How often had you sent
out Paper Anniversary before it was chosen for the 2009 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize?
Many,
many times, Keith. The book had been short-listed for just about everything. The university where I teach rewards research
and writing, but it’s not a “publish or perish” institution, so I had the luxury of time. I kept working
on the book until I felt a degree of comfort that it was ready. I also had the luxury of being selective in where I sent it,
which may have been a factor in its taking so long to find a publisher. I submitted the manuscript to the same contests and
presses year after year, and it was a finalist so many times that I was beginning to think the book had what in baseball is
known derisively as “warning track power”—that it sounded good off the bat and carried a long ways but didn’t have enough pop to leave the yard. I never gave up on the book, though, and
kept trying to make each iteration a little stronger, a little more cohesive, hoping it would find a sympathetic reader. Maybe
the wind was blowing out that day.
Tell me about the title. Had it always been Paper Anniversary? Did it go through any other changes?
The book’s
had about as many titles as it has poems. Ed Ochester, who directs the Pitt Poetry
Series, picked Paper Anniversary after the book had been accepted. It’s from the title of a poem that’s
at the center of the collection. Ironically, I suppose, the poem deals with the difficulty of naming things.
It seems
like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published: that they must
win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their
book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?
I was mostly interested in finding the book a good home.
The prize was just gravy. Being in the Pitt Poetry Series with all those poets I hold in the highest regard—Larry Levis,
Ted Kooser, Cathy Song, Kate Daniels, Greg Orr, it just goes on and on—that’s
the real prize. The advice I would give is envision your book on the backlist of
whatever publishing house you send to—it’ll be there soon enough—and ask yourself, “Is this good company
to be in?” Not a hard question to answer with Pitt.
What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through
as you were sending it out?
Paper Anniversary went through many versions, many orderings. Even though it’s
just a collection of poems and not a “concept album” type of book, I still was deeply concerned that the poems
progress in some coherent way. The book doesn’t have to be read sequentially
at all, but that’s the way most people read a book of poems, so I wanted each poem to not be disruptive of the poems
around it. It took some doing.
How
involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?
Pitt has an excellent designer, Ann
Walston. She listened very patiently to my, um, generous amounts of input. My long
line is hard to manage in a standard book format and I had definite ideas about how I wanted the pages to be set up. Despite
all my input, the book looks great. She did a beautiful job.
Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?
Again,
Pitt was a pleasure to work with. The image I chose, Bookshelf With Sunbeams by Memphis artist Burton Callicott,
is from the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. I’ve loved that painting for a long
time. And in ways I can’t fully articulate, I believe Mr. Callicott’s
project in his painting is related to what I’m trying to do on the page. It hangs on the second floor of the museum,
a few blocks from my house. These are Memphis poems, written in Memphis even when they aren’t
explicitly about Memphis, so it is fitting that a Memphis artist is on the book.
What about the publication of the actual poems in journals and magazines
prior to the book being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the poems published before you
were sending out your manuscript?
A good editor like Ed Ochester is capable of reading
a book and making a judgment as to its worth without consulting the Acknowledgments page to see what journals have put their
imprimatur on the individual poems. (The world needs more good editors—can’t have too many of ’em.) But
I think a book’s journal credits do have a story to tell about the tastes of the poet, and maybe a little to say about
the savor of the poems themselves. My work tends to get published in places like Shenandoah, The Georgia Review,
the Southern Review, Southern Humanities Review, Southwest Review, any journal with some version
of “South” in its name. Sou’wester.
How much work did you do as far as editing
the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?
Though none was required, I did make
a couple of changes after the book was accepted. Actually sending the thing off to press and being confronted by the absolute
ending of its evolution somehow casts a manuscript in an even harsher, clearer light. It’s the book’s date with
the gallows, so to speak, and the thinking of the poet becomes wonderfully clarified. I was happy that the collection stood
up well in those conditions.
What
do you remember about the day when you saw your finished book for the first time?
We went to dinner at Café
Society, a neighborhood restaurant. I had the filet.
How has your life been different since your book came out? Did it become
a factor in getting a future job for you?
I’m thrilled at the prospects of the book becoming a factor in helping me keep
the job I’ve got. I’ve been
teaching at Union University for 22 years. It’s a great job.
If you struck up a conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a
few minutes you eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry published, how would you answer their
next question: “What’s the book about?”
That’s a tough one. I try to stay out of conversations on public
conveyances. And “What’s the book about?” is a difficult question for even the best book of poetry. What’s
Harmonium about? Or Geography III? (I’m pretty sure it’s about more than geography.) I’d
say Paper Anniversary is one man’s attempt to make sense of the stories his life has churned up, and that by
reading such a thing, I’d hope the reader’s own world might begin to register a little more sharply on the retina.
What have you been doing to promote Paper
Anniversary, and what have those experiences been like for you?
