[Rick Mullin]

Well, I noticed after throwing my little fit that the web journal exists to provide resources to educators. But this makes me kind of sad--that form has to treated as something on the side, not to be afraid of, etc.

In painting, the revival of representational pictures is better established. Nobody thinks it brave or quaint to make a picture that is not entirely abstract now, even though it was a rare college art curriculum that allowed anything other than abstraction and conceptual art in the 1970s. The tradition, which never died, of course, came back in full force. There were no New Representational painters, though there were heroes, such as David Park and the Bay Area Figurative movement that formed around him in the late 50s.

I like how Alicia has described how writing in form brings forth something that wouldn't likely emerge without the constraint... the glorious paradox. But other than that, I think we should avoid discussing technical aspects of form and look askew at anyone who would ask quaint questions. Otherwise we risk cementing the obscurity of the grand tradition in poetry in this dark age.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Reading “Lost and Found” alongside “The Barnacle,” Alicia’s new poem in Poetry, is a wonderful reminder of how much this poet brings to the party. The longer poem is rich with bright threads of playfulness woven into a more somber-hued fabric of erudition and emotional profundity. And the short one is an example of light verse that combines serious heft with its jokey, frisky fun. (Alicia’s classical learning and intellectual firepower have never dimmed the twinkle in her eye. She was the Light featured poet some years back, and more recently wrote an insightful essay of appreciation for Julie Kane’s feature.)

As for the interview, I particularly love her answer to the question about “your allegiance to traditional or received forms.” She replies, “I wouldn’t say I had an ‘allegiance’ to form, rather a knack for it.” That’s not only wicked smaht, as they say in Boston, it also strikes me as delightfully subversive. In some precincts of our small world, formal poets adopt the attitude that writing in rhyme and meter amounts to professing a creed or waging a crusade, not playing an enjoyable game that we happen to be good at. So her answer does the opposite of telling formalists what they want to hear. The interviewer’s questions may be pat and uninspired -- poet interviews, like post-game athlete interviews, have their conventions and cliches -- but I sure don’t see any liveliness deficit on Alicia’s side of the exchange.

[Gregory Dowling]

I included "Lost and Found" in a course I did on American narrative poetry (20th and 21st century) last year and the students loved it. (The other poets included were Frost, Bishop, Hecht, Merrill and David Mason.) As most of the students were Italian, they were fascinated to see ottava rima coming to life in 21st-century poetry in English.

[Rick Mullin]

Well, Alicia told you what you wanted to hear, Chris!~,:^)

I alluded to the more interesting point she has made about form elsewhere: That it frees us from the cerebral constraints that confine us when we run on an open field. It pulls something from us that we might not have gotten to.

That's not all it does. But it's hardly "playing an enjoyable game that we happen to be good at". Or, I should say, that when it is such a game, it shows.

I would just find it refreshing to read or hear her discussing something else entirely. Something that interests her.

Rick

[Orwn Acra]

Great answers to, as Rick says, boring questions which are questions only and not conversation starters. This is less surprising when one looks at the masthead.

[Rick Mullin]

…A big problem with this interview and others like it is that the questions were apparently (...well, they were no doubt, actually...) e-mailed to Erica and Alicia, and the two of them sent back written responses. This is deadly for the obvious reason that an interviewee’s response cannot direct the next question. This practice of interviewing via e-mail is an insidious trend in journalism. I’m a business journalist and very frequently public relations people, or my sources themselves, ask for a convenient list of questions for them to answer in writing. I refuse to give them a list (they are often shocked that I reject their suggestion, the e-mail exchange seeming to them so efficient and convenient!). Usually I have my way and there is an old fashioned “live” interview. And during the really good ones, I throw my prepared questions away. I find out only during the interview what I really need to be asking. This is, of course, from Journalism 101, a course that is no longer taught.


A great example of where questions are sent out and answers typed in is the “By the Book” feature in the New York Times Book Review in which, this week, Nathan Lane tells us what’s on his night stand. I like reading what certain folk have to say in this feature, but it would be better if there were a real discussion.