Karan

First thing one notices about these poems is that they are aware they’re poems. I’ve spoken to poets who have a distaste for poems that are aware of being poems, and ones who find it inevitable to deal with the act of poem-making head-on within the poem. I imagine the part of the inclination toward the latter is when you write every day. How do you keep writing one poem after another without acknowledging the act? Does that resonate with you? What about this meta-nature fascinates you most? Though this is present in all your poems by way of titles, in “Poem in which I wonder how the sausage was made” it’s totally intensified as it becomes a sort of ars poetica. The poem uses the metaphor of sausage-making to explore the creative process of writing poetry. What are your thoughts on poetry about poetry?

Denise

Right! Yes and yes and yes! I sometimes eschew the idea of writing ars poetica — a poem about writing a poem can seem like an unhelpful oroborus. But then I spring into the idea of writing poems about poem-making and that's all I want to do. I started this series (all titles beginning "Poem in Which...") after finishing a manuscript of elegies for my mother who passed away in 2021. Writing those poems had me digging deep into sorrow and family history. When I emerged, I wanted to imagine alternate lives and ways of being and get down, I suppose, to serious play. What if I had never become a poet at all?  What if I were an urban planner? What if I had really drowned in that pool when I was six? That led me back to the ars poetica, how we make poems and maybe, even a little bit of the "why" we make poems.  The metaphor of poetry and sausage made me laugh at first—the untidy scraps of life being shoved into a tube to be consumed.  But there was also something rather horrific about it as well.

Karan

That is fascinating. Would you say a little more about why we write poems? To imagine other realities? To escape? To find answers? To complicate the questions? What are the driving forces behind your need to express through poetry, and has it changed over the years? How do you see the act of writing poems contributing to a larger conversation in the world or in your personal journey? 

Denise

I’ve written about this elsewhere, but I was quite sick as a child with asthma and spent most of fourth grade in a children’s hospital. This is when I really started to write. I made handmade “books” in which my new ill friends in the hospital were the main characters, often transformed through various superpowers. It’s only occurring to me now that these “in which” poems are, in some ways, a return to that original project. While I may not be trying to escape so much anymore—my health is much better, knock on wood—I’m still interested in alternate versions of a life. In short, my start as a pre-teen writer was life-affirming and truly a way to escape thoughts of death.  I had a strong sense of dying at ten since some of my new friends in the hospital passed away while I was there. It was terrifying and, of course, made me question mortality and the other big questions at a very young age. I hesitate to use the word therapeutic, but I will use it anyway.  I think writing for me has always had an element of a healing and coping quality. 

Karan

Your poems do not shy away from pop-culture references — Marilyn Monroe, Frito Bandito, Kit Kat Klock, converting Fahrenheit to Celsius — these make the poems more accessible. They are also where a lot of the humor is introduced in the poems, as in Bob Hicok’s poetry. These pop-cultural references contribute to the richness of your poems by anchoring them in specific times, cultural contexts, and shared experiences. They also serve as bridges between the personal and the collective, inviting readers to relate to the speaker's reflections through familiar cultural touchpoints. How do you approach incorporating pop-cultural references into your poetic craft? Are these references a deliberate choice to enhance accessibility, create layers of meaning, or establish a specific tone within your work? Could you share insights into your process of selecting and weaving these references into your poems?

Denise

I have always used pop culture references to some extent in my poems.  I remember the first time using Dove soap (the brand) as a metaphor. I was in graduate school. So yes, the choices are usually deliberate. I guess the most obvious example is Kinky, my book which uses Barbie as a vehicle for feminism, consumerism, capitalism, class, and race. But, even beyond that, I love populating my poems with pop culture that serves as a time capsule. This is especially evident in “Poem in Which I Acknowledge I Am Vintage.” I find it particularly fascinating that we all now can go back in time and find our nostalgia online. I could find that clock and carnival glass bowl on google with just a short description. When I read poems from peers who are younger than I am, with a quick internet search I can find the toy or song they are referencing. It's a whole new kind of access. I sometimes look up Greek gods or phrases in a different language too, of course. It's just all so fast and available. I have always been committed to accessibility in my poems. I want all kinds of readers, not just hardcore poetry readers. I used to be afraid to reference something obscure, but because of google, I am more apt to do so now.

Karan

I appreciate your acknowledgment of the internet's impact on accessibility. I feel blessed that I look up whatever I need to know at any instance. I can’t imagine how much slower the process would be a hundred years ago. This past year, there has been a lot of protest against AI in the literary world. I'm curious to know your thoughts on this. Have you tried using ChatGPT or similar tools? If so, what has been your experience? Do you find it useful, ridiculous, or perhaps somewhere in between? Are there concerns or risks you associate with AI, particularly in its potential impact on the craft of poetry? Do you think it poses a risk to the poets?

