Interview with Poet Ali Hintz
12/7/17
12/7/17
1. What is your creative process; how do you go from inspiration to finished product when you write a poem?
Sometimes I’ll write a poem and be finished in five minutes, other poems take years to write. Such was the case with “Baptized in the Rain.”
I had a health scare a few years ago. The night before my doctor’s appointment, a thunderstorm woke me up. I had a vision of a girl walking in the woods, daring lightening to strike. I went outside and wrote the raw material for “Baptized in the Rain.” The next day, I typed out my notes and edited them into the first version of the poem. At the time, I knew it wasn’t in its final form, but I didn’t know what its final form was. I revisited the poem a few months ago and distilled it into its current form. I cut about half my original lines.
2. What is the best advice you have ever been given as a poet?
Share your work. Share it with friends, with family, with writing groups and literary journals. Some people will love your work, some people will hate it, and most people won’t care. Share for those who do.
Poetry changes lives. Reading poetry is as close as you can get to inhabiting someone else’s mind. When you find a sympathetic mind, you feel that much closer to the universe, that much more connected.
I don’t know if my poetry is good enough to get that reaction from anybody. I doubt if any poet knows that. Take a chance, share your work, and you might change someone’s life.
3. What is your favorite line of poetry, and why?
Hour-wide, lark, your song,
above the hawk.
When the sower hears you
the reaper has forgotten.
Excerpt from “The Lithuanian Well” by Johannes Bobrowski translated by Ruth and Matthew Mead.
It reads like a breath and feels sublime. Each essential word is in its perfect place. It encapsulates the breadth of humanity: life and death and the forward rush of time.
Sometimes I’ll write a poem and be finished in five minutes, other poems take years to write. Such was the case with “Baptized in the Rain.”
I had a health scare a few years ago. The night before my doctor’s appointment, a thunderstorm woke me up. I had a vision of a girl walking in the woods, daring lightening to strike. I went outside and wrote the raw material for “Baptized in the Rain.” The next day, I typed out my notes and edited them into the first version of the poem. At the time, I knew it wasn’t in its final form, but I didn’t know what its final form was. I revisited the poem a few months ago and distilled it into its current form. I cut about half my original lines.
2. What is the best advice you have ever been given as a poet?
Share your work. Share it with friends, with family, with writing groups and literary journals. Some people will love your work, some people will hate it, and most people won’t care. Share for those who do.
Poetry changes lives. Reading poetry is as close as you can get to inhabiting someone else’s mind. When you find a sympathetic mind, you feel that much closer to the universe, that much more connected.
I don’t know if my poetry is good enough to get that reaction from anybody. I doubt if any poet knows that. Take a chance, share your work, and you might change someone’s life.
3. What is your favorite line of poetry, and why?
Hour-wide, lark, your song,
above the hawk.
When the sower hears you
the reaper has forgotten.
Excerpt from “The Lithuanian Well” by Johannes Bobrowski translated by Ruth and Matthew Mead.
It reads like a breath and feels sublime. Each essential word is in its perfect place. It encapsulates the breadth of humanity: life and death and the forward rush of time.