I like to read poems out loud and talk about craft. The
book has provided me with a more pressing reason for doing that. I’ve given
readings at The Southern Festival of Books and our local independent bookstore, Davis Kidd Booksellers. It’s been a
busy spring, with events already at the AWP Convention in Washington, D.C. and Vanderbilt
University, and I’ll be reading shortly at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and UNC
Greensboro. But I have many open dates in fall 2011 and spring 2012!
What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?
People
who take up the art of poetry and pursue it long enough to complete a book have already demonstrated an imperviousness
to even the most reasonable advice from family, clergy, and loved ones. I’ve
disregarded miles and miles of wise counsel. To my detriment. It probably wouldn’t
do me any good to wish for more.
What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the
works?
I’m writing poems. Same as always. They say some boxers fight tentatively as they’re rising through the
ranks, and then, when they’ve had success and finally win a belt, they are
transformed and start to fight like champions. Poetry isn’t exactly the same
as prize fighting, but it’s not a bad thing to hope for.
Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?
This is a common question and a thought-provoking
one, but I think these days it is largely a question about celebrity: Why aren’t
poets bigger deals in our culture? Why aren’t poets consulted by presidents? Why don’t they do American Express
commercials and lip sync their poems during halftime of the Super Bowl? The thing is, poetry does create change. I don’t
believe it; it does. We read Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror and we come out transformed on the other side. All
art changes us. We look at a painting, it moves us, it stops us in our tracks and we are changed. We listen to a piece of
music and the world seems less barbarous for a few notes, the world is less barbarous for a measure or two. That
will have to be enough. My poetry has never gotten me a better table in a restaurant, it’s had no discernible impact
on our nation’s foreign policy, it’s never made my children’s schools any better—the only thing in
my immediate power that does is when I show up myself and volunteer for something, maybe I’m reading in my daughter’s
third-grade class, not my poems but someone else’s writing, and the kids go quiet as I bend open the book, waiting for
me to find where I left off the week before, and then we begin to listen to every word Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote a long time
ago, during the Great Depression, and for a few minutes all of us are changed.
The Literary
Majesty of the King James, Bobby C. Rogers talks about learning
to be a poet while wearing a clip-on tie by Charlotte Pence
Bobby Rogers’s debut collection of poems harnesses much of its power through the contraries it
explores: realism and idealism, bitterness and hope, knowledge and mystery. Articulate, precise, and intense, Paper
Anniversary delivers poem after poem that, in the words of the author, provide “a certain kind of attention and
a desire to make sense of what it reveals.”
A professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Union University, Bobby C. Rogers
lives in Memphis. Paper Anniversary received the prestigious 2009 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the
University of Pittsburgh Press. His poems have also appeared in The Southern Review, the Georgia Review,
Shenandoah, and Poetry Daily, among many other journals. Rogers has won a Greensboro Review
Literary Prize and has earned three Pushcart nominations. He recently answered questions from Chapter 16
via email, in preparation for his appearance at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on April 4.
Chapter 16: First, congratulations
on winning the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. That is quite an honor. How long did it take to write this collection? And
what were some challenges while writing that ended up being fruitful to the work as a whole?
Rogers: It took a long, long time. The poems were written
over a period of fifteen years or more. I’m fortunate that my university strongly supports writing and research but,
at the same time, isn’t a publish-or-perish institution. I had the luxury of being able to continually rework and polish
the book, and I had the luxury of being selective in where I sent the manuscript. It’s a gift not to have to let go
of a book before it’s ready.
Chapter 16: I see a few thematic and stylistic concerns that create a wonderfully cohesive
collection. One, the uniformity of the line—a long line that I’ll come back to later—is featured in every
poem. And two, the subject matter focuses on the present landscape—a meat-and-three, a broken-into car trunk, yard hydrangeas—and
then enters into lyrical reflections that travel beyond the physical present. How would you, however, describe
what unites this collection of poems?
Rogers: I was very concerned with the book’s cohesiveness, even though it’s just
a collection of poems and not one of those “concept album” books where all the poems are written in the voice
of Mary Cassatt’s sous-chef or set during the Great Potato Famine or arranged according to the signs of the Mayan zodiac.
I’m
being unforgivably flippant. Some of my favorite books are sequences of that sort, The Bridge, say, or Roethke’s
greenhouse poems, or Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Kyrie, and I’m jealous of their continuity, how each poem
avails itself of the power of the larger construction. If there’s anything that unifies my book, it’s a certain
kind of attention and a desire to make sense of what it reveals. And then, as you say, there are the structural consistencies.
Chapter 16:
Could you talk about those “structural consistencies”? I think we are both referring to your long line here. Most
poems feature a line stretching from one margin to the next. This tradition goes back to the King James version of the Old
Testament, specifically the Psalms. William Blake also used the long line well, and so did Walt Whitman, of course. A few
contemporary poets who use it well include C.K. Williams, Marie Howe, and Charles Wright. What is your sense of the line and
its prosody?
