In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Robert Grunst

There’s a beautiful peace in your poem “Blue Aster Seeds” that draws the reader into this moment of watching seeds whirl. I love how it takes a moment—a breath of air and seeds—and creates an entire world. Where did this poem start? What was the process in creating this piece? 

The poem began in a moment’s disorientation. Walking along a path near Lilydale’s Pickerel Lake, I found myself beset by a swarm of gnats and responded with the normal tactlessness—flaying to wave the gnats off. The gnats did not respond like gnats though; then, I noticed the blue aster stalks either side of the way and a revelatory puff of wind disclosed the truth of the matter. Cause and effect. Aster umbels/seeds spewed off the dried-out flower heads: that brief moment of confusion; that realization. The light was right: reminiscent, perhaps, of one of Wordsworth’s spots of time.

The poem went through a couple dozen revisions. At least. Maybe every poem is a path, and some paths meander, disappear, turn up again, meander further, and end up where you never could have imagined, or where only transactions between the poet and the motive figures and sounds of the poem lead. And if the end isn’t a surprise—both for the reader and the writer—then the poem is not a poem: not quite or not by a long shot.

This poem has a warm feeling, as if the narrator is taking the speaker by the arm and showing them another world. Where did this persona come from? What was the inspiration for melding the seeds’ flight with galaxies?

I’m interested in your allusion to ‘this persona,’ as for many years I have written with something of a practiced aversion to the use of the first person pronoun in my work. This has to do with a penchant for elusiveness maybe, while I frequently find myself cringing, reading poems which strike me as so self-occupied—performative as to trip the panic / flight alarm. I love Walt Whitman’s poetry, his spider, for instance; though, Emily Dickinson’s ‘I’m nobody! Who are you?’ pairs better with my natural inclinations. Take away the ‘I’, still, there is an ‘I’. There’s the language. The music. The measures. The poem comes through me then. Before me. I don’t want to get in the poem’s way. But provide ways for the poem to be.  

As for the seeds’ flights and galaxies, my rough comprehension of chaos theory and Lorenz’s butterfly effect underlay whatever inspiration there was: everything is integrally connected. This ought to be a perfectly familiar and well-accepted matter by now, but too much evidence suggests otherwise. 

I’m reminded of Suzanne Simard’s The Mother Tree. Simard’s early findings in the realm of old forest ecology were systematically poo-pooed by forestry science insiders, while the forestry industry was horrified by the implications of her work. Simard discovered astonishing relationships between old forest microbial communities, and fungi, and Douglas firs; you take it from there. There are galaxies of galaxies, and if we don’t pay attention to the complexities, the interrelationships, our lives are akin to laminated particle board. No warm feeling in that product. 

What made you evoke gnats at the beginning of the poem?

The gnats were gnats at first. Then they transformed themselves into aster umbels, aster seeds. Ovid, you know.

There’s the historic meaning of flowers. Do you ever think about symbolism when writing pieces like this?

Symbolism. Gertrude Stein’s “A rose is a rose is a rose”? “The Ramount of the Rose.” On and on go the roses. Lilacs. And daffodils. Robert Herrick; Wordsworth; Natasha Trethewey. I used to tell creative writing students that you cannot use the word apple in a poem (or in a story or essay) without some remnant harkening to the Genesis apple. Pomme. Manzana. Whatever apple is in Finnish. Words are legacies. Words are loaded.

From the Greek through Latin aster = star of course. So charting the path from aster seeds parachuting beneath their umbels to aural and etymological connections is not too difficult.

I think of symbolism, yes; failure to comes at one’s peril. An ill-appraised or accidental ‘symbol’ can morph into a load unsuited for any umbel to hoist aloft. 

What draws you to write about nature? What themes do you find yourself returning to in your work?

Nature’s where we live. Nature’s what we are. Where we are and how we live in the natural settings we have been so lucky to be inheritors, and should be respectful stewards of, have been sustaining occupations of my poems and essays for many years. Years ago I worked for a few seasons as a commercial fisherman on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. There was a day on Lake Michigan, pulling chub nets aboard the Shirley B. after a lot of heavy current. The current had rolled lots of bottom mud / clay into the lead line twine. The lifting deck was alive, that soup squirming gyrating curlicuing—worms and tiny shrimp-like forms and spinets—not tiny pianos but almost microscopic steps up from amoebas. Deepwater particles of energy. There were sticklebacks. There were what the boat skipper, Alex, called cockanannwii. There were lake chubs, bloaters, the target species. There was the same kind of wild communal intricacy as is figured in The Mother Tree. Everything’s connected. Take away the spinets, the whole system implodes. The galaxy goes dark.

Which authors inspire or influence your writing? What are some of your favorite texts or books?

There’s not enough space for this one. But John Clare; Olav Hauge; Rae Armantrout; Gary Snyder; Jane Hirshfield; Richard Powers; Barry Lopez; Elizabeth Bishop; Diane Seuss; David Baker; Jorie Graham; Tomas Transtromer come readily to mind. And so many others. I try to reread Melville’s Moby Dick or, The White Whale every couple of years, partly for the irreverent—wild jokes and for the dignities and indignities vested in Ishmael, Queequeg, Starbuck, and Pip. I reread Stevenson’s Treasure Island too for the fantasy—to revisit what it was like to have been thirteen and to believe in a character like Jim Hawkins. Then there’s Jussi Adler-Olsen for odd visits to Denmark. I have many poet friends going back to Iowa City days and have taken much inspiration from their work. To each of them I own a deep debt of gratitude.

You’ve written the books, The Smallest Bird in North America and Blue Orange. What are you working on now?

‘Blue Aster Seeds” is included in a manuscript currently flying under the title, ‘Cries of Kittiwakes,’ circulating now among the several contests. Meanwhile I am at work building fifty chickadee houses for research slated to begin this autumn in collaboration with undergraduate and graduate Biology students at Indiana State University: to be directed by my daughters. I am also minding two apple trees; two apricot trees; and Edelweiss and Swenson Red grape vines.

And new poems. New essays. More essential is the business of awakening to each morning. I strike the singing bowl from Rishikesh. Cross the Ganga on the swinging bridge, Lakshman Jhula, and give free way to the cow making her way from the opposite side. 

Robert Grunst currently resides in Nieul-sur-Mer, France, and is a professor emeritus of English at St. Catherine University. His two books of poems are The Smallest Bird in North America (New Issues Press) and Blue Orange (McGovern Prize Winner, Ashland Poetry Press). “Blue Aster Seed” is included in a manuscript titled BECOMING AS.