mistook for a vase, traveled all four corners of the conference table, appearing in a new location every workshop. I would usually arrive early, and on unlucky days, the door would be locked shut. I would then stand in the doorframe of the neighboring office, waiting for a suntanned young woman to unlock the door for me. I never asked for help, thinking it rude to call out if I did not know my rescuer’s name in the first place. The moment she would switch open the door, I could already sense what extreme temperatures awaited me inside. Hot. Cold. Something equally suffocating in between. I guess it was all the same.
Professor Shaughnessy always arrived on time, bringing with her an exuberance and energy that lifted up the spirits of everything in the room except the excruciating temperature. Her hair, a midnight black, fell carefree about her shoulders and framed a face that always reminded me of a playful Japanese Hina doll. Her face, her gestures, her entire presence never ceased to radiate an intensity, power, and friendliness that made everyone in the class very happily engaged and attentive at the same time.
I often noticed, sitting behind a stack of discount plastic folders, that her eyes would sparkle, which led me perhaps illogically to the romanticized notion that if an eye’s iris could emit fireworks, hers would be crackling all day. She was so enraptured with our creations and gave each poem, however meager and incomplete it really was, an editor and artist’s attention. Shaughnessy, naturally, is both. She is the current poetry editor of the esteemed literary publication Tin House Magazine and an extraordinarily successful poet in her own right, having won the prestigious James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2008 for Human Dark With Sugar.
Yet another addictive aspect of Shaughnessy was her contagious sense of humor. During what would otherwise be rather uncomfortable moments of having one’s poem picked apart right in front of you, Shaughnessy would bring a healthy combination of laughter and constructive criticism to the table. She balanced compliments with suggestions and ideas for improvement. “I would begin with the second stanza instead,” she would offer. “Get rid of that line,” she might add.
It was all too good to last forever. The twelve weeks of the semester slipped by quickly, and Shaughnessy disappeared in a yellow taxi outside FitzRandolph Gate on the last day. She was, as I recall, on her way to a writers’ colony and advised me to focus more on my creative writing and less on what we both disparagingly called “office experience.” As both an instructor and a poet, she is wonderfully wise, curious, and disciplined, displaying a humanity and kindness which is just as bound to move her students’ souls as her readers’ hearts.
When did you realize you wanted to be a writer? What inspired you?
I always wanted to be a writer. It seemed like the best thing one could possibly be when one grew up. As a child, I read insatiably and was particularly inspired by Roald Dahl, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lewis Carroll, Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgeson Burnett, and Beverly Clearly.
Are you working on any projects now?
I am finishing a third book of poems, and also continuing work on a novel, which has been in progress for about nine years.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face when you are in the process of writing?
It’s amazing how many challenges there are to make something out of nothing! The evil blank page has so many tricks up its sleeve, doesn’t it? The blank page mocks me, and yet my biggest challenge is how to truly find a blank page without charts and schedules and emails and paperwork elbowing their way into the writing space (physically and mentally).
What advice would you give to young and aspiring writers?
Read like a maniac. Everything you can get your hands on. Fall in love with one writer’s work, and read everything he or she has written. Imitate what you love about that writer’s work. I would also suggest losing all modesty and sense of shame. Don’t be afraid to be angry, hurt, vulnerable, spilling secrets and embarrassment, on the page.
Having taught at a number of highly respected institutions, what role does teaching play in your writing?
Teaching always reminds me that there is infinite potential for the literary arts. There is always the chance that someone is doing something utterly original and exciting. I feel lucky to be there to nurture that potential if and when it reveals itself.
What themes, if any, do you feel a need to revisit in your work?
I find myself revisiting most of the themes that were worth visiting the first time around. Most useful themes can be reincarnated in new circumstances, new subject matter, new styles. For example, if many of the poems in my first book were about love and loss and betrayal, later work will still incorporate these topics but likely have a new perspective on them.
If you had to explain what role poetry plays in the world today, what would it be?
To consistently question the boundaries and categories of literary work. I love how the “prose poem” lately is interchangeable with “flash fiction” or “sudden fiction” and that the poetic essay, the memoir-essay, and the dramatic monologue are bleeding through genre. The poet, with a call to producing meaning, vision, revision, revelation, and translation, must create new worlds of utterance, of precision, of presentation.
If there is anything you could improve in your own writing, what would it be?
I suppose sometimes I am dismayed by my poems. Why do they only leap so far, and no farther? Why does the pole vault fling my poem and me so high up in the air, and no higher? How can I rig a taller pole then?
Which poets and writers do you admire most today?
I admire them all! I have so many favorites it might be easier to name the few writers I don’t like. I’m just kidding.
