Reading Local Interview: Jennifer Richter, Keith Scribner, and Dao Strom

Jennifer Richter is a poet and author of a prize-winning poetry collection appearing shortly from Southern Illinois University Press.  Keith Scribner is a novelist and director of Oregon State University’s MFA program.  Dao Strom is a novelist and singer-songwriter with both books and albums to her name.  Together, they’ll respond to the prompt, “Patient,” at tonight’s Loggernaut reading at Urban Grind East.  Catch them there, starting at 7:30.  But catch them here first, with us…

Jennifer Richter

Q: Hi! Your book Threshold will be published by Southern Illinois University Press this year, after winning a national award. Congratulations! How long did the book circulate before finding its publisher? When did you find out you’d won? How’s the publication process going?

A: Thank you! I was thrilled to find out last April that my collection Threshold had been chosen as one of two winners of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition. It feels like the bright end of a long tunnel: I’d been sending the manuscript out (in different versions) for ten years; before it won, Threshold was a finalist for various national prizes a total of 25 times.

In terms of the publication process, Threshold has come together beautifully — everyone I’ve worked with at SIU Press has been very talented and generous, and they’ve involved me and asked for my input every step of the way. Threshold will be released late next month, and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Q: You teach poetry in schools and have taught it in correctional facilities. How did you get into doing that work? What training did you receive, and have your experiences with your students matched up with what you thought you were getting into?

A: When I lived in the Bay Area, I spent a short time teaching at San Mateo Juvenile Hall, and I led poetry workshops for recovering substance abusers at the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco. I was a volunteer at Delancey Street — a good friend of mine had been teaching fiction workshops there, and she thought I’d enjoy it, too.

She gave me a general understanding of how the classes ran, but I didn’t really know what to expect on that first day. I ended up staying for four years — those classes were some of the most rewarding I’ve ever taught. Week after week, I watched poetry help those men and women go on living and hoping.

My work with children has been similarly rewarding. Like the recovering substance abusers, the children I’ve taught have had a compelling rawness to their writing — an ability to turn off their inner critics and just “say it straight.”

In the Bay Area, I worked for California Poets in the Schools; here in Oregon, I worked for the Portland-based Community of Writers program, which placed me in elementary school classrooms for week-long poetry residencies.

Q: How do you talk about poetry to non-poets, or people who are curious but who haven’t read much poetry? What resonates best with an uninitiated audience? What kinds of value do you see people putting on poetry, both in literary and non-literary circles?

A: I think narrative poems are a good place to start. Everyone has a story to tell, and the aim of many great poems is to simply tell a good story. I write mostly prose poems these days, and my students have loved experimenting in that form — because it doesn’t look long and skinny on the page like the poems they’re used to, they’re more willing to jump in and start writing.

I know that many people have been taught that the music of a poem relies on rhyme, and that poems are puzzles written in difficult language that one needs to “decode” in order to find the (often elusive) “right answer.” So it’s no surprise that poetry makes some people feel excluded. I try to help my students approach a poem as more of an open door — a personal invitation to come in and make themselves comfortable.

The first assignment I’d give my students at Delancey Street each semester was to write a love poem. Many of us have read love poems and have written some version of them at some point in our lives, and that exercise was a great way “in” for those students: most of them had spent time in jail or on the streets, and they had stored up a lot to say to those they’d left behind.

Q: You recently taught at Oregon State University, and you’ve previously taught at Stanford. Does the West — or a sense of place in general — figure large in your writing? Do you feel that your writing has a natural geographic home, or do your poems migrate freely?

A: I taught at OSU briefly before our daughter was born. I taught in Stanford’s Creative Writing Program as well as for its Continuing Studies Program; I continue to teach online writing workshops for Stanford.

Though it’s rarely the central subject of my work, the place where I’m living (and its weather) certainly informs many of my poems. The landscape often shows up in my work one image at a time: the Oriental poppies that bloom in our front yard, the first day of sun after months of Oregon rain, coyotes howling in a California canyon.

Q: What are you reading right now? What poem would you love to see on the side of your morning bus? Whose poetry do you read and reread? If you memorize poems (don’t all poets memorize poems?) what have you got memorized right now? (If you don’t — what would you consider memorizing?)

A: I’d like to start my day reading Mary Oliver’s “Goldfinches” on the side of a bus. (This is her poem that begins, “Some goldfinches were having a melodious argument at the edge of a puddle….”)

I just bought and am eager to read Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s new book of poems, Apocalyptic Swing. Her first book, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, is one of my all-time favorites. Gary Young’s books are ones I always have on my desk. I’ve been writing prose poems for some years now, and he’s a real master of the form. He makes it look easy.

A poem I’ve had memorized for a long time is the Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet which begins, “Love is not all….” I love sonnets, and I tell my students that they’re great ones to memorize — the rhyme schemes and meter give your ear “cues” along the way and propel you through to the last word of the poem.

