Poet Beth Ann Fennelly and novelist Larry Watson
were featured writers at the 2005 Great Lakes Writers Conference held at Lakeland College, Sheboygan, on Thursday and Friday, November 3-4, 2005. The writers read from their work Thursday morning at the college and Thursday evening at the Howards Grove Community Center, then again on Friday morning at the college. Lakeland College students, area high school students, and the general public were all on hand for the readings and for the three workshops each writer led on Thursday and Friday afternoons.
Fennelly, originally from Illinois, now lives and teaches in the Faulkner country of Oxford, Mississippi. She is the author of Open House and Tender Hooks. Her collection of essays, Great With Child, is forthcoming next April.
Watson, a native of Rugby, North Dakota and a long-time Wisconsin resident who taught many years at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, is now a Visiting Professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee. He is the author of In A Dark Time, Montana 1948, White Crosses, Laura, and Orchard.
*
Reading: Thursday Morning
Fennelly:
Fennelly said "I've heard about this conference for a long time. I congratulate you on having such a fine writer here as Karl Elder."
She has been thinking about the differences between the midwest and the south, and said she has "written one poem that might get me fired. Wisconsin may be far enough away that I can read it." It was about watching students jogging on the first nice day of spring. I mean, she was only watching as those fellows stretched their muscles on the first fine day of the new season, come on....
"... search for their shadows...."
"I have mated again. It is spring...."
"Students every year grow one year younger...."
"... hard to think of that... very very please God distant spring...."
"I should follow that poem with one for my husband...."
"Load train cars with as much as they could stand...."
"Your shame, your hope...."
"... except it was the first Japanese car the county had seen...."
"I have loved you for your shame...."
"For years you were valued as a donkey, for how much you could carry...."
"I would go back for a ride in our Toyota...."
"... a zipper as long as all of lower Alabama...."
"... a life starting just beyond the margins of this poem...."
Her mother sent copies of a book of Fennelly's poems to all the relatives and got a note back from one of the aunts. "Beth Ann, you have to read this," her mother said. It was a nice little note, right up to the aunt's comment that "... your post-it notes really helped." So her mother was annotating or correcting the poems. "I wrote a bitchy little poem and felt better immediately," Fennelly said.
"This apple is a symbol...."
"When she writes 'far-gone train' it means she plans to come home...."
"I thought I was really well prepared to be a mom, and then found out I wasn't," Fennelly said. There were surprises. "... And my hair starts falling out... just another thing they didn't tell you about child birth...."
"Yes, she is growing up, and I am dying down...."
"Even the suddenly slowly-dying need indulgences...."
"I've doubled the garlic in every recipe...."
"I wept in class, the way I always feared I would. And the students did not laugh at me...."
"My hair, anticipating everything...."
"The house finch busily weaving with strands of long red hair...."
"We found out we had a couple different ideas of parenting...."
"The interpreters have all the power and also all the confusion."
"My husband, the anti-tickler, disapproves...."
"Pure terror? Pure delight?"
"Just two more days til she goes out of town...."
To her daughter: "I've documented everything. Later, when you claim neglect, I have proof...."
"Cow-tipping - I think I did it three or four times at least...."
"Weighing a ton and worth a grand...."
"The meek, long-suffering cows...."
"I can't understand that I can't understand why whole countries hate our country...."
"Cow-tipping - I've done that.... who brags that no harm has come to me...."
"You guys are such a great audience...."
She finished up with her poem of advice to students on how to write poetry: "Sit in a white room without paper and think about the poacher who shot the wing off the eagle...."
"... its talons could tear the gauze fabric of sky...."
"... fly in the face of God that one last time...."
"Don't forget to breathe...."
Watson:
"Thanks for coming today," Watson said. "It's an honor to be part of this...." He read to us from Montana 1948.
"I've been digging post holes this morning and I've been dry all day...."
"... and hatred of fences...."
"You can't buy a better beer...."
"It's the best god-damn beer, but I'll have a Schlitz, thanks...."
"Look at that - August, and we've got leaves coming down already...."
"... faces east, my father said, that's the key...."
"... to be like the son they didn't have...."
"... a doctor comes around and they think he's the evil spirit...."
"Yes, she's staying here, she's staying here until she gets better...."
"If my mother said it, it was so...."
"... and my mother was suspicious of charm.... If your character was sound, you didn't need charm...."
"If a doctor is going to drive an old truck, maybe I should be patrolling the streets on horseback...."
"... her voice was steady and strong, but her pauses were wrong...."
"And you believe her?"
"Yes, I do."
"Wesley, would you listen to me...."
"I flinched.... before everything changes...."
"... born out of absolute determination...."
"When he gets these Indian girls where he wants them, he does what he wants to do...."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"... because I'm your husband... or because I'm the sheriff?"
"I wish you wouldn't have told the sheriff...."
"Did any of this happen to Marie?"
"Let's see if she's if she's awake, he said, and get on with it...."
