Daniel Ausema was our most-read poet in December 2008. His poem “Running with the Eagle” — its evocation of the natural strength and beauty of the raptor and the inspiration the narrator draws from it — resonated with readers.
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Every Day Poets: What should readers expect when they see your byline on a poem?
Daniel Ausema: In poetry, nature often plays a big role, though I’ve been moving away from being exclusively a nature poet. My poems aren’t likely to be a place to look for humor, but I do include a lot of playfulness…or at least what I consider playful, whimsical. I describe poetry, especially free verse, as playing with words–messing around with the sounds and rhythms of words, turning images on their heads…to me that’s fun.
Part of that playfulness comes in conversation with other poems (and fiction) I’ve read. There’s a danger of being exclusionary, inaccessible, and looking only inward, but at the same time there’s the potential for depth and insight in allowing poems to speak to each other, so “Running with the Eagle” is something of a response to a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and my February poem, “Knot,” quotes a part of a poem by Herman Melville. Usually it’s not quite so overt, though.
Other than that, imagination and language itself are things I celebrate and explore.
EDP: You have been a journalist and have also written a good deal of fiction. How do writing non-fiction, fiction prose, and poetry — the challenges and rewards — differ?
DA: The reward of journalism is the reward of putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It’s not my first love, by any means, but taking a look at all the quotes and data and information I’ve gathered and working that into an engaging, informative piece is deeply rewarding, much like solving one of those brain-teaser challenges where you have to twist and pull until you get the metal ring past the string. It’s also a good way to learn things, and like Kipling’s elephant baby, I have a ‘satiable curiosity.
Poetry is pure play, which doesn’t mean frivolous. I consider play a high calling, an essential part of being alive.
Fiction is my first love, and what I spend most time on these days. Here too there’s an element of play, of discovery and imagination. And I can satisfy my curiosity on the most random of subjects and pass it off as something that will be useful for a story. I tend to agonize over it longer than with my poetry, but the rewards are much the same as for poetry.
EDP: How do you know whether an idea will be expressed better as a poem or in prose?
DA: Poetry, for me at least, is very image based. So a single powerful image, or a series of related images can sometimes get me to write them as poetry. But images are powerful in fiction too, and at times I’ve taken an idea I initially wrote as a story and turned it into a (very different) poem and vice versa. So I wouldn’t say I ever really know. It’s more a matter of what I choose to do.
EDP: Are there some common themes in your poetry?
DA: I was just noticing recently how common trees, games, and immigration appear in my fiction writing, and each of those shows up now and then in my poems too. But in poems it’s especially nature that recurs as a theme.
EDP: What most inspires you to write poetry?
DA: The natural world, I guess, though as I said I’m working at making my poetry more diverse. Words themselves and language in general also inspire me.
EDP: Who are some of your poetic inspirations (we note that “Running with the Eagle” is dedicated to Gerard Manley Hopkins)?
DA: Hopkins certainly, and E. E. Cummings are favorites. Also John Donne. William Carlos Williams (“These”), Marianne Moore (“Poetry”), Langston Hughes (“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”), T. S. Eliot (“The Hollow Men”), Matthew Arnold (“Dover Beach”). Those are all standard high school, or at least college, poetry class material. Perhaps somewhat less known, though certainly not unknown, are Wendell Berry’s Mad Farmer poems. “As soon as the generals and politicos / can predict the motions of your mind, / lose it [...] Be like the fox / who makes more tracks than necessary, / some in the wrong direction.”
EDP: What was the inspiration for “Running with the Eagle”?
DA: It stems in one part from the first time I saw a bald eagle in the wild. I was a camp counselor in West Michigan, canoeing down the Little Muskegon River. As we came to the backwater of a dam, the steep bluffs pulled back, and there it perched, not more than ten feet above the water. It wasn’t quite as aloof as in the poem–it flew downriver in front of us twice before choosing a higher perch, scaring a great blue heron in the process. The eagle stayed there then, but the heron kept on in front of us until we reached the backwater, screaming at us each time we came around a curve. I’ve never, before or since, heard a blue heron vocalize.
It was some years later (as well as several years ago now) that I decided to retell the event as a sort of reply to Hopkins’ “The Windhover,” which begins with the most breathlessly ecstatic sentence in any poem I’ve read: “I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- / dom of daylight’s dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding / Of the rolling level-underneath-him steady air, and striding / High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing / In his ecstasy!…” I don’t have the chops to approach that kind of ecstatic play, but I wanted to capture a bit of it, in a poem that’s far more, well, uncertain about its speaker’s place in relation to that bird of prey. The final line is intentionally cut off with fewer stresses to reflect that uncertainty.
EDP: Do you have any preferences with regard to poetic forms? How would you describe the forms and styles in which you typically work?
DA: What I’ve had so far in Every Day Poets is more structured than is my wont. I do enjoy fixed forms, but more typically I find free verse to fit how I want to say things. The poems I had last year in Mind Flights (“Exile, Self-selected”) and Raven Electrick (“Machines Tend the Abandoned Fields”) are probably most typical of what I’ve been writing lately in terms of form.
EDP: Thank you for your time.
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8 Responses to “Interview with Daniel Ausema”
Comments
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March 18th, 2009 at 2:50 am
I thought those were great questions, Nick and thank you Daniel for your very full and informative answers, as well as your excellent poems.
March 19th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Thank you for a very interesting interview. I can relate to many of the answers provided and thoroughly enjoyed “Running with the Eagle” and the inspiration behind it.
March 19th, 2009 at 5:14 am
Thanks, Daniel, I found that very stimulating. I’ve just cut my teeth on a first poem and so it was fascinating to read your processes and thoughts, not least as a journalist writing poetry. Thank you!
March 19th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Interesting interview, thank you. I enjoyed the way you compared journalism to a jig-saw puzzle – I like the idea of putting the pieces together to come up with a coherent whole, a piece of prose. I think writing poetry is a bit like that, too.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:02 am
A very enjoyable and thought-provoking interview. I agree that the jigsaw analogy is excellent. This is something to return to – there is a lot to ponder!
March 19th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Excellent interview. Great, informative answers.
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:16 pm
(Belated) thanks for the comments, everyone! And thanks, Nick, for the interview questions.
March 25th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Hi Daniel,
I enjoyed reading this interview with it’s insight into how you work and find your inspiration.
You mentioned that play is an important part of being alive. I had never considered poetry as play before but this concept suddenly made a lot of sense. Thank you
Carol