Keith Scribner

Q: Hi! You’re lived in Turkey and Japan and traveled widely around the world, and you often write about quintessentially American things — American hopes, dreams, vices, and delusions. Does travel outside of the USA offer you a new perspective on things American? Are you aware of writing about “American-ness” as you work, or do you see it in retrospect?

A: These interests were alive in me from the time I was a kid — I was very conscious of social class and class striving, for example, and I suppose thought they had a pull on everyone, everywhere. Living and travelling outside the country can very quickly call into question these assumptions about basic human motivation and behavior, and, as you say, provide an outsider’s lens through which we see Americans and finally ourselves. That capacity to see characters or conflict or story both as an insider and outsider is key, I think, to writing with authority and credibility.

Q: Your first novel, The GoodLife, has its roots in a true story about a regular married couple who kidnap an Exxon executive as part of a plan to get out of deep debt. You published the book in 2000, and since then the world has tipped into an economic recession in which ordinary people are struggling with overwhelming debt. In retrospect, does the book feel at all prophetic to you? Did you have an eye on the global economy as you wrote it? Have your ideas about personal responsibility and opportunity (economic or otherwise) changed since the recession hit?

A: I wish I could claim the book was prophetic, but mostly I was thinking about the last recession at the beginning of the 1990s, which is just a blip compared to what the world is going through now.

Certainly when I was writing the book I was thinking about the gulf between the middle class and the country’s richest business people, and I was very interested in ways in which a belief in the American dream can lead to a sense of entitlement, that is, “I played by the rules, worked hard, and now I deserve the payoff.”

It does seem, as you suggest, the novel is even more relevant now than it was 10 years ago. The model for success we’re shown is, Take all you can, shirk responsibility for the consequences, then cop a huge bonus. The ease with which the kidnappers delude themselves and justify what they’ve done is understandable.

Q: Your second novel is about a mysterious deaf “miracle girl” who appears in people’s dreams and seems to be performing faith healings. Is there an element of magic(al) realism to the book? Were you interested in challenging readers’ ideas of what could be “real,” or did you set out to critique or debunk mass religious fervor?

A: There is some lyrical “magic” in the book, but nothing that approaches magical realism. They are moments where I hope a reader feels the transcendence that can occur through fiction, poetry, art, music, religion….

Although I’m having some fun in the novel with mass religious fervor, I’m not sure I’m debunking it. It’s only one kind of fervor that can consume people. Nationalism is of course another. There’s some irony in the fact that the Miracle Girl, this beautiful young woman who is unable to hear or speak and who has such power (real or imagined) over hoards of Americans, is the daughter of a Vietnamese woman and an African American soldier. She’s a very physical reminder of one of America’s greatest failures.

Q: You’ve taught fiction writing at Stanford, and you’re now the Director of the MFA program at Oregon State University. Is there a “most common” way in which you see young writers go astray as they’re learning the craft? Put another way, do you have any words of wisdom for writers who are just starting out?

A: If I had to pick one thing, it would be establishing a strict writing discipline. I’m a big believer in writing every day (or at least five days a week), preferably at the same time every day. MFA students usually make great progress in their writing while they’re students because they have deadlines and they have to write.

When you leave a program and you’re writing out there in the cold, you need to sit down at the desk every day—when you’re inspired but also when you feel completely empty. I suppose some people are lucky enough that they can write only when the muse is speaking and produce a novel, but most of us need to treat it like a job.

Q: What are you reading right now? What’s third from the bottom in the stack on your night table (or on your desk)? If you could only read work in one genre for the next year, which genre would you choose? Have you ever memorized a poem? Do you still remember it? (No fair copying and pasting…)

A: I’m reading the tremendous The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, a voice and sensibility I could sink into for the rest of my life. Steve Yarbrough’s Safe From the Neighbors is coming up in the stack.

One genre for a year? This’ll sound like a cop-out, but it’s true: literary fiction. It’s nine-tenths of what I read—both novels and short stories.

And yes. I used to memorize poems regularly–it was part of my morning ritual before writing. At one point I suppose I had a dozen or so memorized. And I could add that to my suggestions for writers just starting out. It’s great to get those rhythms, those phrases, that language into your brain. Whether or not you’re aware of it, they’ll creep into your writing. I’ve let those poems go (I’m not sure why) so I can’t recite them on the spot, but pieces of them–lines, cadences–are still with me.

Dao Strom

Q: Hi! You’re both a writer and a musician, a singer-songwriter. Can you talk a little about the differences and similarities between writing songs and writing fiction? Do you always know which one you’re writing when you start out? Do the genres cross over for you at all?

A: They are both, for me, forms of voice – which means they are both equal attempts at an articulation, of inner rhythms, perceptions…. I think of both mediums as ways of getting as close as I can to invoking something that is mysterious but crucial to my experience of being here.