Rogers:
I studied with Charles Wright at Virginia, and, as you might expect, he’s had a large influence on my work. So have most of the other folks you mention.
I am among the last of the Southern poets to come by the majesty of the King James Bible honestly—that is to say, as
a child sitting in an uncomfortable oaken pew Sunday after sultry Sunday. While wearing a clip-on tie. Back then, even the
deacons without a high school diploma would utter prayers of their own composition that recreated the Elizabethan cadences
of the King James, complete with thees and thous.
Nowadays in rural churches it seems it’s all New
International Version all the time. I’m not the one to say whether or not this development is good for the congregants’
souls, but I’m pretty sure it hasn’t done a whole lot for anybody’s writing. From birth, I’ve had
the scriptures read at me, and, you’re right, the Hebrew scriptures continue to influence how my words gather across
the page.
In
Paper Anniversary, I wanted my line to be as long and content-rich as possible and still have enjambment retain
its ability to surprise and mean. Whitman with enjambment. Not a bad goal. Dickinson freed of Common Measure. We’re
lucky with our poetic forebears in this country, aren’t we? But the most important and inescapable influence I’ve
had is the voices of family I’ve heard growing up, telling stories on the porch or after a meal with the sweet smell
of Turkish tobacco from a Camel cigarette hanging in the air, sometimes the same story we’d heard over and over for
years, decades even, voices seeking to hand something on, to be listened to, to be acknowledged.
It’s not always lying when we
tell an old story, but even when it is, there’s a faithfulness to keeping the act of telling alive, a faithfulness to
something beyond the facts, to something truer than the truth. It was a blood sport, actually. You had to earn your floor
time on that porch. No one wanted to listen to a flat story. The long poetic line I’m working in right now seems to
be the best way score the stories that I’ve been given to tell and earn my piece of time telling them.
Chapter 16:
How do you decide when to break the line?
Rogers: I try not to break them. I’ve come to view the line as a void that I have to
struggle to fill, a form that preexists whatever words I might dream up to populate it. Rather than taking a mile and a half
of prose and chopping it up, I try to expand a line from its interior to its edges. When I’m revising, I trust the line
more than anything else. If the words reside honorably in the line, that’s strong evidence for me that they must have
a reason for being there. Those are the words that survive into the next draft.
Chapter 16: The Psalms are often divided into
two main types: laments and hymns. Which category would you place your poems?
Rogers: Robert Alter will tell you that categorizing the
psalms is problematic at best, but I’ve been unable to get away from them, from their narrative arc, their directness
and simplicity of expression, their bitterness and celebratory hope, their blues-like qualities and their formality, their
anger with God and their absolute dependence on something beyond their own competence. I hope there’s a praiseful note
in even my bitterest lament.
Chapter 16: One of the poems in this collection—“The Creative Process”—serves
as an ars poetica, suggesting how a poem can serve as an extension of our memories, a way to stave off transience
and impermanence. Could you talk about some of your thoughts regarding this poem?
Rogers: You make do with what you have. Sometime I sense
in my students—and I used to detect it in myself—that they are dissatisfied with their world, that they distrust
it and long for more exotic surroundings, cities with name recognition and events that are more compelling and poem-worthy
to dress up their days. They haven’t yet fully come to believe that a parking lot in Jackson, Tennessee, where they’ve
just slammed the car door and slung a book bag up to their shoulder, where the afternoon light throws the outline of every
bumper onto the veiny asphalt in some crazy and rhythmed way, where they’re late and lonely and hungry and not as prepared
as they’d like to be, can have anything at all to do with art. The sooner we all get over that the better.
Chapter 16:
Finally, what are some exciting trends you are seeing in contemporary poetry right now?
Rogers: Living in Memphis frees you from having to keep
up with all the exciting trends, but it’s no problem at all keeping up with the work of the poets I love, and finding
new ones. We live in a time of great poetry. Charles Wright and Adrienne Rich and Philip Levine still walk the earth and write
poems. So many great poets to devour: Andrew Hudgins, Mark Doty, B.H. Fairchild, Claudia Emerson, James Tate’s prose
poems, Louise Glück, and on and on. Tennessee is full of good poets: Marilyn Kallet, Mark Jarman, Kate Daniels, Bill
Brown, John Bensko, Jeff Hardin—and those are just a few of the ones I count as personal friends. So many good new books
being published by Pitt and Carnegie Mellon and LSU, by Graywolf and BOA and Red Hen. I have no patience with the voices that
bemoan the state of poetry and say it’s dead or doesn’t matter. I pity them. To say poetry is dead is an admission
of illiteracy.
