Denise Duhamel - Hollywood, FL
With more than 13,000 miles very recently under our belts, it's pretty easy to say that traffic varies widely from town to town, state to state. With the possible exception of Beverly Hills on a Saturday afternoon, the stretch from Miami (where we and Winnie Cooper are spending a week) to Hollywood is the most discouraging. We spot the signs of U.S. 1, The Dixie Highway, and we imagine it will link us quickly to the north, but it's a soul-killing parade of endless red lights and jittery drivers who slam between lanes like they were lottery players looking for just the right combination.
Additionally, our resting point while in South Florida has turned into a bit of a nightmare. Now, I don't expect every place to be green and beautiful like Granite Lake in southeastern Washington State, or remote and pristine like Death Valley, but nothing could ever prepare you for the Miami Everglades KOA Camp where we pulled in a couple of days ago. Motorhomes have been shuffled here as tight as any deck of playing cards. Need sugar from a neighbor, just slide your window open and tap the dude on the shoulder. Well, unless it's our neighbor to the west. All he's got is weed. Oh, and the classic rock radio that he plays all day, all night, even past the normally Nazi-strict "quiet hours." All parks have these hours, usually something like 10pm - 8am where everyone is supposed to tone it down a bit for the retirees. But not our dude.
On the first night, around 10:15 pm while Free was blasting "Feel Like Making Love," I strolled past the side of his place to see what was up. Party, maybe? All of his friends. A minor breaking of curfew. Good friends, good times. But it was just him, head slumped, doobie in one hand and Jim Beam in the other. When he spotted me he gave me a big grin, a welcoming smile. I reversed field and headed back to the relative quiet of Winnie Cooper.
The next night the music played on. Mostly 80s stuff tonight, Men at Work, Hall & Oates, but then back around to the oldies, the Moody Blues..."I'm just a singer in a rock and roll band..." Etc. We're here for 5 more nights.
Denise lives on the ocean under blue skies year round. She lives in Hollywood, Florida, a place full of retirees and vacationers. But she's young, hip, working, and getting all of the benefits most of us dull slabs have to wait until we're 65 for. So it'd be easy to hate her if she wasn't so wonderful - as wonderful as her work, I suppose I'd say.
A Rhode Island native, she's logged her time in Boston and New York, so sunny climes are a gentle and wonderful reward for all of that. She tells me about some of her favorite writing spots, a local coffee shop, the wide and windblown boardwalk just north of her apartment, the beach itself, just steps away from her building.
Like some of the writers I've met, Denise revels in the anonymity of a large, bustling city. She can escape in public places and take in the characters and stories only available to someone who's a great listener. She writes in notebooks while on the town, then comes home to her office to turn the scratchings into full-blooded poems.
In person, she's a dynamo, eager to talk about the powerful effect this newish place has on her work, her health, and her happiness. She's animated and lovely and we have a terrific session in the sunny and large living room where light pours in on us. I tell her about another poet who she knows and she's sincerely happy to hear some news of a good friend. I tell her about another poet I know here in town and she knows him, too. We talk about his recent new job and in this way we catch up like pals - even though we've just met.
I say my goodbyes and look for my wife. She's across from Denise's apartment complex, staring into the shiny waters of the Intercoastal Waterway where $250,000 boats bob past on their way to - wherever - does it matter? Neither one of us wants to get in the damn rental car and get back on that highway. I ask her if she'd like to live in Florida, and she says, "Only if we never have to drive."
True enough. But we know we have to get back to Winnie for the night. And the classic rock. Our dude waits, he and his pal Jim Beam. We drive and start making bets on what's playing. I think it'll be the Marshall Tucker Band's "Heard it in a Love Song." My wife opts for anything by Skynyrd.
Choosing
About a third of the poets I meet ask, "Why me?"
It's a complicated question, and I don't think I've ever given a completely satisfactory answer. But in this entry I thought I'd try.
1) The work of some poets just screams out "place" to me, poets like Miller Williams, for example. It's always been impossible for me to read his work without feeling the South in every line. So I sought out many poets like this when I was first putting a big list together. I wasn't trying to stack the deck in favor of the conceits of my book, but I did want some ringers, some folks who would think that the question, "Has place influenced your work?" was a satisfying and enjoyable place to start a conversation.
