The Winning Poem: A Klee In Coal, By Janet I. Buck

M.T.: How did you begin to write poetry?

I don't think most poets are intellectuals. I think they are feelers, and they must proceed with their writing lives as if their emotions have merit. I spent forty years denying the fabric and seams of my disability precisely because I thought it was of no interest to universal eyes, and feared (I think) that a dissertation on missing limbs and a plethora of anatomical disasters would amount to nothing more than a pool-side chat at a pity party for one. In retrospect, I find it interesting that pride kept secrets of my demons from coming to the surface; yet, I had to tread the water of layered ghosts for a good length of time before I ever discovered that there was anything there beyond the confines of meretricious shame and self-absorption.

M.T.: Who are some of the writers/poets who have influenced your work?

J.B.: My writing has been shaped by a number of influences, most importantly by the work of Alice Walker. Our disabilities are quite distinct. She lost sight in her right eye from a BB gun accident. My leg was amputated above the knee when I was seven years old (all a result of a grand-scale collection of congenital abnormalities). What I share with Alice Walker is deformity and defamation and resuscitation of a sort. The appeal of my art is inseparable from the hideous tomes of tragedy. They are the rulers of my existence and frame the manner in which I see the world around me.

M.T.: Tell us about the creative process. How do you go about writing a poem?

J.B.: I play with words constantly: in the car, in the shower, in the laundry basket, in bed. Writes kitchen always has a light on. Bulbs of syllables come and go, short-out in chaos of urgency, and walk with their plugs in the wall. Poetry is like a car phone that puts one in touch with what matters. If you leave it on but dont use it, the battery goes dead. The urgency of a writers swell is like poison oak. You run across the pain and it rubs off, then settles in your system, to be revived (unfortunately at times) by that awful itch you have to scratch or quell somehow. Articulating the vernacular of agony and grief is a cousin to tight screaming fits. What I cannot share in conversation becomes a poem. It is born of fountains of the deepest cold.

M.T.: Tell us about your upcoming book of poetry.

J.B.: Calamitys Quilt, to be released by Newtons Baby Press on December 1st, is a collection of poems on topics such as disability, catharsis, family, love, grief, and social consciousness. Many of the poems are new and a number have been published in journals such as The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Southern Ocean Review, New Thought Journal, In Motion, The Horsethief's Journal, and Tintern Abbey. The concept of turning calamity into a quilt works, I believe, on several levels. There is first the action of catharsis and creation (of making the most you can from old cloth and memory); and second, the warmth and comfort of a reader learning he is not alone in his own huge sea of despair and strife.

MT.: Tell us about the articles you write to help other writers/poets.

J.B.: I've written a number of essays on the writing process, ones which I think have helped me make sense out of my own need to write. They address topics such as inspiration, catharsis, the process of writing, and coping with rejection. I have told myself a million times: a rejection letter for a poem is not a value judgment concerning my life nor the meter of my pounding heart, but I think the notion needs to be hammered in. This passage from one of my essays should demonstate the tone and message of my small slap at espousing practical poetic theory: The ground-rules for effective poetry are simple: subtle not obtuse; visible not invisible; appetite wetting, not the Sahara Desert style of stranded nouns without the oasis of sensory description somewhere in the galaxy. Everyone's path to inspiration has a different set of stones, but accessibility means that the reader knows or intuits what continent the writer lives on; interpretation is tossing all the maps out the window and relying on the primary presence of somehow vaguely familiar road-marks to carry you to a desired destination. Here we have the oxymoron: creativity defined by traditional form or rather a departure from it. The bowling pin here is accurate release, not a pissing contest for sesquipedalians, but a target (theme), an arrow (imagery), and a hand (style) which have to blend their missions.

M.T.: Could you explain the meaning, the theme, and the significance of your poem: A Klee in Coal?

J.B.: A Klee in Coal is a piece that explains the nature of my art: writing is an emotional not an intellectual exercise. It doesn't belong on a pedestal. A celebrated painter who did wonders with color, Klee is the springboard for the admission that grief is as basic and raw and plain as pure sand, a texture that is relevant and reachable in a universal sense. It crosses the boundaries of time, genre, race, and nationality. I think of a pen as a clothesline for discontent, where the wrinkles and the liquid of sadness in life hang out to dry. Sharing sorrow and explaining its threads makes it more bearable. When I spread my shame like putty between admissions cracks, I smooth the way for others to reach for their own knives. When you walk beside me in release, a magical evolution is set in motion. Writing is not about making statements, but about the sanctuary of the reach and the permanent connection that is made when human hearts unite in understanding.