_______________________________________________________________
1. How did you become a poet? What is the importance of poetry?
My background was in advertising and PR, so I was used to separating my business life from my inner life. I had no formal training as a poet and wrote my first poem when I was thirty. I had just ended a marriage and wrote to express feelings of disintegration.
After that, I was compelled to write. I joined several workshops, being less isolated in a community of poets.
In this technological age that shrinks the soul, poetry nurtures the inner life. There are poems you write for yourself, and poems that move others because of their beautiful language and meaning, whether it be political or psychological. I believe a poem “succeeds” if it goes beyond the self into a shared human experience. The poem should be accessible and, unlike good painting, not abstract. It must connect to the reader on a visceral level.
Back to top
_______________________________________________________________
2. Why did you decide to write a memoir?
At first, I wrote a series of autobiographical poems. It was my agent who encouraged me to use the form of a memoir. Writing my life in prose was a challenge: In my poems, I could hide out, but working with the long line gave me room to expand my thoughts, to flesh out my life. In the memoir, I had to go public with matters I’d considered private. Although I am not completely comfortable with this public persona, I feel an obligation to share with others my experiences with child abuse and breast cancer. Speaking out, I can offer a sense of hope.
Back to top
_______________________________________________________________
3. What literary figures have inspired you?
I don’t know what possessed me to mail Anne Sexton a few of my poems. But one morning the phone rang; I heard a deep sultry voice, “It’s Anne Sexton.” She invited me to attend the private workshops she was holding in her home, in a Boston suburb. Her presence was sheer magic, and I wrote feverishly. It was 1974, the summer before her suicide.
Stanley Kunitz has been an abiding source of inspiration. For almost thirty years he and I have corresponded. I’ve visited him in his beautiful garden in Provincetown, and in New York City. His indomitable spirit has kept me going through the dark times of my life and my art.
Back to top
_______________________________________________________________
4. You’ve experienced the trauma of child abuse, and three bouts with breast cancer. How exactly did writing contribute to your survival?
In my journals and poems, I was able to express my fear of my father’s rage. I created another voice, another persona, which told secrets about my family.
Later, during my treatments for cancer, I wrote what was happening to my body as if I were an observer. It was a way to ease the terror of the chemotherapy and radiation, the real possibility of dying. My writing became a form of prayer.
Back to top
_______________________________________________________________
5. Survivors sometimes mention “the gifts of cancer.” Do you agree with this outlook?
My sister, who also had breast cancer, asked me, “Do you think of cancer every minute?” I answered, “You train yourself to find the joy.” The gift comes through friendships, with family, through work, in the beauty of nature. My sense of humor is a gift I share - when speaking to groups of survivors: I wear a phosphorescent blue wig.
Back to top
_______________________________________________________________
6. Tell us about the cover image for Places in the Bone?
I just happened upon the photograph during a visit to an open studio in my neighborhood. I was drawn to the shadowed breast and the torso, thin like mine. I purchased Julia Zhogina’s photograph, hoping it would inspire a poem about my body after breast cancer. I showed the image to my editor, assuming she’d think it too racy for my book cover. Luckily, I was wrong.
Back to top
_______________________________________________________________
7. How did you decide on the title?
At first I came up with something lighter, more humorous, “I Should Be Dead By Now.” My agent nixed that one. “Places in the Bone” refers to the fact that my abusive father was an orthopedic surgeon, and that my breast cancer spread to my hip bone. Ultimately, the title implies mystery, what’s unnameable in the soul and the bone.
Back to top
_______________________________________________________________
8. As a college professor, how do you use your writing in the classroom?
I teach a memoir workshop. I suggest topics to explore, such as a childhood memory, or a personal photograph. Students critique each other’s work and revise their own. We also study memoirs by Mark Doty, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julia Scully. I’ve used excerpts from Places in the Bone to illustrate how the narrative can move back and forth in time, but more importantly, I let students know how writing has helped me to survive.
Back to top