"Charming, affable Uncle Frank was gone for good...."
*
Reading: Thursday Evening
Watson:
"Thank you, and thank you for coming tonight...."
"I swore I'd never be one of those people who pretended they were just deciding what they were going to read...."
"A Four Minute Story - time it...."
"They took a bottle of Chardonnay to MacDonald's...."
"... but the cold water seemed the medium in which they belonged...."
"... an unusual pattern, as if the lawn had served as a dance hall overnight...."
Watson read from his novel Orchard, mostly set in Door County, Wisconsin, in the 1950s.
"... an artist with an international reputation, but in Door County he's better known for his affairs with his models...."
"... babies and rifles - their shape gave instruction as to how they are to be carried...."
"... and sweat-soaked leather...."
"... in this narrow space the horse gave off so much heat she half-expected to see his body glow...."
"... and sneezed twice in the sudden sunlight...."
"... the rifle's bruised, dark steel...."
"It yelped and skittered sideways off the porch...."
"She looked squarely at him: 'I was going to shoot your horse....'"
"I dream about him [the horse]...."
"'There is no such word,' she whispered...."
"A fellow hard up for cash and in a hurry, that's a bad combination...."
"... as if his main concern was how the blue-black steel caught the light...."
"I thought you said it shoots straight...."
"It shoots straight, just a little high...."
"... that sign of neglect was just what caught his father's eye...."
"Henry had always felt a vacancy in his life for that lost season...."
"Where was the water, where was the sky...."
"Thanks for listening...."
Fennelly:
"I've had a great day...."
"I thought I'd start with a love poem [The Snake Charmer]...."
"How is it you love me so much?"
"When the snake loves, it's the fiercest kind of love...."
"By the time the journal came in the mail, he was this sad, lonely fellow...."
"Why we shouldn't write love poems...."
"He should have praised less and bought a dog...."
"Oh, aren't the poems stupid and devout...."
"We should write about what we know won't change...."
"Ah, poem, I am weak from love and you are sweet. Do not come home to shame me...."
"The things that stick with you are not the kind of things you anticipated...."
"I wonder if we choose what we recall...."
Of "Bite Me:" "I did not read this poem today because it takes a special audience...."
"... which feels like telling the wind No when it blows...."
"... and, Lord, did I push...."
"... and your father was terror and blood spatter...."
"... because you were crowning and had to eat your way out of me...."
"My husband thinks I should go around to high schools where kids are at risk of pregnancy. Wouldn't it be great - prophalactic poetry...."
Of the poet Jack Gilbert: "If only he could have had a baby, he would have found what he was looking for...."
"... and now he was 80 and wished to be in love again...."
"... so he could be inhabited and large...."
"The Secret kicked so that the mattress shook, but it didn't wake the husband...."
"... so I wrote The Revenge Poem, our tool as poets...."
"... sorry about the book. It was a joke. Don't put me in a poem...."
"Now he's fat. And bald...."
"Don't feel like you have to call Child Services or anything...."
"She learns the world by tasting it...."
"Wearing her yam goatee...."
"Beware small villains everywhere...."
"I'd keep heer safe forever...."
Of her daughter growing up and reading these poems about her: "I never thought of her getting old enough to read them...."
"You're the balloon, I'm the grasping hand...."
"I'm the resemblance you deny...."
"... that is my threat and my promise. Even if I'm dead, I'll meet you there...."
*
Reading: Friday Morning; and Q&A with Students
Fennelly:
"Thanks a lot for being here...."
"Karl Elder is a fabulous poet. I recommend you read him...."
"A lot of people in my family are about food - and I'm one of them. I express how I feel about people by how I feed them...."
"I'll crush pine nuts, unhinged...."
"... you will seem merely a generous portion...."
"... my saucy, my strongly seasoned love...."
"You could follow the recipe in the poem if you want. At the back of the book, I've got the measurements...."
"His drinking was different in sunshine...."
"... and slurred 'My Little Indian Princess'...."
"My sister was a little juvenile deliquent. I followed along in fear...."
"Such tasks belonged to the little sister...."
"... where every clerk and loafer knew your name...."
"... that silent sister who tagged along because she had to - I wouldn't like her either...."
"Poem Not To Be Read At Your Wedding...."
"I've listened to the sound of the stars...."
"The stars, how they see us from that distance...."
Fennelly told again about her mother amending her poems with post-it notes for the relatives: "... 'and your post-it notes really helped'...."
"... so I wrote a revenge poem...."
It was the only poem in her next collection that she hadn't sent to her mother before the book was published. When the book came out, her mother called and said "I know why you didn't show me that poem." Oh, God, Fennelly thought. "Why didn't I show you that poem, Mom?" "You wanted me to be honored at the tribute...."
"... roll and roll it, the way God must have packed the earth in his palms...."
"Suppose my tongue caught that mystery...."
"You are closest to something when naming what it's not...."
"... who rolled executions on his tongue like berries...."
"... as long as he has lips, he has a weapon...."
