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1. In your essay “Unexpected Muse,” that is included in the book, you write of your connection to Van Gogh the artist, and Van Gogh the man. Can you elaborate on this?
As for Van Gogh's art, I think my poetry reflects one of his themes: the beauty and damage in nature. I've written of “white blossoms turning sickly green” and “the ground stitched like a wound.” Many of his colors, except maybe for cobalt blue and turquoise, are “impure” or layered with other colors. My poems are also layered in meaning and language. His use of form is irregular or impressionistic. I do not write in form, rather in blank verse.
Of course Van Gogh's life was infinitely more tragic than mine ever was, but in his letters to his brother, Theo, and in the facts of his life, I recognize some of my struggles for public recognition. I once sent a manuscript to a well-known publisher that sent it back with a note: “These poems are all about death. Do you have any others?” Family acceptance and financial stability is something else that the artist and I battled with. For her generosity and acceptance of my writing life, I sometimes refer to my younger sister as my Theo.
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2. In the past, works by artists such as Frida Khalo and Jim Dine have played prominent roles in your poetry – can you tell us more about each of them with regard to your work?
Frida Kahlo painted her body and her body's pain. I have published poems dealing with body image -- the loss of a breast to cancer, the loss of my uterus, which I compared to the collapse of a star. Frida's self-portraits inspired me not to look away from what had happened to my body, but to face it and give it language. I never could fully embrace the damage, but writing about it took away some of the shame. My poetry on this subject eased my sense of isolation and helped to connect me with other women, both in suffering and in celebration, in both mutual pain and survival.
Jim Dine's work has also influenced me. In my poem “Intaglio,” I describe the artist's model, discussing woman as object. Rather than a source of beauty, I write of her being manipulated. Inspired by the artist's robe series, I write of the body's transformation, the process of becoming invisible. Without doubt, I can attribute the way I interpret Dine's art to my childhood abuse, my dissociated state, the feelings of disappearing.
Some of my poetry has been staged. My series “Light & Bone,” poems based on photographs of the Mummies of Guanajuato, Mexico, was presented in a multi-media performance piece by acclaimed choreographer, Paula Josa-Jones, at the Boston Conservatory Theatre. One review stated that the presentation was ”compelling, visually stunning...more about the living than the dead.”
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3. As a teacher, you’ve taught classes on writing about art to a mix of students – some writers, some artists. Why is it important to write about art? What are the inherent challenges?
I have as friends several artists I met over the years at artists colonies, and I've helped them with their artist statements. They have difficulty expressing what they want to say about their creative process, and the work itself. I ask them specific questions, and we take notes on their responses; after a time, we have produced an artist statement that pleases them. Unlike writers, many artists are introverted about their feelings; perhaps I am drawn to the silences in them, as I was to Van Gogh's.
As for my art students, I help them to find an appropriate language to describe art, their own and others whose work we study, from the masters to the modern. The aim is to make them feel confident and comfortable when describing line, color, space, the meaning of a work of art. I've found that students appreciate art more deeply when they can find language to describe what they're seeing. Several art students have taken my memoir class. For their final project, they completed an excerpt of their memoir, which included their own artwork. These were sterling examples of the natural coupling of writing and visual art. There is an inherent connection between the two.
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4. Tell us more about writing from the 1st person perspective of Vincent? Do you often write from another’s perspective? How did his art and drawings influence the voice you found for him?
I used to be most comfortable writing in the “I.” With myself as the speaker or narrator in my poems and memoir, I explored painful memories from my past. Using the “I” was a safe way of confessing, although, for many years I was dissociated from my own writing voice. The next step in my creative process was to write on art. Inspired by visual art, I found a new language that took me away from myself as subject. I experimented with using “she” or “he” to discuss a figure in a drawing or a painting, while exploring the relationship of the artist to the figure. For example, I wrote on the portrait by Mary Cassatt of her sister; and the painting by Georges Rouault of a singer between the two world wars. In my next phase, I wrote from the artist’s perspective. In a series based on the work of Andrzej Jackowski, a Polish artist living outside London, I used “he” to describe the meaning and impulse behind particular pieces: a tilted single bed, a featureless woman. I knew Andrzej personally and studied his art in-depth. But what of Van Gogh? It was his own letters that led me to his voice. I heard Vincent speak through his words to his brother, and I took a leap of faith -- that I could speak for him, or, in a sense, with him
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5. You choose to use many of Van Gogh’s drawings over his more well-known masterpieces – what about the drawings captivated you?
The drawings were sketch-like, intimate. I felt an instant connection with them, as if the moving lines were lines of a poem-in-progress. The drawings seemed to be in flux or unfinished; between the shapes and shadows, I felt a way in to access to Van Gogh’s artistic process and internal tension. Specifically the drawings on religious themes, “Bearers of the Burden” (p. 47), “Man with Ladder” (p. 37), and “Studies of a Dead Sparrow” (p. 99) allowed me to explore Van Gogh’s spirituality, and my own.
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6. How did you come to use Van Gogh self portrait drawing as the cover image?
I had not seen “Self-Portraits,” the drawing I used for the book cover, until I visited the book shop at the Van Gogh Museum. There it was in the post card section. Van Gogh's three images both startled and disturbed me. The sepia lines seemed in motion, both defining his face and causing the images to pull away from themselves, as if they were trying to disintegrate. One of the Museum curators later showed me the original drawing. When I commented about the blank square shape in the upper left hand corner of the drawing, she told me that Van Gogh often ran out of paper and most likely tore off the square to use for another sketch. It was then that I re-wrote my original line to read: “Seen through the paper/absence retains its form.”
As for selecting the drawing for the cover of my book, I thought it would intrigue potential readers; although they would recognize Van Gogh's face, most likely these self-portraits would be unfamiliar. I'd hoped that they would be pulled to the images as I was - their hurried, raw, sketch-like qualities - and they'd take a peek at my poems.
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7. Your last book, Places in the Bone published in 2005, was a memoir. Did that writing experience influence this collection of poetry? How so?
After Places in the Bone was published, I assumed I had completed those chapters of my life. I had found language that allowed me to both retrieve and discuss painful memories from my past. I've come to know, however, that one is never free from the past; this is especially true of all artists, poets in particular. As I've said, I was not only drawn to Van Gogh's stunning art; I was captivated by his life struggles. The themes I had tackled in my memoir - namely, conflict with a father, the feelings of isolation or being an outsider, as well as the struggle for recognition - reoccur in this poetry collection. I'd have to say that I could not have attempted to write these poems, a project that took nine years from start to finish, were it not for the fact that, in the memoir, I dived into my own past in the memoir, and managed to come up for new air.
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