In my first semester at Hamline’s MFA Program, the poet Gretchen Marquette came to visit one of our classes. During a Q&A with our class, she was asked about her writing practice. The student asked whether she wrote everyday, and if she did, whether her requirement was based on amount of time spent writing or amount of work produced.

I don’t remember Gretchen’s answer in its entirety, but the essential point was that she didn’t write everyday, but she did make sure to live her writing life everyday, which for her meant things like taking walks and conversing with friends. I remember being really struck by this, so here I’ve listed four ways to live your writing life in the Twin Cities (although these ideas could broadly be implemented in any town or city).

1. Like Gretchen said, try going for a walk. Experiment with listening to music during your walk, then not. Calling a friend, or walking in silence. Observe the scenes around you. Attempt to brainstorm ways to describe what you are seeing and what moments you are finding. I highly recommend walking in Summit Avenue’s Historic District in St. Paul (and maybe finding yourself at Nina’s Coffee Cafe to write afterwards).

2. Visit one of the city’s great bookstores. Visiting places like Magers & Quinn, Milkweed Books, Moon Palace Books, Common Good Books, or one of the many other bookstores in the area is an act of engaging in a conversation with both literature and our community. Many of the stores also regularly host authors or events. Rain Taxi provides a wonderful and thorough calendar of literary events throughout the Cities.

3. Try reading when you’re wishing you were writing. Grab an old favorite or reach for a new release. Consider your reading experience both as a reader and a writer. Additionally, get out of your typical reading/writing routine by reading/writing outside of your home. Try reading or writing outside by one of our many lakes, like Bde Maka Ska (formerly Lake Calhoun), Lake of the Isles, or Como Lake. Or visit a coffee shop such as Groundswell in Midway, Spyhouse on Snelling, or Botany Coffee in Powderhorn.

4. Interact with art outside of literature. The Twin Cities are home to some exceptional museums. Take advantage of the fact that the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s permanent collection is completely free. Wander through the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden by the Walker Art Center, where you can encounter Jenny Holzer‘s Selections From the Living as well as a John Ashbery poem strung across the bridge that connects the garden with neighboring Loring Park. Go to a concert at Turf Club or 7th St Entry. Try to consider these forms of art and how they can inform your writing.

Author:

1. Tell us about your poem in Volume 20. How did it come to be?

I’m working on a collection that’s in part about turning fifty, and it contains a lot of poems that riff on that number in one way or another—a poem called “L” in fifty-character lines, for example. I wanted to write a very short poem in counted verse—ten lines, five words per line—so I started looking up the meanings of the letter “L,” besides its status as the Roman numeral for fifty. Once I had a rich list, the poem happened fast.

2. What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

There are so many ways I’ve answered this, including reading voraciously, having encouraging teachers at key moments, and a couple of early successes. Another answer is just loneliness. Reading and writing help me feel connected to others about non-superficial matters in a sustained way.

3. How has writing shaped your life?

The practice eases all kinds of pain and gives me delight; it feels wholly good, even when it’s hard. The getting of writing out into the world is much more costly!

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work?

As a reviewer I read a lot of very contemporary work with excitement and admiration. I’m especially attracted to sound-driven poetry, and also to writers who think formally but are in various ways disobedient to form, too. Dickinson is my desert-island poet and I teach modernism, so I keep coming back to H.D., Moore, Hughes, Cullen, Millay, Brooks, and others.

5. What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

The poetry book mentioned above is She Will Not Scare. I’m also doing a lot of work that hybridizes criticism with personal narrative, including some short pieces (most recently, “Women Stay Put” in Crab Orchard Review) and a book about reading twenty-first-century poetry.

Visit Lesley’s website and follow her on Twitter. In addition, check out Shenandoah, the literary magazine where Lesley serves as Poetry Editor!

1. Tell us about your poem in Volume 20. How did it come to be?

I first wrote the poem “Ventriloquist” when I was living in the Rio Grande Valley. It’s by no means uncommon to hear English and Spanish (or a combination of both) spoken throughout the region. However, Spanish wasn’t my first language, and it wasn’t necessarily because it was discouraged (as it was in my parent’s generation) as much as it was neglected, placed on the back burner for what I assume my parents thought was the more practical English. The poem is a reflection on my struggles to learn Spanish throughout my childhood, and the hope that, through every Post-It note and botched pronunciation, I could connect with an important part of my culture that always seemed out of reach.  

2. What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

 As a graduate fresh out of college, I was living somewhat aimlessly, unsure what direction life was bound to take me. I started writing as a way to cope with the boredom and it quickly became a habit, then an obsession, and then a way of living. No one experience shaped my inspiration to write, rather, it was the process and struggle of trying to put something on paper that shaped the writer I am today. It’s still a process and it’s still a struggle, but if wasn’t, I know I wouldn’t have anything to say.

3. How has writing shaped your life?

Short answer: for the better.

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work?

I try to read as much contemporary poetry as possible, but I find myself returning to collections by Bob Hicok, Dean Young, Tony Hoagland, Daniel Borzutzky, and Valzhyna Mort. No other contemporary writer for me, however, creates such poetic (and often nightmarish) landscapes quite like Cormac McCarthy. Each time I reread his novels and plays I discover something new and meaningful about the world I had never considered before, which is what good writing, regardless of genre, is supposed to make its readers feel.

