An Interview with A. E. Stallings [by Aspen Matis]

A. E. Stallings is the author of four books of poetry: Archaic Smile, which won the Richard Wilbur Award; Hapax, which won the Poet’s Prize and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Benjamin H. Danks Award; Olives; and, most recently, Like. A 2011 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2011 MacArthur Fellow, she lives in Athens, Greece.

I corresponded with Ms. Stallings via email about the addictive nature of creative discovery, poetry’s ability to “give life more abundantly,” a poem’s power to rescue readers across time and generations, poetry’s inexorable connection with humanity (and, thus, the medium’s longevity), and the fearlessness required of great critics—the boldness to lead with one’s aesthetics and taste. We also discussed the beautiful notion of “poetry as its own emotion, a mood in which the world, even in minor glimpses, is perceived as vibrating with significance.”

What is poetry’s greatest role in your inner life? Why do you write poems?

Reading or knowing or memorizing poems probably has a greater role in my inner life than writing poems. A lot of writing poems is frustration or not getting anywhere or having crises of confidence: it means being willing to write bad poems. Of course, when you write a really good poem and you are discovering something as you write there is no other feeling in the world like it—it is addictive. I think what poetry can do in a way is give life more abundantly… there is a feeling of being fully alive and alert to the various-ness of the world. In a great poem, I feel fully conscious.

What do you see as poetry’s role in our present society?

I think poetry has a diminished role in our present society at large, if we are talking about the Western Anglophone world. But that doesn’t trouble me much. Poetry tends not to be part of our discourse—I would put that down largely to its diminished place in our education. At the same time, you can look at the popularity of MFA programs—the number of people actively studying to be poets—or what a sensation Amanda Gorman was at the Inauguration, and you can see there is still a hunger for it. I don’t think it matters that poetry isn’t wildly popular, as long as it is deeply appreciated by some. Poetry was around before the alphabet and it will be around when thousands of species of plants and animals alive today are gone, when the glaciers are gone, when languages that exist now are gone, basically for as long as there are human beings. So I don’t worry about poetry at all. But a poem can rescue you, can keep you company even across time and generations. A memorized poem becomes part of your brain, and no one can take it away.

There are many people for whom poetry would be important if they were exposed to it as an enriching pleasure, rather than a school text for decoding. Imagine if people only learned music as music theory. Memorization and recitation, reading for pleasure, learning poetry by heart, these are the most important parts of poetic education.

What is the most radical thing a poet can do in her work?

Be out of fashion with the times. Write what you like. Write for your ideal audience.

Renowned literary critic Sir Christopher Ricks describes your poems as “never less than the true voice of feeling, and always more.” The MacArthur Fellowship committee praised your “mastery” of poetic form. What, in your opinion, is the relationship between form and meaning? Between structure and ingenuity? 

Structure and form, meaning and ingenuity, are ideally entangled. A sonnet that is also a great poem could only have been a kind of sonnet, not an ode or a ballad. A form—whatever that is, it could be a sinuous ribbon of spare free verse, or the blocky paragraph of a prose poem—should feel that it is pushing interesting choices and also undergirding those uncanny decisions. What you aim for ideally is something that feels both surprising and inevitable.

Your most recent book of poems, Like, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The judges called it “a collection of inventive formal poetry that challenges, gives shape to, and delights in how the art form mimics and distorts the universalities of life.” What would you like to share about the origins, creation process, and ambitions of this newest collection?

I don’t tend to write poems in a programmatic way—I write the poems that are available to me at the time. As such, they tend to map loosely onto life events, and so be thematically related by accident. I think the biggest difference with this collection was the decision to put the poems in alphabetical order by title, which seemed to work surprisingly well.

What 17th and 18th century poets do you read? And what has their work awakened in you?

