{"id":1382,"date":"2010-09-10T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T18:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=1382"},"modified":"2025-02-27T10:56:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T18:56:35","slug":"kathy-fagan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/kathy-fagan\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 66: Kathy Fagan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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About Kathy Fagan<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Kathy Fagan\u2019s newest collection is Lip (Eastern Washington UP, 2009). She is also the author of the National Poetry Series selection The Raft (Dutton, 1985), the Vassar Miller Prize winner MOVING & ST RAGE (Univ of North Texas, 1999), and The Charm (Zoo, 2002). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Slate, Field, Ploughshares, The New Republic, and The Missouri Review, among other literary magazines, and her nonfiction, in River Teeth. Fagan is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Ohioana, and the Ohio Arts Council. Formerly the Director of Creative Writing and the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, she is currently Professor of English and Editor of The Journal.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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A Profile of the Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Notes on \u201cSelf-Portrait as Sycamore in Copper & Pearl\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSelf-Portrait as Sycamore in Copper & Pearl\u201d is one poem\u2014one of the longest poems so far\u2014 in a new book-length manuscript, tentatively titled Sycamore. For over a year I\u2019ve been researching and observing these trees, and I realized that I\u2019d referenced them in previous books, sometimes misidentifying them, often not naming them directly. Clearly they\u2019d been working at the periphery of my vision, vision meaning eyesight and foresight in this case, and I wanted to figure out what that could mean. The notion of self-portrait also, though somewhat trendy at the moment, helped me to bridge my natural persona-writing tendencies with something that felt more authentically autobiographical\u2014except, of course, in this case, the self-portrait is presented as a tree. That imposed distance allows me to draw on elements of culture and history
that a single human lyrical speaker might not be capable of. The trees\u2019 cultural ubiquitousness,
their longevity and silence, their vulnerability and enormity, their invisibility, adaptability, and
usefulness\u2014all of that feels right now very close to me, and \u201cother\u201d enough to hold my interest.
In my 2009 collection, Lip, various personae speak\u2014angrily, flippantly, loudly, bitterly\u2014they
talk A LOT. It\u2019s a talky book. The project of Sycamore is more about listening: like holding a
stethoscope up to the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My challenge, in all of these poems, is structure and scope. I won\u2019t discuss scope here, but as for
structure, \u201cSelf-Portrait as Sycamore in Copper & Pearl\u201d required a visually and syntactically expansive, branch-like stanza. I had to let enough light in and around the lines for the trees\u2019
many colors to shine, but I also had to focus the eye\u2014via the short lines\u2014on less pastoral
images. Spiritually I think the poem has an ancestor in Frost\u2019s \u201cDirective,\u201d in the sense that both
poems insist on acknowledging the flawed and moribund within an idyllic setting. Both \u201cguides\u201d
have only at interest our getting lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes on Reading<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure I could think of at least three underrated books, but in the interest of not leaving anyone out let me just say that I recommend Christopher Howell\u2019s Light\u2019s Ladder to my friends and students and they devour it. I myself return to it again and again. I am also re-reading Lorca, Didion, Stevens, and Dickinson. I\u2019m reading, for the first time, Ron Silliman\u2019s The New Sentence and Francine Prose\u2019s Goldengrove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My major early influences were Poe, Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, and Philip Levine. I\u2019m old enough to read them all again now and to love them freshly, and I realize I had awfully good taste as a child. I can\u2019t write without words and pictures around. Dictionaries, field guides, poems, exhibit pamphlets. I have a picture file with literally hundreds of photos of sycamores at various times of the day in all seasons and locales. Word breeds word. Image begets image. I\u2019m always striving to write a poem, but to think poetically\u2014openly and expansively and minutely and emotionally and architecturally and musically all at once\u2014that\u2019s the exquisitest part.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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\"Issue<\/figure>\n\n\n

“Self-Portrait as Sycamore in Copper & Pearl” by Kathy Fagan<\/a><\/h2>\n\n

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