Emory junior Macy Perrine talks her poetic process and the mysterious potential of the inciting image.
When did you start writing poetry, and what inspired you to do so?
The first time I remember writing poetry was in third grade. In school, we made little collections of mostly fill-in-the-blank poems, like the “If I Were in Charge of the World” template based on Judith Viorst’s poem. We did a similar project again in fifth grade, but there was a lot more creative freedom. I remember writing these really dark poems about familial violence, and though my poems were fictional, I wonder if some part of me was already contemplating my own familial experiences and subconsciously translating them into poems. I had been writing stories since before I even knew how to write, recruiting my siblings or grandmother to transcribe for me–but after the fifth grade project, I found myself more urgently gravitating towards poetry. It allowed me to be imaginative but also vulnerable and honest.
Describe your creative process. What does it feel like to submerge yourself in the world of a poem?
I typically start out with an image or concept that compels me, and then I write the poem around it. Some images that have recently initiated a poem: the sensation of kicking slush out of your car's wheel well; hay bales with red, white, and blue net wraps; the eeriness of gears spinning perfectly into one another. Images often float around in my head for years before making their way into a piece, so I have learned to be very patient. If I have to force something to become a poem, it is probably not ready to be written down.
I obsessively edit for a month or so after the poem is written, which is my favorite part of the process. I love to trim little pieces of language that aren’t quite working and set them aside for the future. I love reordering sentences to see how sequence affects meaning. I love getting frustrated by my line breaks and starting from scratch, putting the poem in paragraph form so I can break it up again. It’s like a puzzle, but the number of pieces is adjustable, and the picture will be different depending on how you choose to fit everything together. But it feels like there’s a right way, and your job is to figure out what it is, and to reconcile the instructions you’re getting from the audience with what your own brain and heart are telling you. And also, the poem/puzzle has a mind of its own and does not necessarily want to listen to you.
Of course, after the editing process comes the waiting. I naturally get sort of disgusted by my own poems after working with them so closely, so setting them aside for a few months is easy. Coming back as a slightly older poet with fresh eyes always seems to solve a lot of problems.
What tends to inspire you to write?
An obsession with an image is usually the starting point. My subconscious does a lot of the work for me, transforming the image into a vehicle through which I can explore my own life. My poems are intensely autobiographical, but it’s hard for me to say that my familial or romantic relationships “inspire” me to write. I rarely sit down to write about my dad or my lover–I sit down to write about an image, and the poem finds its way back to the other things. I once tried to write a poem about bison and ended up with a poem about my brothers. It was such a strange and enlightening moment—to realize that the reason I have always adored bison is because they remind me of my brothers, and to think that a poem taught me this.
Read "Bison" (Interview continues below)
Who are some of your poetic influences? How has their work shaped your own?
This is a difficult question for me because the poetry I like to read is so different from the poetry I write. I would say some of my current favorite poets are Phillip Levine, Richard Hugo, Terrance Hayes, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Carolyn Forché. This is very vague, but I think there’s a rawness and plainness and truth in the work of these poets that really compels me. There is so much to be learned and unearthed from their poems artistically and intellectually, but they are also just storytellers, and there is something so memorable and profound about their honest and sort of unembellished representations of the human experience.
What do you love most about poetry?
One of my favorite things about poetry is that so much happens for just a half-second as you experience the poem: the micropauses between lines and stanzas, and the way these shape meaning; the way an image is constructed and then immediately transformed; the way that a line’s meaning can completely shift from whatever word comes next, but you won’t know until you get there. It’s a magical experience, with all the emotion and suspense and dynamics of reading a novel, but condensed into a few minutes.
What are your goals for your poems? What do you hope people take away from them?
When I first came to college, I had this subconscious belief that the more complicated or strange or difficult a poem was, the higher its quality. But I am realizing more and more that I am not terribly interested in writing difficult poetry. I understand the appeal of writing something that can only be deciphered by those who are willing to work for it, but I would rather write poems for people who get tired easily. Art takes work, to be created and to be understood, but I do not want my art to take labor.
As a first-gen student from a working-class family, I have a great sense of loyalty to the people who have never taken a literature course, who have no background in poetry. I want to write for the version of myself who first arrived at Emory, the girl who felt terrified and overwhelmed and unintelligent, even in places where she expected to feel at ease. I want to write poems that make her feel like she belongs in poetry, too.
How do you incorporate poetry into your daily life at Emory?
There is so much poetic fodder in the daily sensory experience of just being in the world and living on a campus surrounded by people your age (who have both incredibly similar and incredibly different life experiences). I try to keep my eyes and ears open. I’ve noticed that when I consciously look for inspiration, I end up focusing on things that seem poetic rather than things which compel or excite me. I try to look for joy in my existence rather than looking for poetry. The joy initiates the poem, and then I can excavate the pain.
I also read as much as I can. I am in three poetry courses this semester, so I’m not able to read for pleasure as much as I’d like to, but I’m being exposed to so much art that I’ve never encountered before. I wouldn’t necessarily choose to read these poets on my own, but there’s so much to learn from writers who view and translate the world differently than you do.
If you could take one poet (alive or dead) to dinner, who would it be?
In high school, I spent two years of savings from my job to pay for a week-long writing camp at Susquehanna University. I studied under Professor Karla Kelsey and her student Amy Jarvis, two beautiful poets and even more beautiful people. Amy gave each of us little letters at the end of camp, and in my letter she said she admired the “quiet impact” I had on the workshop. I have carried this phrase with me for years. It truly re-shaped my self-image and made me feel valuable even in all of my shyness and nervousness. I remember crying at the end of the camp, realizing I would have to go back to Wisconsin after a week of feeling so incredibly at home and supported and taken care of. In response to my tears, Professor Kelsey told me about the freedom she found in going away to college, and I felt understood as a human being in a way I had never experienced before. I learned so much from both of these poets, about how to read my poems aloud and how we can still find poetry beautiful when we aren’t quite sure how to make sense of it. I would love to take each of them to dinner and tell them that they are the reason I had the courage to leave home, and they are the people that made me a poet.
Comentários