I am fond of the Metaphysicals, particularly Marvell and Donne and Herbert. There is a poem by Matthew Prior I love (“Jinny the Just”). I am a fan of Keats and Byron (not so much Shelley, “Ozymandias” aside). With the Metaphysicals, the crash of science, intellect and emotion. From Byron, a way of writing about current events. From Keats, vowel music.

Are there any reliable critics? If so, who, and why is his or her perspective useful? If no, why not? What happens when poetry is critiqued? What is gained? What is lost in translation?

I think the best critic writing today hands down is Ange Mlinko. She is willing to lead with her aesthetics and taste, something a lot of critics are afraid to do now, and then to support with her intellect and her ear and her wide reading. She is fearless. William Logan also leads with taste, and I often read him with pleasure (unless it is about me), but I don’t always trust the scathing wit to be in proportion to the “offense.” Still he is always worth reading, thought provoking, and, like Mlinko, fearless. 

Do the best books win the poetry prizes? Why do great works so often fall through the cracks of our literary foundation, into obscurity?

Some very good books do win prizes of course. But no, it isn’t always the best ones. I’ve been on committees for prizes, and the race does not always go to the swift—a committee has to come to a consensus, and consensus is often compromise. Also the sheer number of poetry books out there (this I think is partly to do with poetry’s professionalization) can make it hard to winnow. I’d like to think that while a lot of accomplished poetry drops away, great poetry will tend to emerge from the background noise sooner or later.

Do you have any wisdom or guidance you’d like to share with young poets? 

Write what you like! Read outside of your generation. Read poems from other languages.

What are you working on now? What creative pursuits most excite you, today?

I am always trying to eke out the odd poem. I have been writing a lot of prose this year, essays of various kinds. Translation is endlessly fascinating to me. At present I am working on Virgil’s Georgics, which, as a poem concerned about the environment and politics, seems particularly topical.

What themes and inquiries most fascinate and inspire you?

At first I read “inquiries” as “injuries,” which perhaps says something. I write a lot about discord and about under- and afterworlds, so I suppose these must interest me. Often it is an emotion I am after. I have started to think about poetry as its own emotion, a mood in which the world, even in minor glimpses, is perceived as vibrating with significance.

Comments

[Karen Beckworth]

An excellent interview. What a remarkable talent she has. And how candid and responsive. "Write what you like!" I love it. And inquiries as injuries; ha! But I sort of balk at the idea that Logan is "fearless." He is too calculating; it's a rhetorical stance.

[M. C. Rush]

Excellent read. Her tips for young poets could not, I think, be improved upon.

[Timothy Swain]

I agree with Karen Beckworth about Logan--he is far too calculating--I've got all his books, his poetry is fine but his criticism is--well, "off". Ego-centered? I've finally put him aside. A.E. Stallings is one of our greatest poets today. I've been following her for years--her translations, too; everything is superb!

[Jacqueline Lapidus]

Stallings doesn't say this, but it also helps to be living in a place that evokes great poetry of the past and feeds all five (maybe six) senses! I spent the best years of my life in Greece, learning modern Greek by immersion, the way children do. I will always miss the light, language, music, food, people, connection with myth & history, even in a now-modernized, Europeanized present. My own poems were all the better for having those experiences. Stallings' poems bring that life back to me.

[Molly Arden]

Bill Lawgen und Mary Syer
Wurden letzten Mittwoch Mann und Frau.
Hoch sollen sie leben, hoch, hoch, hoch!
Als sie drin standen vor dem Standesamt,
Wusste er nicht, woher ihr Brautkleid stammt,
Aber sie wusste seinen Namen nicht genau.
Hoch!
Wissen Sie, was Ihre Frau treibt? Nein!
Lassen Sie Ihr Lasterleben sein? Nein!
Hoch sollen sie leben, hoch, hoch, hoch!
Billy Lawgen sagte neulich mir:
Mir genügt ein kleiner Teil von ihr!
Das Schwein.
Hoch!
-- Brecht und Weill, Die Dreigroschenoper