UPDATED to add: I. GOT. THE. JOB.

Am too excited to type. So thrilled. Will give you all the details soon.

Am over. the. moon.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for all the energies you sent out on my behalf!! It worked!!!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In honor of Poetry Thursday (and because I feel so very, very indebted to you all for the abondanza of love and good wishes that you have sent out into the universe?a veritable heat-seeking missile that will surely help me to land mon m?tier? I have a tremendous need to GIFT you with something extraordinary and wonderful) et voila: an interview with the incandescent Lizzie Skurnick.

She, the American poet who blogs with impunity. (Everyone knows she gives good linkage).

Now, I know some of you enjoy the word play that goes on around here, but if you have not frequented The Old Hag, you are missing some seriously sexy lexemes. She is a kundalini master of wordplay. You think I am exaggerating? Allow me to present Exhibit A: Penvy.

Penvy, "the wave of nausea that hits you when you read about forthcoming books by people you went to college or even once slept with that came out to great acclaim while you haven?t written anything in?.ever."

People, this is the woman who introduced me to John P. Marquand. I shall say no more.

But wait?there is more. SO much more. Not only does she grace us with information about her loves (poetic, obvs?I?m no Mary Hart), and her process?she shares a poem that has never before been published!

Truly, she slays me. Am slain. I?ll shut up now so you can enjoy.

(Ms. Elizabeth Skurnick, clearly neither old, nor haggish).

bp: How much time are you able to spend writing poetry? Do you find it comes in waves/cycles, or are you fairly consistent with your approach?

Lizzie: I set many plans for my writing poetry, and sadly they mostly gang aft agley. I sort of scribble what comes to mind wherever, then place it in a big heap that I try to sort from time to time. I was recently at UCross and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and, while I wasn't able to get a lot of poetry down, I did place my scraps for my next book--for which I already have a title!--in order in a very attractive red folder.

Strangely, my most productive time was when I was writing for various teen series--a book about every six months. I used to write at this bar near my house called the Charles Village Pub, which had three-prong sockets at every booth. During each chapter, I would get one or two poems. I should probably find another task that's slowly killing me so I can finish the second book.

bp: Is there a particular time of day that works best for you? How about place?

Lizzie: I get a lot of poems when I am driving, out walking, in the shower, swimming, lifting weights, and out in bars with friends. Basically, if I am situated so that I could hit someone, get hit, drown, drop a weight on my shoe, or look intolerably pretentious, I am golden. I wrote all the Husband poems while driving on the back of many Harper's that I totally never read?the first, "My Husband is a State Trooper"*, immediately after being pulled over. (I did let the Statie pull out ahead of me first.)

For example, last week at the VCCA, taking a walk after a dinner, I passed a group of cows and was struck with a few beginning lines and a final and penultimate couplet. The lines were genius. Genius! Sadly, I had no pen. I booked over to the studio area and overturned everything in my studio. No pen. I scrambled to the lunch room, mumbling the lines over and over (I retain for about 7 minutes, then it's over) knowing that kitchens ALWAYS contain pens. Went through all the drawers. Sprang upon the phone, which had a message pad with many messages written in pen and pencil next to it. NO SIGN OF EITHER. Raided the art closet; considered actually painting the poem with burnt ochre. Considered the worst option: Interrupting another artist, which at a colony is kind of the equivalent of busting in on someone in the bathroom and snatching the roll of toilet paper from the handle. Am coward; could not. Finally ran back to my room, where there actually was a pen. Later discovered EVERYONE was writing about the cows, sketching cows, drawing philosophical truths from cows. I am returning to getting pulled over, because at least my car always has pens.

bp: Speaking of place, do you find yourself inspired to write about Baltimore much? In general, how much does a specific place inform your work?

Lizzie: Mostly, I am inspired by ex-boyfriends and places of commerce -- Best Buys, nail salons, hospitals (they are places of commerce now!), hotels, airports, my cubicle at work, etc. Wordsworth had the country, but Target is my country. The ex-boyfriend thing I should certainly try to outgrow, but I haven't yet.

I have been writing light verse about Baltimore for the Maryland Morning show on our local NRR affiliate, WYPR, and I will write light verse about ANYTHING. Right now I am trying to work up something about the alien Chinese crabs in the harbor.

bp: Do you remember the first poem you ever memorized? If yes, what was it and where were you in your life?

Lizzie: The first poem I ever memorized was "Jabberwocky", and I was on my parents' bed with my brother at bedtime, being grilled by my mother. I can still recite it, although the first stanza is escaping at present; I seem to be coming in at "And hast though slain the Jabberwock?/Come to my arms, my beamish boy!" which may be my favorite two lines ever. You know what I just realized? I still write in rhyming tetrameter. Mystery solved.

Also, I periodically re-memorize "Leda and the Swan", "The More Loving One," and Sir Thomas Wyatt's "They Flee from Me...", because, in my old age, the words do flee from me. Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" I like to recite, especially the first stanza. ("My mother died when I was very young/and my father sold me while yet my tongue" is a great rhyme.) My primary regret is that I was not an English boy born in 1906, forced to memorize reams and reams of poetry while declining Latin verbs. If there is a semi-sadistic teacher with one last Mr. Chips-y semester in him/her, I can pay.

bp: What poets electrify you? That's to say-- which poets, when you read them, inspire you to write? Fill your spirit? Feel like they are expressing your own thoughts and experiences?

Lizzie: For contemporary poets, I really love Cathy Bowman and Kay Ryan. My old teachers Andrew Hudgins, Sandy McClatchy and Greg Williamson are great. Personal faves have always included Alan Shapiro, David Shapiro and Dean Young. Donne over Milton, Auden over Pound, Randall Jarrell any day of the week. For really young poets, I liked Ben Lerner's early stuff, that of my friend Dan Groves, and a lot of Julianna Baggott. I loved the Paris Review poems in the 90s, and I am really fond of the work Poetry is publishing right now. Do I even have to say Elizabeth Bishop and Emily Dickinson? I don't think it's humanly possible to object to them.