Both are spiritual for me, and a way of connecting to things on a soul level. Music is a little more physical and emotional because I get to use my body, voice, hands in a physically engaging way and it is totally intuitive for me – while writing is more cerebral and philosophical and painstaking, and somewhat takes me out of my body. But I think I am always seeking a sense of music in prose, and wanting to articulate intricate ideas in songs.

I work at each fairly separately, though themes, imagery, phrases often overlap. Lately, I am turning songs into poems and vice versa. Genre is something I am interested in blending and bending the expectations of – I am interested in the rhythm of the whole structure as well as of the single line or passage. So I think the two mediums fuel one another and it all works together in some organic way, at least for myself in the process.

Q: You’ve moved around a lot, with stints in California, Texas, Iowa, Alaska, and now Oregon. (Welcome!) How do you feel about migration and travel? Does being on the go inform your work? And what drew you to Juneau, your last stop before Portland?

A: Migration, travel, displacement, rootlessness (and all the seeking and laments that come with…) are definitely major themes for me. For myself – & perhaps for others like me who are immigrants due to wars, discord, etc. – migration has been both oasis and exodus, privilege and loss.

At the same time, my philosophical side sees that we are all travelers in this world and our residences anywhere – on this earth, in our bodies – are impermanent. So the notion of travel works as a metaphor on different levels for me. I have seldom felt I belonged anywhere, whether this is a fundamental spiritual question or whether it is because I was born in a country on the other side of the world, I’m not sure. But it is probably the reason I write.

I am also strongly drawn to the contemplation of landscape and how nature (earth energies) affect us, communicate with us, heal or humble us. I think, from living in different parts of the country, I have tried to grow an awareness of the different energies of different regions. (I love Oregon, esp. the forests and the coast…) I just think this way of relating to our surroundings is important and perhaps lacking in our modern, technology-driven lives.

I also think there is something about the traversing of boundaries and the mingling of cultures that has the potential to be harmonizing, if we do so with respect. There is a part in the I Ching that speaks of the etiquette one should have as a traveler – that it is a humbling position, where you must remember you are in another’s home, and act humbly. I guess I relate to that notion of what travel – as a theme – has to teach us.

And as for Alaska… my husband and I went somewhat on a whim. En route from moving from Austin TX to Portland, we made a detour to Juneau on the invitation of friends up there. This was supposed to be a 6-month stay but it turned into 2 years. For the experience of isolation, trees, extremes of light (long nights in winter, long days in summer).

Alaska was also humbling because I had to learn that I am not totally suited to those types of winters and that much isolation. I also spent those 2 years learning how to homeschool my son, which for me was a way of learning how to choose and find ways to live by our own values.

Q: You’ve commented on the fact that you are the child of writers, and of a political prisoner–your father was held by the Communists in Viet Nam for ten years after you and your mother left the country. In what ways are your family’s legacies important to your writing? How has knowing your family’s history shaped how you see and write the world?

A: My family history is the foremost reason I am a writer. I feel a sense of debt and responsibility to it — those circumstances, those stories, the choices my parents made. It is very challenging for me also because I am aware of so much division from those things — Vietnam, heritage, my father, the language, my own knowledge of history.

I have at times hated myself as a writer for the fact that it seems I’m only able to write about the position of disconnect and not-knowing that I occupy toward my heritage. My mother is very much someone who cut herself off from the past; my father I did not meet until I was 23 and I cannot help but feel a tremendous amount of sorrow for what he went through in his choice to stay in Viet Nam. This position — of being between worlds — is where I am still writing from now.

But I also have this belief that part of the trouble with the Vietnamese culture (esp. Viet-American) is, in fact, this “myth” of separation and exodus we identify ourselves by. And so I have a desire to try to bridge that, at least thematically, emotionally.

Q: What’s your next project? Do you have a new album, book, or other work in process? What should we look forward to seeing? (And any hints about what you’ll be reading at Loggernaut tonight?)

A: I’m working on a book that I’m calling Notes From the Southern World. It is a fragmented mixture of several voices and forms I’ve been wrestling with over the past few years — part memoir, part fiction, part prose-poetry, images, much meandering. I am also working on a song-cycle related to these same themes — of Viet Nam, migration, exodus, war, and mythology. My dream would be to be able to release the book and album as parallel works, somehow. Perhaps I’ll read pieces from these projects tomorrow.

Q: What are you reading right now? What albums are you loving? Are there other fiction writers (or poets) who write and perform music, whose work you admire? If you could have written any short story in the world, which one would you lay claim to?

A: I’m reading the poems of H.D., and Running In the Family by Michael Ondaatje. The most recent albums I’ve loved is Laura Gibson’s Beasts of Seasons. I listen to Sigur Ros often lately. Of writer/songwriters, I think of Leonard Cohen, of course … but know there must be more I’ve not yet discovered.

I don’t know if it’s a short story I would lay claim to, but maybe just a passage: the opening italicized section of James Agee’s A Death In the Family.