Talking with Nathalie F. Anderson
Nathalie F. Anderson’s first book, Following Fred Astaire, won the 1998 Washington Prize from The Word Works. Her poems have been singled out for prizes and special recognition from the Joseph Campbell Society, The Cumberland Poetry Review, Inkwell Magazine, The Madison Review, New Millennium Writings, Nimrod, North American Review, and Southern Anthology, and have also appeared in APR’s Philly Edition, Cimarron Review, Cross Connect, Denver Quarterly, DoubleTake, The Louisville Review, Natural Bridge, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, The Recorder, Southern Poetry Review, Spazio Humano, and in the Ulster Museum’s collection of visual art and poetry, A Conversation Piece. A 1993 Pew Fellow, Anderson currently serves as Poet in Residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, and she teaches at Swarthmore College, where she is a Professor in the Department of English Literature and directs the Program in Creative Writing.
What others say about Nathalie Anderson:
“Nathalie Anderson’s poetry brings to my mind what John Logan’s called “a ballet of the ear.” She appreciates rich, textured language, and has a consciousness of sound as well as movement, elements more rare that you might think in contemporary poets. Her investigations of phobias, in particular, are smart, witty, and—haunting’ –Louis McKee
“Philadelphia poets owe Nathalie Anderson endless thanks for her tireless dedication to all that we do here in our city. No one has ever stepped forward with such indivisible scope in such a divisible environment as the poetry of Philadelphia. Her support and sincerity are the lessons for all poets to shift and widen the world view as much and as often as possible. Nothing but the best of thanks to Nathalie Anderson.” – CAConrad
The Interview:
Q. You have written that “anxiety — especially sexual anxiety — is my most frequent subject”. Is there a cause and effect?
I’m not certain what you mean by “cause and effect” here, but I do believe that anxiety inexorably turns a person self-conscious, and a self-conscious person inevitably becomes a more obsessed observer, so *maybe* the more anxious we are, the more likely we are to be able to perceive the structures supporting our anxieties, analyze them, display them. When I wrote this statement, almost 15 years ago, I was especially conscious of the double bind society imposes on women, punishing either pliancy or self-reliance, beauty or plainness, intelligence or air-headedness: as John Berger writes so chillingly, “a woman must continually watch herself.” I still try to write through my own anxieties, but my poems these days – in the wake of my father’s death from Alzheimer’s — probably focus more on anxious aging than on anxious sexuality or sexual politics.
Q. In the poem “The Miser” the male subject requests you not write about him, yet you do in images that could make the heart race a bit. Do you often refer to life events in your poetry?
I guess my poems nearly always arise from something I’ve experienced or observed, but – nearly always – I twist and intensify the inciting incident or perception until someone who’d been with me at the time might well not recognize it anymore. I like the force, the immediacy, that comes with the pronoun “I” – though, maybe ironically, that intensity sometimes leads me to write in the second or third person to soften the insistence of apparent confession. If “she” did it, after all, we’re all detached observers; and if “you” did it, then we’re all equally culpable! But I like what happens when an “I” enters a poem: I think the reader pays attention in a more engaged way.
Q. Your book “Following Fred Astaire” has been described as fine writing, wry humor, and relevant. Released in 1999 by Word Works; could you tell us how the book was developed?
Well, one answer would be that I wrote a bunch of poems, arranged them and re-arranged them and added to them obsessively over several years, realized finally that the conglomeration had become unwieldy, broke it in two, rearranged the poems again, and finally got lucky with a publisher! But a better answer is that the poems in this book do focus on anxiety – especially the sequence about peculiar phobias, the dream poems that punctuate the four sections, and the many poems where longing and apprehensiveness intertwine (like “Red Sea,” maybe about junior high school crushes; or “Gossip,” maybe about friends so intimate they’re perceived as – might as well be – adulterers). I think the book finally came together for me when I decided it was going to be about anxious desire, and so dropped from the manuscript most of the poems, however effective, that stood to the side of that topic. I like arranging poems in different arrays, to see what happens when they rub against new neighbors, and this book must have gone through at least 30 permutations before The Word Works chose it for their Washington Prize.
Q. My favorite lines from the poem, “The Troll” is “Dunk her or drown her, she pops right back up with her havoc and hoodoo. She’s the mange in your manger, iceberg in your bath.” What was the inspiration for this poem?
Thanks! I’ll mention for people who may not know that this poem appears in the Endicott Studio’s on-line Journal of Mythic Arts, one of several poems of mine that they’ve kindly picked up during the last couple of years: here’s the URL: http://www.endicott-studio.com/cofhs/chTroll.html I got the idea for the poem during a bout of extreme end-of-semester grouchiness when I appalled myself by responding with fury when a couple of people asked very small favors of me – I guess my own minor version of road rage. I felt like a troll, and started playing with the idea of a creature that would relish that rage rather than feeling shamed by it. There’s a lot of word-play in the poem, which I hope both softens its nastiness and also makes it more disturbing, moving from the familiar “thorn in the flesh” and “skeleton at the feast” towards more peculiar associations, like the mange and the iceberg.