For my light verse, I got a few comparisons to Ogden Nash and Calvin Trillan, and I almost vaporized on the spot out of sheer thrill.

bp: Are there any song writers whose lyrics you feel are pure poetry?

Lizzie: I don't know about pure, but I do love that Nellie McKay; I think her rhymes are hilarious. I also like Gillian Welch a great deal. And this isn't quite an answer to your question, but I was trained as a singer, and I adore art songs--anything by Barber, Carter, Bolcom, Rorem. I really recommend a recording of Bolcolm's "I Will Breathe a Mountain", and Susan Graham's "Songs of Ned Rorem." At VCCA, I met the composer Daron Hagen and I am looking very forward to listening to some of his art songs. For that matter, you can't go wrong with Schubert or Schumann--particularly "Widmung," which sets a poem by Friedrich R?ckert. I do try to listen to art songs while writing, but I get distracted by singing along loudly and badly. I mostly have to listen while I'm doing the dishes--there is something miraculous about Aaron Copland's song cycle "12 Poems of Emily Dickinson"--if I were a better musician, I would do a cross-disciplinary class on music and poetry. I think it gets overlooked a lot in favor of ekphrasis, which is fine, but you can't wash dishes to it.

bp: When is the activity of analysis on a poem good and when is it too much, too much like killing a frog to cut it open and look inside?

Lizzie: Hmmm, analysis. I, too, dislike it. However, I think for a good poem, analysis is always good, as long as the analysis itself is good. Does that make any sense? A good poem can probably sustain quite a bit of analysis. Some can sustain centuries' worth, of course--but I think if you can maintain a robust discussion on a poem for at least a half an hour, it's still probably pretty good.

My pet peeve probably lies more with poets than critics on this issue. I hate a poem that's no fun, and I abhor poems that tack on a lot of work for nothing. (I will give them $500 dollars to the person that can at least bring me to tolerate language poets.) I am always having to semi-gently steer my students away from dropping frequent allusions to Elizabeth Bishop's work and the blood of Christ into their poetry. (Christ! He's everywhere.) Students should be forced to read all poetry, but prevented from associating themselves with Akhmatova until they are at least 67. (There is a very funny poem, "A Preface to an Omnibus Review", by Judson MItchum on this subject.)

bp: How/when did you know you were a poet? What kind of support/response have you received from family and friends?

Lizzie: I really did always write everything in verse, book reports, birthday cards, whatever. I still can do rhymes on the spot about everything. (I mean, I'm no Run D.M.C., but they do rhyme.) I just sang what I consider a DEEPLY clever song to my 6-week-old nephew about poop; he seemed into it. In terms of support, I tried to avoid having my family read my poetry for as long as possible because it's fairly personal and I find it mortifying. However, a family friend sent everything I published in college journals home to them (thanks a lot, Alex!), so I was sunk very young. With my book, the worst was when my mother said, "It's all right that you made me a monkey in your poem." (This CLEARLY was not all right.) She does love the book, though, and rereads it frequently. However, it makes me cringe anytime anyone who knows me in real life reads it--I am always counting on the fact that no one really reads poetry. But the most random people do. I recently ran into a high school friend I hadn't seen in years, and she said her father was crazy about it. My lawyer friends also seemed big on reading it. I thought lawyers had no free time. Apparently they are paid $400,000 a year to hang around reading my books and reviews. I am looking into somehow exploiting this market.

bp: Will you share a poem with us?

Lizzie: Here's a poem I mistakenly left out of the book--I read it recently at a reading, and everyone said it was their favorite. It may be that it just sounds good ALOUD, but in any case, here it is?published for the first time at Blue Poppy:

Back to Bed

I dug up the pathway to see the gray stone.
I rinsed the stones down to a dull alabaster.
The dull gray was sewage, the caretaker thought.
I rinsed down the pathway that steamed in the heat.

I cleaned out the mouse nest below the blonde cupboard.
I waxed it with Lysol and rough verdigris.
The mouse nest was peppered with corpses and rot.
I breathed in the wet, ammoniacal streak.

I loosened the yellowed and billowing blinds.
They fell in a dusty, impenetrable heap.
Grandmother died in the friction of August?
I planted a kiss on her plasticine cheek.

I scoured the cabinets with Clorox and soda.
I emptied the beaters and batters beneath.
Grandmother died in the fricative August.
Formstone resettled in billowing heat.

I'm wearing eggplant to every engagement.
You take my arm in the frictional heat.
Passers-by see us and think I look pregnant.
I fall asleep in the funeral suite.

The mattress was layered with mouse and antacid.
I filled the Hoover, then cracked it for cheap.
I blew up our bolstered, inflatable bed
And we rocked like a boat on a fictional sea.

copyright (c) Elizabeth Skurnick

* You can hear some of the Husbands intoned rather poorly here if you scroll down.

Elizabeth Skurnick's most recent publication is Check-In, a Pushcart-prize nominated chapbook published by Caketrain Books in 2005. Her poetry has appeared in The Iowa Review, Barrow Street, The Ledge, The Melic Review, The Sewanee Theological Journal, the anthology Shade (Four Way Books: 2004), and on the radio at WYPR's "The Signal" and "Maryland Morning." A lecturer in the Advanced Academics MA in Writing program at The Johns Hopkins University, she was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee, the AWP Poetry Fellow in Prague, and the recipient of residencies from Yaddo, Blue Mountain, The Ucross Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her reviews and features have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, New York Magazine, The Baltimore Sun, and many other publications.

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