WORKS:
Interior With Sudden Joy (2000)
Human Dark With Sugar (2008)
SUSANNA MOORE: A FEARLESS AND ELEGANT WRITER
By Katherine J. Chen
The first time I met Susanna Moore, I was sitting in a classroom surrounded by eight or nine other students. The room was eerily silent, with the exception of two young girls who were drawing figures on a piece of paper and giggling to each another. A boy who arrived a few minutes before the class was scheduled to begin looked around the room and asked me whether this was indeed Susanna Moore’s creative writing workshop. I nodded, squirming a little in my seat as I inhaled the stench of French fries and ketchup from his body.
It was a dull afternoon, and my thoughts were elsewhere, drifting down Nassau Street to the bus stop that would take me to New York City immediately after the class ended. I remember feeling sleepy, dazed, and a little afraid, like a nervous child sitting alone outside of a doctor’s office. Propping my head up on the table with one hand, I took a deep breath and sighed. To my surprise, I smelled a wonderful fragrance, one that seemed rich at the time with exotic spices and floral scents. I looked in the direction of the door, saw something bright-colored glide along the walls and then descend at the head of the table. No longer did I feel like a nervous child sitting alone outside of a doctor’s office. More or less, I felt like Mary Poppins had arrived, lovely coat, briefcase, and all. She said, “Hello” in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice and smiled gently at us, the corners of her lips spread outward in a tiny pink crescent. By the time the workshop ended, I had forgotten all about New York City and was walking aimlessly back towards my dorm, tugging behind me the backpack that carried all of the belongings I had meant to take on the bus.
Susanna Moore is a wonderfully captivating individual who, even on first glance, possesses the artistry and character one might expect of a successful writer. She is tall, graceful, and feminine with high cheekbones, bright piercing eyes, and gray hair that is distinctly streaked with black highlights to give her the presence of what I can only describe as a large majestic bird. Eloquent and sensitive, she is a wondrous combination of humanity and sensuality with a talent for bringing to life in her work the enormous tragedy of her characters and for making her readers feel more aware of the fragility of their own lives, as a result. It was a great honor to be a student in Susanna Moore’s class and to be in the presence of someone who is so wise and experienced, yet at the same time so inquisitive about all of life’s tiny curiosities.
INTERVIEW:
PenTales: Did you always know you were going to be a writer?
Susanna Moore: I never thought of being a writer, although as a child I was always reading and always writing. It wasn’t until I was thirty and did not have to go to work every day that I began to write My Old Sweetheart as a way to make sense of things. Once it was published, I began to think of myself as a writer, although I did not try to write another book for ten years.
PT: How do you work with revisions?
SM: I begin each writing day with revisions, which both calms and excites me sufficiently to write something new once I am finished with that day’s editing.
PT: Do you ever get writer’s block? If so, how do you deal with it?
SM: I don’t get writer’s block, but perhaps that is naïve of me, as years and years go by without my writing a word. I don’t think of it as writer’s block because these silent periods do not make me unhappy. I’m not trying to write then.
PT: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who would like to make a career for themselves as a published novelist or poet?
SM: My advice is to read, to take classes that force you to write, and if possible, to sail around the world in a dhow (in other words, to get some experience).
PT: What is your writing schedule like?
SM: My schedule is erratic, although lately I work in the morning – that is, about noon – and continue for four or five hours. I often work at night, too. So perhaps it is more honest to say that I don’t have a conventional schedule.
PT: Where does your inspiration come from? Do your ideas just come naturally to you?
SM: The few ideas that I have had absolutely did not come to me. I really write about things that interest me (women, children, Hawaii), an answer which is, I know, a commonplace one. I often do research on my subject (prison, homicide detectives, nineteenth century Calcutta) for several years before I begin writing.
PT: Are you currently working on any new projects?
SM: I am working on a novel about a couple living near Berlin at the end of the Second World War. It is the story of a man who values possessions more than people.
PT: You have taught creative writing at quite a number of top-notch universities. What role, if any, does teaching play in your own creative writing?
SM: It is difficult to write at the same time that I am teaching – even if it is a few days each week, teaching is quite exhausting, particularly as I am passionate about it, passionate about my students. It does help me to clarify my own thoughts when I have to explain to young writers just what it is they should be doing, not that I follow my own lessons.
PT: In your work, you deal with a lot of difficult subjects, writing scenes that are often painfully graphic and horrifying, though certainly necessary. When you confront these subjects in your writing, do you force yourself to be as objective as possible? What is the process you go through, as you write on these challenging topics?
SM: I am certainly as objective as it is possible for an outraged woman to be – the things that I write about are so much less terrifying, less horrific than what is happening every day that I am always surprised when readers are shocked. I tend to tone everything down in the books.
WORKS:
• My Old Sweetheart (1982)
• The Whiteness of Bones (1989)
• Sleeping Beauties (1993)
• In the Cut (1995)
• One Last Look (2003)
• I Myself Have Seen It: The Myth of Hawaii (2003)
• The Big Girls (2007)