Q. Ashland Poetry Press released “Crawlers” in 2006. Could you describe the book for us?
Here’s a version of what I’ve been saying to introduce the book at readings: Crawlers found its shape in the last years of my father’s life, and, as he lost himself to Alzheimer’s – as he forgot how to speak, how to eat, how to walk, how to stand – it made me think about what a struggle it is to learn how to do those things in the first place. So Crawlers poses poems about a child’s coming into consciousness with the complications surrounding the father’s loss of consciousness, drawing connections between a child’s ways of coping with bereavement – my mother died when I was three – and the father’s disappearance as he ages. In this book, too, I’m interested in the subtleties of domestic atrocity, the daily stinging cruelties hidden behind the wall of family. All our fairy tales – with their disregarded younger brothers, their murderous stepmothers, their Cinderellas – map this terrain, and the book plays with those archetypes – but it also skitters with arthropods: bugs, insects, crawlers. We share the earth with insects. They own our yards, our houses. Rather like our families, we can’t evade them.
I’m also interested here in the distinction that the literary and cultural critic Edward Said has made between filiation – accepting or acquiescing to the family and the world-view we’re born to – and affiliation – in which we actively choose our associates and our beliefs, even if they are the ones we were born into. Affiliation seems to me to extend the idea of standing on our own two feet, and in the book, I’ve used travel as a metaphor for getting beyond the limitations of the self. So, although the riddle of the sphinx doesn’t actually appear in the book, I think it makes use of the implications of walking on four legs, two legs, three.
Q. You maintain a poetry events list that is without equal in the Delaware Valley and beyond. How did you get involved with the list and how does one person manage so much material?
The list began on a much smaller scale: I wanted my students to know about literary events in the Philadelphia area, and eventually began to pass along the information I was gathering, to friends and then to friends of friends, and so on. I now send announcements to upwards of 450 people, not counting my students. How does one person manage so much material? Ineptly, alas! I try to keep up with events at local colleges and universities, but otherwise the task of keeping current with every reading series inevitably gets beyond me. I used to make up calendars periodically, but that labor quickly became overwhelming too, so now I’m more a conduit than a compiler: people send me their announcements, and I pass them along. I’m thus dependent on the list itself for its effectiveness, and I thank you ALL for assisting me so admirably! For anyone who’s not yet signed up, my e-mail address is nanders1@swarthmore.edu. I should mention that there’s another, frankly more professional list in the area, a list run by Kathye Fetsko Petrie that leans more towards fiction than poetry. It costs money to access, but it’s a lot more comprehensive: book clubs, book reviews, book advertisements. I believe Kathye’s e-address is kpwriting@comcast.net.
Q. You have written libretti for several operas. Where is your love of opera rooted and are there any new projects in this area?
I actually came late to opera. My former colleague at Swarthmore, Sue Snyder, would sometimes invite me to performances at the Met, and I was blown away by the force of the emotion those singers could project. Even for a novice, operas are laced with familiar melodies, so that suddenly an aria will snap the plot into clarity, suffusing happenstance with implication. It’s been thrilling to work with this material, to put together the little verbal skeletons that music will flesh out and bring to life on stage. Thomas Whitman and I are bringing a new project to completion soon: a version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” where Holmes is bested (as Watson puts it) “by a woman’s wit.” We’re going to try out some scenes at Swarthmore this coming spring; and Orchestra 2001 plans to present the opera in concert during their 2008-9 season.
Q. The poem, “Country Night,County Donegal” describes a country western night in an Irish Bar. I did not know the Irish enjoyed country music let alone a professor from Swarthmore. Do tell?
The year I wrote that poem, Garth Brooks was the top-selling musical artist in Ireland: amazing, I agree! If you go to a local pub in, say, Connemara or Donegal, where various local people regularly get up to sing, they’ll typically serenade you with Johnny Cash or Patsy Cline! I confess I prefer Irish traditional music to just about any other kind, but I grew up in the South, where that tradition turned itself into Bluegrass, and I enjoy especially the edgy area between country and rock: the Band, Roseanne Cash, kd lang.
Q. Could you describe your experience and responsibilities as the “Poet in Residence” at the Rosenbach Museum and Library?