2) Simply, geography. The planning of this trip has been monumentally challenging. I've been unable to completely describe the logistics of it to anyone. The truth of the matter is, early on, I had a huge road atlas in front of me, and I knew we'd be hurtling thousands of miles, dozens of states, shooting through countless - and many now unremembered - towns. And since we were there, why not talk to someone? I will confess that there are some of the poets I've met this year who I hadn't even read before this trip. I don't know what sort of revelation this is; my god, there are tons of poets out there. But lucky geography has led me to several folks who I've now "discovered" in a real way. One of these poets is David Romtvedt of Buffalo, Wyoming. I saw that our route was taking us through his part of the state, and using Google, I happened across his name. I read some poems online, loved them, and I'm very grateful I took the time to contact him and visit his picturesque little town. His work fits this project beautifully, and better yet, he was a terrific guy to spend the morning with.
3) The old/young dynamic. Relative terms, I assure you, but since I went to school in the early 80s, many of the poets I studied are now 60+. Because I wanted a good cross section, I knew I'd need to find poets roughly 40 and below. It's easy to pick someone who's been in the game a while and has 15 terrific collections. It's a little harder to find someone more or less just starting out. But as the overall list was being created, I noted that it skewed older than, say, the average age of a living American poet. So I began to work on adding younger poets. It was in this way that I discovered Beth Ann Fennelly, for example, a dynamite poet from Illinois, now in Mississippi.
4) Some poets I wanted to meet with disqualified themselves by noting that place just wasn't a concern for them. They didn't see how they'd fit into the book's conversation. Some poets have bowed out because they were too busy, finishing books, doing research, teaching, new children, etc. Sometimes it just was simple bad timing. Poets on sabbatical. Poets out of town during the week I was going through their area. The vagaries of my trip caused some of this, and without going around AGAIN, I don't know how to avoid this sort of problem.
5) Some poets I just could never contact. Some never replied to any of my queries. My preferred method is via email, and a surprising number of poets - even ones in academia - don't publicly list an email address of any kind. In many of those cases I've sent faxes to their offices. In some cases, the fax worked and we've been able to set up meetings in that way. But in other cases I was never able to reach some poets that would have been welcome partners in the book's conversation. (In some extreme situations I've even used the telephone to reach folks who had been otherwise unreachable, and again, sometimes I've been successful getting a hold of someone, sometimes not.) Obviously this limits the book in some ways. I toyed with the idea of seeking out previously published interviews, finding a way to fuse this material with my own, but that seemed less than satisfactory. So much of this trip is the actual physical visit that I make to the poet's home. And in the end, I never want the visits or the interviews to be something the waiting poet is dreading.
Finally, I can say that the process of choosing poets for the book has been a fascinating challenge. It's a rigorous thing I'm asking. Not just, "Let me ask you some questions," but welcome me into your home or office. I'm going to appear on your doorstep in a few weeks with a giant bag of cameras and tape recorders. I'm an imposing presence (I mean, fat); my bald head is gleaming with sweat (regardless the weather). I'm on a schedule. I've just driven 200 miles in the big rolling tin can. My wife is circling your narrow neighborhood streets while I'm here, and I've got 200 miles to go this afternoon, SO PLEASE RELAX AND GIVE ME THE ANSWERS TO MY QUESTIONS. I'm unclear what state I'm in, what town. I may confuse you with another poet I met yesterday or will meet tomorrow. And I'm likely to eat any amount of cookies you put on a plate in front of me. It's frightening, I guess is what I mean!
But, 38 poets into the project, over 13,000 miles later, I would do it all again, every moment, because the poets I have met have been universally terrific, giving of their time, receptive to the ideas, and just plain fun to spend part of a day with. A mighty "thanks" to them all - past and future - just isn't enough.
Peter Cooley - New Orleans, LA
Peter Cooley's house has a purple door. It's a rich and powerful hue, and we see it from well down the street as we negotiate the narrow passage.
We're in Jefferson, actually, just minutes west of New Orleans proper. In less than 24 hours in and around the city we've been stuck in traffic behind three different accidents. Last night, after spending a pleasant but chilly night in the Quarter, we sat for nearly an hour motionless on I-10 behind a two car fender bender just before the gorgeous twin span bridge that links New Orleans to Slidell, Louisiana, across Lake Ponchatrain. Then this morning as we drove into the city again we came to a stop behind what looked to be a dirt spill. No truck in site, but maybe 70 yards of black topsoil was spread across three lanes about three inches thick. Of course the cars come to a screeching halt. The dirt, my god, the dirt! A little honking, however, convinced the delicate flowers ahead of us to push through. Then on our way here we edged by a t-bone crash in an intersection, a champagne colored Saturn up on a median, its driver scratching his head, wondering where on earth that other car had come from.
