This week on The Poetry Shop 5, we welcome Melinda Clemmons, author of Closer, her debut poetry collection, released last month with Pine Row Press. You might be familiar with Clemmons’ work from appearances in literary journals such as One Art (“A Tuesday in My Twenties”), Rust + Moth (“A Motel Pool Outside Cheyenne”), and West Trestle Review (“Empty Condom Packet in a Churchyard”), where you can sample some of the excellent poems from this collection.
Clemmons writes narrative poems that tell compelling, emotionally complex stories. There’s wisdom here and a seasoned, kindhearted handling of the past. One feels like they're in good hands in her universe—such as in the poem, "Motel Pool Outside Cheyenne," in which the speaker teaches her new husband how to swim:
His long body tense,
he gripped the back of my neck,
a child's concentration in his brow.
I rocked gently on my toes,
whispered Just relax,
craning my neck away
to show him he could let go.
Another example is the way Clemmons treats a crude object, giving it new meaning in "Empty Condom Packet in a Churchyard”:
Let it mean love.
Let it be they were only briefly lost
and seeking privacy.
Let it be their idea of God
drew them to this soft grass
with little stone overhang,
a glossy lizard darting away.
The material in Closer spans a lifetime. There are poems about childhood, teenage years, a first marriage, divorce, a second marriage, motherhood and travel. The common thread: Clemmons' ability to select the moments in life that have something important to say.
Reading Closer, I found myself wanting to linger in Clemmons' world, her outlook on life and profound skill to share it. We're thrilled to have Melinda Clemmons with us on The Poetry Shop 5 to share some of her poetic inspirations and favorite books…
Welcome to The Poetry Shop 5, Melinda Clemmons! We always start by asking: who was your "gateway poet," the poet whose first book or poem got you interested in poetry?
My mother read William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just to Say” to me when I was in grade school. That poem showed me what a poem could do, and how simple it could seem. I remember opening the fruit drawer in the refrigerator with a newfound reverence. That was the first gateway.
I wrote fiction in my twenties, and turned to poetry in my thirties when my children were young. When I opened a Ruth Stone collection, I felt completely at home. Her poem “Train Ride,” changed my life. “All things come to an end./ No, they go on forever.”
Which poetry book are you currently reading?
Rachel Richardson’s Smother (W.W. Norton & Company) is extraordinary. The poems focus on mothering amidst the recent devastating California fires and other catastrophes. She writes with both clarity and depth. I’m reading it slowly, both to savor and to learn.
And this morning I read Kelly Grace Thomas’s new book, Future Tense (Alice James Books) in anticipation of her book launch this afternoon. It’s a gorgeous memoir in verse bursting with grief and love and hope.
Is there a book on the craft of writing that you recommend to poets?
I do love a good book on craft, and there are so many out there. I think the first one I bought was The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux (W.W. Norton & Company), who are wise, welcoming guides. It's a great resource and companion for writers at all stages. I've probably recommended it more than any other craft book, and return to it often.
I just started reading Tracy K. Smith’s fantastic Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times (W.W. Norton & Company), and am already recommending it broadly. I love how she talks about how poems are created and what they can do. She writes, “Above all else, poems enrich the wheelhouse of the unconscious with a wealth of questions. Ask a poem what it means, and it will reply, 'Tell me what you noticed.'”
I also love reading writers' journals (e.g. May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude), listening to interviews with writers, and pulling a dozen beloved collections off the shelf at once to read and reread poems that move me and spur me to write.
Who is a new voice in poetry that we need to check out–someone with a debut book or recent release?
Isabel Neal’s debut collection, Thrown Voice (Yale Younger Poets Series). The poems in Thrown Voice observe and inhabit the natural world—rivers, frozen fields—in language both tender and strange. She often weaves in lines by other poets and her own grandfather. It's remarkable.
Finally, what’s a poetry book that others may not know about but deserves a shout out?
I'm so glad to have been introduced to Amy Dryansky's work through her latest book, Ambergris (Pine Row Press), which explores grief, motherhood, nature, desire, and so much more. I was gripped all the way through. She writes, “I can’t always tell the difference between sad/and sweet; sometimes they taste the same to me. It’s a confusion/to which I’m prone, an allegiance, I won’t say religion, but/it could be the only way I know how to pray.”
Books referenced in this article.
Closer (Pine Row Press) by Melinda Clemmons
The Essential Ruth Stone (Copper Canyon Press) by Ruth Stone
The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation) by William Carlos Williams
The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton & Company) by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux
Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times (W.W. Norton & Company) by Tracy K. Smith
Smother (W.W. Norton & Company) by Rachel Richardson
Future Tense (Alice James Books) Kelly Grace Thomas
Thrown Voice (Yale Younger Poets Series) by Isabel Neal
Ambergris (Pine Row Press) by Amy Dryansky