William Bowers All We Read Is Freaks

Idue north Cathy Smith Bowers' sixth volume, The Abiding Image: Inspiration and Guidance for Offset Writers, Readers, and Teachers of Poetry, she gives permission, with her customary wit and relatable language, for the reader to accept and move forward from any background. Her fresh-out-of-higher teaching job, and the many she's had since then, inform her skill of connecting personally to a reader. She gives the reader a identify to brainstorm, "the constant paradigm," and advice on where and how to go from there. She has honed and refined the craft of teaching, simply equally she has done with her own poesy writing, into a book that not only teaches what you need to know right out of the gate, merely also reinforces it with stories from her own experience. This book journeys through chapters for the needs of a novice, "How to Read a Poem," all the way to the end, "On Pilgrimage: The Work of the Author."

She doesn't just "talk the talk." She has well-nigh certainly "walked the walk," and with this volume, we travel with her, and we glean how to be meliorate writers, readers and teachers along the way.

Cathy Smith Bowers, a former poet laureate of North Carolina, served for many years as the poet in residence of Queens University of Charlotte and currently serves on the faculty of Queens' MFA plan. In 2002 she received the J.B. Fuqua Distinguished Educator Award. Author of 6 poesy collections, she was inducted in 2014 into the South Carolina Authors' Hall of Fame.

I had the delightful opportunity to speak with Cathy nigh her latest book in early November of 2021.

You take been pedagogy since you graduated from higher. When you lot look back at that "fresh-out-of-college" teacher, what would you tell her now?

(Laughter) I'd say to myself, "Cathy, don't wear such short skirts!"

Wow. I think I would tell her to end trying to retrieve you have to show how smart you are. You are non hither to impress the students with that fact. You are here for their humanity, and to make sure that whatever you do in their lives will affirm and honor their humanity. I still beloved how the students would blitz into the room and become straight to the bulletin board to come across if they were "published." It was crucial to them. It was as if it was the biggest thing that had happened in their lives. Now, I would know for a fact that everybody by the end of the week would have something on that board. I don't care if it was only "Jesus wept." I wouldn't even accuse them of plagiarism. I'd say "wonderful, this is and then fresh and original."

Allow's go to your new book, The Abiding Image: Inspiration and Guidance for First
Writers, Readers, and Teachers of Poetry. What compelled you lot to detour from writing poetry to writing about poetry?

It was a case of "necessity is the mother of invention." I was instruction all over the identify and I got so tired of hunting downwardly my dissimilar folders. For instance, if I'm going to teach "reading as a writer," I accept a binder for that. It'due south a mess, merely it'southward all at that place. I had a folder on the role of tension in verse, audio, and just about anything yous tin imagine, I had a folder for it. I got tired of looking for them, so I simply said I'm going to get all these folders together, go through and pull out of all the mess and have the true stuff, the gilt, and I'thousand going to get it typed up in clear language.

I started doing that, and it took me nearly two years. My publisher happened to ask me what I was working on, and I told him. He said, "Cathy, that sounds like a book to me." I thought, well, it could be. Then I really started thinking nearly crafting them, instead of just getting one subject organized and typed.

I would rewrite and rewrite, and that took some other two years getting the book together. I think what happens in this volume is that it really does progress from when I idea of writing as an academic discipline to the more spiritual aspect of information technology. The final affiliate is called "On Pilgrimage: The Work of the Writer" and it focuses a lot on the spiritual element of writing.

Some argued with my putting "Inspiration and Guidance for First Writers, Readers, and Teachers of Poesy" in the title, and I'm glad they did, just I just wanted it to be totally unintimidating for anybody who would pick it up. When I finally came up with that championship, I knew information technology was just what I wanted this book to exist, and I'thousand yet really happy with it.

This book certainly seems open up to any level of experience. I think that's because information technology feels like nosotros're on a journey with you, and not sitting in front of your lectern. Tell me about the "abiding image" itself. You lot've said that's your mantra. What has information technology meant to you?

When I kickoff thought of myself as a poet, or that I wanted to exist a poet, it really was all nearly my thinking that I was somehow smarter than others. I think that goes back to the fact that my father, with the vi children, used to tell united states of america what we would each be. This was the rare fourth dimension when he spoke or acknowledged united states. This was also the first communication I remember having with him, when he looked at me and said, "You're going to go to higher and you're going to be a instructor."

And I thought, well, I must exist smart, so I was very obnoxious. I thought I was smarter than anybody else, since I was going to exist a teacher. When I actually did offset writing, I thought the job of a poet would be to come up with this deep, profound thought that only I knew about, since I was and so special, and that then I was going to choose the near hard words — hopefully words no one would sympathise — to articulate that profound thought.

Then, equally I say in the book, it didn't take me likewise long to realize that non simply did I have no profound ideas, I didn't have any superficial ideas. But what I had was an image that had somehow hooked me and wouldn't let me go. For example, my father, who worked in the cotton factory, always had a piece of cotton on his Adam'south apple. To me information technology was like a piffling ghost fluttering there. It was one of the images I would never lose when I thought about my father.

I came to wonder why that paradigm, no pun intended, came to haunt me. I came to realize information technology'due south considering those images that abide with united states of america accept more to them than meets the eye, or the nose, the tongue, the ears, or the fingertips. Such images can register with united states through any of the senses, evoking a complexity of emotions. It's why we might experience those images in every role of our body, mind and middle. Information technology takes sitting down with the prototype and then just writing into the mystery of the prototype that might uncover and open up that complexity of emotions.