"... the sympathy of some fox...."
When she was teaching English as a Second Language, Fennelly asked her students to draw a picture of their families. One of the students turned in a blank page except for the notation: "I am a lonesome...."
On the disappearance of languages: "Does the ear grow numb mourning sounds it will never hear?"
"... sound out what's there, what's not...."
On the difficulty of translation: "'I am hung over.' In Czech, it's 'The monkeys swing inside my head.'"
"If she bites into the word, she'll be a lonesome...."
Watson:
"We're given the advice to write about what we know, but sometimes we like to write about what we don't know and work our way to understanding...."
She was, he read, "... a brush stroke of scarlet...."
An artist, on seeing a woman's face: "I'm too late. Another artist has already created this...."
"Maybe this is the year winter won't leave...."
"... the geometry of her jaw - she was undoubtedly her mother's daughter...."
"I always wished I could paint," Watson said. "Writing allows you to fulfill these desires...."
What the artist in The Orchard said, getting naked with his naked model: "I'm doing this not only because I need to know what you look like in the sunlight, but what it feels like...."
The model, who never initiated conversation, did: "As a child, I used to confuse sand and the sea.... I knew the sea was salt. I tasted it.... I thought the sand was salt tossed up by the ocean...."
And when the Norwegian fisherman whose son had drowned went out to sea and didn't come back, the people said: "Einar has found his little boy...."
The grains of sand, drying, fell off her breasts "... as if she and nature had concocted a little strip-tease...."
"Yet empty as it was, that painting was full of - is there any other word for it - presence...."
"The work is titled 'Absence and Desire....'"
Q&A Session:
How hard was it for you to get published? LW: It was easy, he said. His first novel got taken right away. "This isn't so hard," he thought. Then "what started as an easy process got very difficult. I couldn't publish another novel for 13 years...."
Is the writing industry very competitive? LW: I don't think of it as a competition.... Thinking about 'beating out other writers' is the wrong approach.
Where & when do you do your best writing? BAF: When I was young, I wrote at night, I wrote when I was sad. Now that I'm older, I have made writing my daily life. I sit at the desk and do it. I have become a morning writer. LW: I just say that I'll write every do. I do approach it as a job. I work on the novel every day, and maybe some in my journal or on a short story too.
Who are your favorite writers? BAF: Elizabeth Bishop, and then Plath, Sexton, and contemporary poets and some of the classics. Are you going to write your autobiography? No, I'm not interesting enough.... LW: J.D. Salinger, especially Catcher In the Rye. I didn't know you could write in a voice like that. And Hemingway - he made it look easy.
Why did you want to become a writer? LW: I like to make things. That's the satisfaction of writing - when you get done, there's something that didn't exist before. BAF: I loved reading and the way reading made me feel.
How do you get over writer's block? LW: I don't have it. I keep my standards very, very low. Once I get something on paper, I can possibly make it better. You can always put something on paper. BAF: When the writing is not going well, I go back to the books I love. Sometimes I trick myself with little exercises that get me writing. The cause of writer's block: you judge your writing too soon. First you have to let it be its wild self.
Do you censor yourself? BAF: I'm interested in writing abour relationships, and that can get you in trouble.... LW: Fiction announces it's made up. I wouldn't write something meant to hurt someone else.
Do you write from an outline? LW: I just go. No, I don't know how it's going to end.
How do you know when you're done? LW: The contract tells you when it has to be done.... It's done when it is as good as I can make it at this point. BAF: If you're scared of looking dumb, you'll never accomplish anything.
Have you ever written a sequel? LW: I thought of it, but I got the order wrong. I wrote a pre-quel.
What did you hate about your English classes in high school? LW: Diagramming sentences.
What are your favorite writing utensils? LW: I usually use a black pen on yellow paper. BAF: I'll use anything.
What's the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher? LW: A good teacher let's students figure out how much they know, and the bad teacher shows off how much he knows.
How well do you know your characters? LW: You know these fictional characters better than you know real people.... I'm hanging around imaginary people a lot.... I hear them talking....
Do you want to write a screen play? LW: The form intrigues me, but I'd probably have difficulty with it. BAF: Someone said that having your novel made into a movie is like having your oxen made into bouillon.
How would your life be if you weren't a writer? BAF: I don't think I'd be very happy. Poetry has helped me be a better human being. LW: In that 13 years when I couldn't get published, I did a lot of whining, most of it to my wife. My wife would say: "So quit." She wasn't encouraging me to quit; she was reminding me why I write. BAF: My husband writes fiction. I tell him, "Oh, I'd never stoop so low as to write fiction...."
Are there specific things you like writing about? LW: Sometimes a region. BAF: My first book was about different things, the next one about family; I need to write about different things again. LW: Sometimes writing is a way not to be affected by things going on in the world.
Do you have a target audience when you write? LW: I don't for fiction. When I wrote reviews, I'd imagine who were the readers of that newspaper. For a novel, I'm writing for the thing itself, its demands.
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