A little over eight years ago, the Rosenbach decided, as part of their community outreach programming, to sponsor poetry workshops at local centers for the elderly. Although they approached a number of individuals and organizations, I was the only person to carry through: I’ve been leading workshops at the JCCs Stiffel Center in South Philly for the Rosenbach every spring since then; in fact, this summer the Museum is publishing a small anthology of poems by the workshop participants, which I’ve helped to edit. During my second year with the program, the folks at the Rosenbach asked if I’d like to be “Poet in Residence” in recognition of the work I was doing, and of course I leaped at the chance. As the resident poet, I’ve also had the great pleasure of putting together readings at the Museum in conjunction with their exhibitions: an evening celebrating literary parodies; poets’ responses to early photographs or maps; poems wrestling with spiritual and secular rituals, occasioned by the exhibition of Judaica that’s up right now. The Rosenbach has put together small collections of the poems written for two of these events – 26 Letters, 26 Poets (poems commissioned for the exhibition “R is for Rosenbach,” celebrating the Museum’s 50th anniversary) and Conscious Mapping: Poets Journey through Verbal Geography – and should have one out any day for the Chosen exhibition. They also invite me to read nicely juicy passages on Bloomsday, which is such a cool thing!
Q. What direction do you see poetry moving in the first decade of this century?
Oh golly, I don’t know! One of the most exciting aspects of poetry these days, I believe, is that so many different styles seem to be flourishing at once. As I read through the journals, though, I’m struck lately by a return to what one might call lyric mystery – breath-taking phrases, often in disjointed, even surreal relation to one another. I think maybe this tendency springs (paradoxically?) from theory-intensive movements like LANGUAGE poetry: in denying subjectivity, side-stepping master narratives, and disguising its cerebral side, this sort of work sometimes begins to look surprisingly like Symboliste poetry, without the formal constraints.
Q. What poets were early influences on you and who do you read out of the current crop of poets?
I began my poetic initiation through my mother’s college poetry text, Louis Untermeyer’s anthology of modern British and American writers, and took especially to Hopkins, Yeats, Stevens, HD, Eliot – ironically, the very people I most frequently teach today – plus women writers like Christina Rosetti, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, Edith Sitwell, Emily Dickinson, Amy Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay. These days, I especially relish the contemporary Irish writers (Heaney, Longley, Muldoon, Boland, McGuckian, ni Dhomhnaill etc etc etc). I read a lot, but feel like I only scratch the surface of what’s available. Poets I’ve read this summer include Michael Dumanis (My Soviet Union), Jessica Fisher (my former student! whose book Frail-Craft won the Yale Prize for 2006; she’ll be reading at Swarthmore this spring), Terrance Hayes (Wind in a Box), HL Hix (Chromatic), Dorianne Laux (Facts about the Moon), and Natasha Trethewey (Native Guard).
Q. You were a fellow at Yaddo, awarded a Pew Fellowship and your books have received wide acclaim. What advice would you give poets who are applying for fellowships, grants and submitting work for publication?
I’d say, keep trying, and don’t take rejection personally. Not that I manage to avoid getting down at the mouth myself, but I try to look at these competitions as if they’re the lottery: winning is so unlikely that you can’t, you CANNOT, feel bad about not receiving notice! And if it happens that you do succeed, remember to reassure your fellow writers even as you celebrate, because – however wonderful your work – believe me, luck was part of that success!
Q. In addition to publishing your poetry you have read at a number of venues around the country. What are the benefits for a poet to share their work in public and specifically what is the benefit for you?
I love to read. I think the poet’s voice can raise the words off the page to grip the reader, and there’s something especially satisfying in seeing, actually seeing, people respond to your words. With so many people writing (and – alas – not so many people buying) poetry these days, poetry readings offer a space where you can introduce yourself to a wider audience. I know some poets are execrable readers of their own work – yes, I too have heard them – and I know that a lot gets lost when we try to take complications in by ear. But I think readings are dynamic, potent opportunities to extend our reach.
Q. Your work has been published widely in print and on the internet. There is a school of thought that the internet via online magazines has provided an outlet for poetry that no longer exists in the print form. The other school of thought is that the internet has reduced the quality of poetry that is available to readers. Do you have any thoughts on this?
I’m more a print person than an internet person, and haven’t often submitted my work to on-line zines. But I’ve seen simplistic work in magazines, and compelling work on-line, so I don’t believe that either medium is by definition dangerous or sustaining to what we do. I’ll often chance on a poem on-line and then go looking for that person’s books; on the other hand, if I read something awful on-line, I’ve educated myself about that poet pretty cheaply!
Q. Where will others be able to hear your poetry in the near future?
I’ve been reading a lot this past year, with Crawlers hot off the press, but haven’t set much up for the coming year yet. I’ll be reading new poems at Swarthmore sometime in the fall, and hope to be reading soon for the MAD Poets, as well. On November 3, I’ll be leading a workshop for the Montgomery
County Community College literary festival, and hope many of you will join me.
Contributor Note- Nathalie Anderson is our last interview of the summer season. It has been a pleasure to interview the poets who have appeared here, all unique, talented and inspirational in their own right. I hope you enjoyed getting to know them as I have. Enjoy the rest of the summer! – G Emil Reutter.
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