Interview with Poet Anne Whitehouse
1. How important was the process of revision during the creation of your poem?
Very important. This poem went through a number of revisions over a couple of months, including a title change. I am grateful for my online group of women poets, whose feedback was invaluable to me as I revised the poem.
2. What is the most important writing advice you have ever received?
I was fortunate to take a course on Surrealism with the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz. I was an undergraduate in a class of graduate students, and it was not a writing workshop, but one day I got up the nerve to tell the professor that I wrote poetry. He agreed to read my poems and meet with me privately to discuss them. About one of my poems, Paz said, “While I like each of these metaphors, you have three of them, and you only need one. Pick the strongest one and use that.” I realized at once that this was very good advice for me, and I still take it to heart.
3. What is one of your favorite lines of poetry? Why?
“For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”
(from “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens)
I love the triple use of the word “nothing” in this one-sentence stanza. It gets me every time and stops me in my tracks.
Very important. This poem went through a number of revisions over a couple of months, including a title change. I am grateful for my online group of women poets, whose feedback was invaluable to me as I revised the poem.
2. What is the most important writing advice you have ever received?
I was fortunate to take a course on Surrealism with the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz. I was an undergraduate in a class of graduate students, and it was not a writing workshop, but one day I got up the nerve to tell the professor that I wrote poetry. He agreed to read my poems and meet with me privately to discuss them. About one of my poems, Paz said, “While I like each of these metaphors, you have three of them, and you only need one. Pick the strongest one and use that.” I realized at once that this was very good advice for me, and I still take it to heart.
3. What is one of your favorite lines of poetry? Why?
“For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”
(from “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens)
I love the triple use of the word “nothing” in this one-sentence stanza. It gets me every time and stops me in my tracks.