“Entreaties for remembering…” strikes me as a poem of deep attention. Attention to all of life’s fragments–memories, objects, creatures–and our feelings about these things. What role does attention play in your work?

No one said it better than Mary Oliver: Pay attention / Be astonished. / Tell about it. Every poet would agree that attention is elemental; however, I don’t think attention is always a conscious, intentional act. Sometimes I’m gobsmacked by a word, image, phrase, or sound that sneaks up on me and demands attention. It’s my decision what to do with that demand. I can dismiss it, of course, or I can write it down before it disappears. Each line of “Entreaties for remembering” is an example of jotting down an attention-seeker that wanted to become part of a poem.

Through reading this poem and some of your others, I gained a sense that life always happens unexpectedly, in ways we don’t plan. How do you face this realization as you approach your work? Do your poems feel unexpected or unplanned? 

I’ve come to believe that life is a series of surprising inevitabilities. In retrospect, there was some sort of plan for every chapter of my life, but the plot wasn’t mine. I’m not that inventive! Likewise, I don’t know what a poem wants to say until it tells me. When I try to force meaning or direction or form, the poem doesn’t work. I think many poets have a similar experience: a poem isn’t finished until it’s told you what it wants to be and say. My job is to facilitate that process—and to stay attentive to the possibility that even a published poem may want to say something more or less or different down the road.

I find the use of the word “entreaties” in the title of the poem compelling. An entreaty is an earnest or humble request–a kind of asking. Was the process of writing this poem a kind of humble ask, and for what? 

I consider myself a narrative poet—although you wouldn’t know it from “Entreaties”! However, as I said, I’m also a fanatic collector of images, phrases, ideas that often resist expansion into a narrative. They are aphoristic in nature and that’s what binds them together. I began this poem with the theme of remembering and searched for images, both concrete and abstract, that would fit. The word “entreaties” was a last-minute impulse to include in the title. It seemed to work with it as a humble asking for the bits of wisdom and experience that are worthy of remembrance.

The idea of “small contentments" recurs in your work. Do you feel the act of creating poetry lends itself to revealing life’s small contentments to us? 

Thanks for referencing my book, The Catalog of Small Contentments. Your question contains my answer: the act of creating poetry lends itself to revealing life’s small contentments. Whether it’s applauding the tenacity of weeds; recognizing that, in the scheme of things, mistakes are mere molehills; or standing in awe of white rainbows, everything we learn and experience is material for poetry. And, I can’t resist adding, the joy I experience in the process of writing is the essence of any contentment I feel.

“Entreaties for remembering...” examines life from the perspective of the individual human to the cosmic. I find this balance of perspectives as essential to understanding humanity’s place in the world around us and the universe beyond. How do you explore perspective in your poetry? 

What an insight into perspective! This poem does move from moss, weeds, and sugar ants to the Future and Eternity, and “balance” has become more instinctive as I explore our place in the universe. I love the suggestion that we shouldn’t call ourselves human beings, but Earthlings. Essentially that’s what unites us: we share a planet that is groaning from the pain we’re inflicting on her. I’ve been reading lots of scientific articles on climate change and the extinction of species. If it’s true we are in the sixth mass extinction, Earthlings are next in line. I’ve written a number of poems that contain these themes. Maybe they can be called my “poems of discontentment”!

I noticed you were an English professor. How did teaching influence your own writing process and what you thought was possible in literature? 

In a recent poem called “World Lit Class: Four Decades Ago,” I say ...learning titles, names, / is not the point when art explores / the breadths and depths of options and choice.

This is, of course, a post-English-teaching insight but it captures what the writing process asks of us: to explore the options and choices we have as we craft and re-craft a poem from its theme to title, lineation, stanza breaks, sound effects, rhythms, and on and on.

The fact is, I didn’t write much poetry when I was an English teacher. Perhaps the gift of those years was learning how to be a more astute reader and explorer. It was only after I retired in 2008, after sixteen years in academia and twenty-four years in the business world, that I began writing poetry in earnest. I connected with the vibrant literary community in Portland, Oregon, and began taking classes. I became very comfortable with being a student.

Come to think of it, there is a discipline in being a teacher—the preparation, the engagement with students and parents, the unpleasant tasks of correcting papers and assigning grades—that carries over to the writing process. It takes concerted discipline not merely to write a poem, but to send out submissions, design collections, work with publishers, take the stage at readings: all part of the job. So, on second thought, I am grateful you prompted me to reconsider how that training as a teacher served me well as a poet!

Read Carolyn’s poem, “Entreaties for remembering...” in dulcet Literary magazine, vol. One, Issue No. 2, coming this february.