5. What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I’m currently working on completing two manuscripts, one that extends on the themes and narratives of my first completed manuscript, Portraits from the Orphaned Plains (where “Ventriloquist” appears), and another (still untitled) that centers on war, violence, and the struggle to make meaning through chaos and destruction. Although they differ significantly in content and style, they each allow me to push my writing further, and to say something new about the world and the human condition.

Esteban’s collection of poetry, “Dusk & Dust,” will be published by Hub City Press this coming fall. Learn more about the book here. Pre-order now. Follow Esteban on Twitter.

Language and communication are essential to life and culture, but where is poetry’s place in a world where the emphasis is on speed and efficiency? If one can get past the notion that poetry is only for intellectuals and scholars, that it is boring and difficult to understand, then becomes apparent the fact that poetry is simply a way to smell the proverbial roses. It can help us appreciate language, how beautiful it can be, how wonderful it can sound. That love of language can then be communicated to readers and spread around the world. Sounds idealistic and romantic, but in my opinion this is actually what poetry can accomplish.

Poetry can encompass both the sound of music and the movement of dance. It can also capture beautiful visual images, and reproduce the rough or smooth texture of things. It records our experiences of the world through our senses, our meditations on them. It can blend all of our senses together in one synesthetic, cathartic moment of a poem. An old professor used to say poetry is “a compressed drama”. I tend to agree with that statement. The old maxim ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ might be true in some cases, but poetry finds a way with words to tip the scales so a picture might be worth only a precious few.

I think it is true when people say that music is its own language. I’ve heard master musicians described as being “fluent in many idioms” (I think this was in reference to guitarist John Scofield) such as jazz, blues, funk and many other genres. The interesting thing here is the word “idiom”. This is a word that refers to written language; yet music has none in that sense, excluding musical notation of which not everyone is literate. Music communicates emotion as a sort of raw energy, directly through the ears; something that also happens in the best kinds of poetry. Songs ranging from classical to pop are regimented and structured: also in poetry. Lyrics can be, and sometimes are poems themselves.

One idiom that comes to mind is: “poetry in motion.” This may sound cliche, but the fact is that movement, gestures, and expressions are all ways to communicate: body language. When a dancer moves the feet and arms in a certain way, we are moved by the evocation, the emotional energy. When a ball player passes a ball with intent, the receiver knows where to be, how to get there: the coordinates have been communicated, all without words. Yet when the actions are completed, when a hole-in-one is scored or a masterful trick landed on the rink, the highest praise we give is in terms of poetry.

If poetry has a place in the lexicon of popular culture, then it is something that can be written, revised, and revamped. More readers, from all ranges of experience, could and should turn to poems for pleasure, for inspiration, for healing; to explore new worlds and perspectives in a few short lines. On the other hand, poets should perhaps be conscious of a wider audience when writing poems as to make them more accessible.

I apologize for rambling on. I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this very free and open discussion in the comments section below. Cheers!

Author:

Photo Credit: Heather Kresge

1. Tell us about your short story in Volume 20. How did it come to be?

A pretty huge percentage of the stories that I write begin as things that I just think are funny, just little jokes that I’m telling to myself. Initially, the only thing I knew about “How I Came to See the World” was that I wanted to write about someone having a pet skunk. For whatever dumb reason, I thought that was just hilarious. So, most of the early work that I did on this story was just figuring out what kind of a person would want to own a skunk. Somehow, the paragraphs about the neuroscience study found their way into the story–those were based on an actual research study that I participated in when I was a grad student and didn’t really have enough money to afford anything beyond my rent.

2. What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

My older brother, Phil McAndrew, is a cartoonist and an illustrator, and when we were growing up, we always used to draw comics with our friends. I always imagined that I would end up having a career in comics. But I was never crazy about super-heroes or action stories, and that stuff dominates so much of comic culture, and in retrospect, I think part of me was always kind of exhausted by comics. I never thought of myself as a writer though, and it wasn’t until I was a senior in college and took my first ever writing workshop, with Phil LaMarche, that it began to feel like a thing I wanted to do. Phil was a fantastic teacher, and on some level, I think that I owe him some thanks for all of the writing I’ve done since then.

3. How has writing shaped your life?

In the most concrete terms, writing has helped me get jobs as both a tutor and a teacher (my primary sources of income for the past several years). I try not to be too spiritual or grandiose about writing, but I do also think that, while I’ve lived a much different life from either of the characters in “How I Came to See the World,” writing has helped me with a lot of the same things they’re struggling with: being honest, setting goals, and trying to find some purpose or meaning in my life.

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work?

Carson McCullers has always been one of my favorite writers. Her second novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye, was probably the first book I ever read that made me feel like, “yeah, this is the sort of book that I want to write.” Amy Hempel and Stephanie Vaughn are a couple of other writers whose stories I always look to as the sort of thing I want to strive for. I’m always inspired by my friends, too. My friend Cameron Barnett just published his first book, The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water, which is a collection of really beautiful poems, and being at his book launch reading in Pittsburgh last year–just seeing him, seeing that all of this is possible and that it’s all worthwhile–was easily the most important literary event of my recent life.

5. What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

There are always at least five or six things that I’m rotating between. I’m hopefully getting close to finishing a manuscript of short stories. The story that’s been demanding my attention this past month or so is about a haunted house. I also have a nonfiction piece that I’ve been working on for several years about a woman who lived her entire life off the grid, in a house out in the woods–about an hour north of where I live in Pittsburgh–without running water, heat, or electricity.

Visit Tyler’s website and follow him on Twitter.