I was talking virtually the abiding image to a student who had asked me after a presentation if I knew the origin of the word abide. I was taken ashamed, because I love word origins and I had never looked that ane upwardly, even though I don't think I've used any give-and-take more than that one. (Laughter) Well, there might be a few I've used more that, to my Mama's dismay. But I had never looked upward the origin of the word abide. The educatee told me that when the ancient Hebrews were in exile — out in the desert and away from their temple — they would pitch a tent, their tabernacle, where they would concur their ceremonies. So, abide means to pitch a tent over, to join in community nether that tent.

I believe that when we read poems we explore someone else'south constant prototype. It'southward as if that person has pitched a tent and said "come inside, sit with me for a while." In this way, we, besides, get to feel their image — in mind, body and heart. I beloved that give-and-take origin. This didn't brand it into the book, just it should have. There'll accept to be a sequel.

Having had you as a teacher myself, I've seen firsthand how you are able to teach the arts and crafts of writing in well-calculated, only seemingly casual means. It is always memorable, with information couched in stories that stick with you long afterwards. Can you speak to the craft of teaching itself? You lot've already touched on this with creating possibilities for success, just I'd be curious if yous could give the rest of us a few tips on your particular alchemy.

I'k certainly non being disingenuous, simply I was not a great student. I believe that if I had had amend teachers — though I did take some who were actually memorable to me —, teachers who knew how to impart information and to exercise that in a way that made me care, I would have been a amend pupil. Before I teach whatsoever class, I ask myself, "Okay, I'thousand teaching a class tomorrow and here's the subject. What do I wish a teacher had said to me almost this subject area, and how do I wish that teacher had said it?" That'due south how I teach every class.

I saw one of my students, a graduate of our MFA program, at a reading I gave a few weeks ago. She's published 3 books, I call up, since she graduated, and when she signed her book for me she commented on my mantra. Instead of telling students to become write a poem, help them recollect their ain abiding images from their lives, to choose one prototype that has energy for them, then to sit down down and make a mess. Brand a mess. It'south one of the hardest things to go them to do because when was the outset time nosotros were told not to brand a mess? And now here'due south Cathy telling them to brand a mess.

Right. And information technology only comes with practice.

Yes, when I'm working on new poems, I have to slap my ain hand, because I find myself wanting to look a give-and-take up or figure out the judgement structure. That's not what making a mess is all virtually. You have to requite fourth dimension to the unconscious, which is not only messy but brilliant. If y'all give the unconscious that freedom, yous tin can promise that something unexpected does come up. It's most releasing control. Our Western way of thinking doesn't like mess, we desire a finished product, nosotros want it to be perfect, and we want it at present.

Yous write how you were fatigued to a specific form, the "minute," equally you dealt with intense grief, considering you lot thought the "rigid mechanics" of form might serve as a container for your emotions. At the fourth dimension you idea it would exist a bridge until you lot got back to complimentary verse, only you found information technology to be an intriguing dance and stuck with it. Practise you lot withal find course intriguing that way? What are your thoughts on current trends in verse, and the uses of form, quondam and new?

When I started using the minute form, a verse form that has three stanzas with a total of sixty syllables in rhyming couplets, I used it because I was really scared to be lonely with the images themselves. My brother was dying and I needed to explore those constant images I'd experienced with him, but I was afraid of releasing everything to the unconscious, to my emotions. I was afraid of that, so the tight structure of the minute form gave me a style to remainder the messy emotional unconscious with the lodge and logic of the consciousness. It kept me balanced between the two so I could actually spend time with and write nearly those images.

A lot of times when we are working in class, we use the class as an excuse for a sure syntactical construction, or for a give-and-take that provides a rhyme simply because a rhyme is needed. What I exercise instead is to see the process equally a dance — sometimes I'chiliad leading, sometimes the form is leading, whichever serves the poem.

I think things are very exciting every bit far equally poetry goes today. Give thanks goodness we've gotten away from the white Anglo-Saxon male person poets. We'll still let them write poems, of form, but Walt Whitman intimated this thing about the republic of poesy, and well, it's a lot more democratic out there these days.

I ever assign a book that'southward very recent, that perhaps has gotten a lot of attention, maybe won an award, often a book I oasis't yet read. I wouldn't have done that years ago, wouldn't have made myself that vulnerable. Now I'one thousand giving myself the aforementioned experience I'm offering my students.

Equally for the newer poets — I beloved Layla Long Soldier'due south Whereas. I dear Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg. I love Terrance Hayes, another South Carolina poet who invented a course called the "gold shovel."

What is adjacent for you?

I'1000 writing individual poems, and only loving what I'm doing. The poems are based on the photographs of Diane Arbus. Some of her photographs are shocking, though y'all tin't ever say why they are shocking. She took photos of existent human beings, circus stars, people in nursing homes, people walking the streets of New York. I have always been intrigued with something she once said, that everybody experiences trauma, that "people get through life worried most when they're going to feel their trauma. Freaks come into the globe with their traumas. They are the aristocrats." The overall subject of my volume in progress — Welcome to the Aristocracy — is freaks. Some other Arbus quote will be the epigraph to the last part of my book is, "If we are all freaks, then our job is to exist the best freaks we can exist." The epigraph of the middle department is a quote from Flannery O'Connor: "Northern writers are always asking me why Southern writers accept such a penchant for writing well-nigh freaks, and I tell them it'due south considering we tin can withal recognize i when we see it."

NONFICTION
The Constant Image
Past Cathy Smith Bowers
Press 53
Published September 1, 2020

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Source: https://southernreviewofbooks.com/2022/01/03/the-abiding-image-cathy-smith-bowers-interview/

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