Denise

We don’t even have to go back one hundred years!  When I started to write seriously, in 1980 or so, I had an encyclopedia and a dictionary in book/paper form. It was really hard to find information about contemporary poets. My local library didn’t stock poets who were still alive. It wasn’t until I was an undergrad in college that I even realized people were still writing poetry! I was always writing, but I didn’t realize what I was writing were (quite terrible) poems in my notebook. I am more nervous about AI in terms of politics and war and misinformation than I am in terms of creative writing.  I haven’t tried ChatGPT yet, but I have friends who have experimented with it. I can see how it could be an interesting tool—kind of like Flarf in the early 2000s. I am still hoping that the human heart and emotional intelligence will remain vital ingredients to poetry.

Karan

Though none of these poems here are traditionally formal, having followed your work for years, I’m aware that you have a love for villanelles, pantoums, sestinas, ghazals, etc. and you’ve experimented with these forms for years. A lot of poets don’t want to be restricted by rhymes or syllable-count, etc; and free-verse seems to be the more “American poetry” ground. I am someone who believes the restrictions in form allow us to go to places we wouldn’t go to were it not for, say, a particular rhyme, or repetition. I imagine you feel the same. Please correct me if you don’t. I’d love to know what sparked your interest in form and what has carried this interest for so many years? Why do you still experiment, stretch and play with forms? And if possible, tell us your secret too: how are you able to do it so well?!

Denise

I have my friend Maureen Seaton (who died this past summer and about whom I wrote Poem In Which I Consider Mosquito Bites After Maureen’s Memorial In the Arboretum) to thank for my love of form. Maureen and I started collaborating in the early 1990s and she wrote sonnets as easily as I wrote free verse.  Maureen, who had been mentored by Marilyn Hacker, was leery about free verse at that time so we wrote collaborative sonnets and then pantoums and sestinas and villanelles. Making the poems together with Maureen, I saw the joy and fun that could be had in traditional form. Soon I was writing in form on my own and Maureen was writing a lot of free verse on her own. It was a wonderful education in poetry! I still remember Maureen saying that using traditional form was like constructing a poem out of blocks, bit by bit, whereas free verse often employed freewriting (at least it does for me) and then sculpting away the boring stuff to find the essence of the poem. 

Karan

Collaborative constructions can indeed be fruitful, especially when delving into traditional forms. Shannan and I often write ghazals together. I'm intrigued by the notion of formal poems being constructed out of blocks. Could you say more about that? In your experience, how do you find the creative process differs when working within traditional forms compared to free verse? Also, how do you inspire and encourage your students to experiment with new forms? Would you mind providing a prompt here to entice poets, perhaps those who've never tried a new form, into taking that creative leap?

Denise

That is amazing that you and Shannan are writing ghazals together! My friend Julie Marie Wade and I just finished a series of collaborative ghazals as well. I love the form, and working towards an end word is exhilarating! Much like a sestina, right? The idea of laying a series of blocks through a traditional form means you build the poem one line at a time as dictated by the rules of the form. You can’t go as wild as you might in a free write in which you are not counting syllables or considering end rhymes or end words. So I guess you could say writing in form is akin to building with bricks and the form is the cement holding the structure together. You can’t stray so far when writing a ghazal, but the constraints build a wonderful tension and take you in unanticipated directions. A collaborative ghazal doubles the fun. 

In terms of a prompt, I’d like to suggest collaborative pantoums. Some of my students have begun having pantoum parties. Collaborative pantoums are especially fun to write because each writer offers one line (which is really two lines, as the lines are repeated and separated by other lines in the poem). The writer finds their numbers on the form and fills in the lines. As time goes on, the pantoum gets increasingly difficult because the writer is trying to make sense of the lines coming before and after it. It’s really fun—sometimes with profound results, other times with silly results. I offer this cheat sheet for pantoum parties which can be written in pairs or by a large group. 

Karan

In one sense, all poetry is about loss — of innocence, time, places, people, love, beauty, joy — even as it tries to capture these. In “Poem in which I acknowledge I am vintage” you reminisce about old traditions, childhood memories, and the impact of aging. Reflections on cultural changes, loss, and the passage of time seem to be a motif across all your work. Do you feel the past feeds your poetry? What is it about nostalgia that appeals to you? In addition to this, the “Poem in Which I Consider Mosquito Bites…” alludes to the speaker's physical discomfort from mosquito bites after attending a memorial. The irritation from the bites becomes a metaphor for the distractions and challenges in dealing with grief. How much of your poetry is an exercise in dealing with loss? Is it a distraction from grief, an exploration of grief, or a movement through grief? Does poetry bring you joy or ease your pain?

Denise

I remember the late Thomas Lux telling our class that even if nothing interesting happened to you after you were six years old, you'd still have enough memories for a lifetime of poetry. Or maybe he didn't say this exactly but it was something to that effect. So much of poetry, or at least my poetry and the poetry I love to read, is rooted in memory. As a poet, one of our superpowers is to compress time, expand time, collage a timeline so that time is not the linear arbitrator of life. I have found that poetry does help me deal with grief, connect with the grief of others, and feel not so alone. This is true whether I am reading poetry or writing it. I love writing. And thank you, Karan, for reminding me of this. Even when I am writing about the most devastating things, I feel a sense of joy and release.