{"id":1406,"date":"2011-03-10T12:53:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T20:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=1406"},"modified":"2025-02-27T10:54:44","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T18:54:44","slug":"laurie-lamon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/laurie-lamon\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 67: Laurie Lamon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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About Laurie Lamon<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Laurie Lamon\u2019s poems have appeared in journals and magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly,The New Republic, Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture, Poetry Northwest and 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Ordinary Days, edited by Billy Collins. She was selected by Donald Hall, Poet Laureate 2007, as a Witter Bynner Fellow for 2007. Her collections of poems are The Fork Without Hunger, 2005, and Without Wings, 2009 (CavanKerry Press). She is a professor of English at Whitworth University.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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A Profile of the Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Notes on Four Poems<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis Poem Doesn\u2019t Care That It Isn\u2019t a Sonnet\u201d is a very new poem, and it\u2019s representative of other elements of style and subject in my work. I\u2019m very concerned with what distracts us from the on-the-ground reality being played out everywhere around us. The poem is a kind of catalogue of what a poem knows it can\u2019t do anything about: the superficial distractions of pop culture, technology\u2019s interference with real human time, political terrors, human suffering, animal abuse\u2026 It acknowledges that we live with burdens which are overwhelming. On one important level, our responsibility is simply to be aware, to be witnesses, and to care. At the more \u201cpolitical\u201d level, the poem is curious about the world, engaged by facts, and accurate in its telling. Even at a quieter lyrical level, the poem also quickens us. To be truly affected by beauty is not a passive response. It wakens our desire for the conditions and goodness of that beauty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question of stylistic and subject connection and departure is so interesting to contemplate and study in poets. I began as most poets probably do, being startled and gratified by imagery, and how a line has architecture, enacting time and space. Thirty years later, I can see how early affinities have evolved into recognizable themes. Some of those are evident in these four poems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote \u201cPain Thinks of Black\u201d over fifteen years ago. I remember the process of writing it distinctly, probably more distinctly than any other of the Pain Poems, certainly. These poems are quite different from my other poems. With this series, and crucially with this poem, I am trying, with very intentional reductions, to render experience without metaphor or simile, without the values of association and correspondence. That sounds like a description for something other than a poem! When I was writing the first of what would become over 40 of what are now The Pain Poems, it was the X-ray and MRI image that became the visual guide for what I was handling. Everything familiar to me as poetic tools had become inadequate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPain Thinks of Black\u201d took years to get right, as ridiculous as that sounds. It\u2019s only 4 lines long! The utter catastrophe that can open up, be real, and become part of your life\u2019s history, and which you can survive\u2026. Dickinson\u2019s poem \u201cPain\u2014has an Element of Blank\u2014\u201c and her descriptions elsewhere of \u201cAdamant\u201d are buried in the psyche of this poem. \u201cPain Thinks of Still Life\u201d is something quite different in subject, exploring the paradox of that genre to express the dynamic of possibility that the image and juxtaposition can render. The imagistic poem, the Still Life painting\u2014they offer an amazing presentness that is anything but quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes on Reading<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I read all kinds of books. I love history and science and biography. One of the best books I\u2019ve read in the last few years is Walter Isaacson\u2019s Einstein: His Life and Universe<\/em>. I think curiosity about the physical world is an antidote to most of our failings as human beings! Emily Dickinson knew much about botany; she was a devoted and learned gardener, and she grew orchids in her conservatory. Poets I return to again and again include Dickinson, Adrienne Rich (An Atlas of the Difficult World<\/em> in particular), and Muriel Rukeyser. I didn\u2019t discover Rukeyser until graduate school, and I can\u2019t imagine understanding Rich\u2019s poetry without knowing hers, and her biography. I read Czeslaw Milosz to encounter one of the most generous, compassionate, and intelligent minds of the last century. I think \u201cSix Lectures in Verse\u201d should be required reading for us all. I read Linda Pastan for her spare complexities, and for the way she integrates mythology into the world of streets and flower markets, husbands and breakfast tables, overcoats and bedsheets.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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Three Poems by Laurie Lamon<\/a><\/h2>\n\n

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