But the purple door opens and I'm welcomed in my Peter and his wife - and the delicious smell of chicken cooking.
Peter and I sit in the living room and I arrange the gear. The digital camera goes on a tripod off to the side, where it will work on its own, shooting images once every 10 seconds or so. I get out my indestructible Sony Cassette-Recorder and look for a place near Peter to set it. He's on a big soft couch with no tables near him so I prop up two very unlikely - but charming - fish-shaped pillows, each about 18 inches long. I learn that Peter's wife doesn't like them, but to me they look quirky and homey.
The chicken cooks, Peter's wife fusses with some papers, and Peter and I start to chat.
The purple door comes up a couple of times because Peter wants to talk about the rare quality of light that exists here. He's always had a debt to light in his work, but he really became aware of it during the research and writing of his celebrated volume, The Van Gogh Notebook. This part of Louisiana has just the right climate and humidity to give colors their due. The reds have a rich redness, the purples really pop. I wouldn't believe if it weren't for the door that I look at more than once during my visit.
I tell Peter about another poet I saw earlier in the trip who had suggested I make this visit. It's a poet who Peter knows of, but doesn't know personally. He's genuinely touched at the gesture and says, "He owes me nothing." But I hope I would have found my way here anyway. Cooley's work is not a natural or obvious fit for a book about "place," but I've long since learned to look past the obvious things. Peter's landscape is internal, questing. The speaker in many of his works is caught inside a frame of his own design, looking out, peering out, wondering if indeed there is a way out. It's heady stuff, and rich in place in ways that doesn't require the occasional name of a town or street or roadside bar.
He tells me a bit about his kids, who he clearly loves, and who are displayed in photos on the fridge, in a bookcase, on the piano, etc. He asks about the next stop while I start to pack up.
"Let's get some photos outside," I say, even though it's a chilly January morning - and even though Peter has already told me a handful of times that he left Detroit, Chicago, and Iowa behind mostly because of the temperature. I'm thinking get him posing by the door. The purple door. The poet outside.
Beth Ann Fennelly - Oxford, MS
Beth Ann Fennelly has just finished a 15 page poem about kudzu, the climbing and unstoppable vine that covers millions of acres in Mississippi, Alabama, etc. Kudzu is a Southern touchstone, and when my wife and I first moved down here in the mid 80s, it seemed an exotic and frightening natural world element too spooky and mysterious to ever fully understand. We left Mississippi after only about 18 months, so its reappearance as we drove into the state last night set us thinking about the South, a place, a way of life, a varied and multi-faceted landscape vastly more intriguing than the easy and lazy stereotypes that abound.
But Fennelly is from the north, suburban Illinois, specifically. So I wondered how she came to be here in Mississippi, and - more importantly - how she got so in touch with the evil vine.
We park alongside her home's huge corner lot, and Beth Ann greets me and lets me into her delightful and airy home just minutes after putting her daughter down for a nap. I sit opposite her, my back to an entire wall of book-filled shelves, actually pretty and white cupboards, some with glass doors.
She met her husband, the fiction writer Tom Franklin, in Arkansas, the furthest north Franklin had ever traveled (he's from Alabama), and the furthest south for her. After some years in Illinois, they've settled in Oxford, a hip and wonderful Mississippi town, also, of course, the venerable college where Fennelly teaches, Ole Miss.
Fennelly tells me a little about kudzu, an Asian vine that was introduced to America at the 1876 Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia. An ornamental vine in its homeland, it grows best in the climate of the southeastern U.S., where it is free of its homeland's variety of pests and bugs. In the summer, the vine can grow a foot a day, and it does, obscuring fences, trees, power poles, sides of houses, etc.
Most folks see it as a nuisance, but for Fennelly, it represents one of the things she loves about the South, its places, and people. It's mysterious. It covers up some things that would normally be too in the open, too easily seen. Like her favorite elements of Mississippi, the kudzu conceals some of what's underneath, leaving rich stories for writers to unearth. She believes in her own work she's doing the same things.
Supposedly napping, Beth Ann's daughter has serenaded us throughout the interview with a combination of singing and talking, a burble of words and sounds that have reached down the hallway to us while chatted.
I won't see her on this visit, but I was glad to to hear her little songs.
