Featured Poet: Felicia Nimue Ackerman
We recently had the opportunity to interview the illustrious Felicia Nimue Ackerman about her approach to poetry and the creative process.
Can you describe your creative process?
I often write poems in response to pieces in places like The Boston Globe, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Rhode Island Monthly, and The Wall Street Journal, where they appear in letters to the editor, so of course I look for material to respond to. I also write parodies of poems (so far by William Blake, Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Joyce Kilmer, Rudyard Kipling, Richard Lovelace, Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Walter Scott, and William Wordsworth), so I look for poems I can parody. Beyond that, I write whatever appeals to me. Most of my poems involve lots of revisions. I get terrific advice from three incredibly patient and skilled friends (listed in alphabetical order): David Phiroze Christensen, Beverly Greenspan, and Sara Ann Ketchum, who often read and comment on ten or more versions of the same poem. I’m also grateful to David Tulanian, who tells me about opportunities such as the two Los Angeles Times calls for “op-poetry” – op-eds in the form of poems. They took mine both years, and here is one.
The Fat Ladies Sing
We revel in our candy bars,
And cookies, cake, and pie.
That vegetables taste wonderful
Is one humongous lie.But now we face admonishment.
Our size sets off a fuss.
The war against obesity
Includes a war on us.
We know our girth is plentiful,
But listen to our voice.
When thinking of our corpulence,
Why can’t you be pro-choice?
What is your motivation for writing?
To give and get pleasure and sometimes maybe to offer a new way of looking at things. I’m wary of large claims for poetry, though, as I indicated in this letter in The Chronicle of Higher Education online.
On Shelley ’s Claim, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”
If poets influenced our laws,
It mightn’t be so good, because
Their views are sometimes less than sound —
Consider Eliot or Pound.
How did you become a poet?
I used to have a friend who was an evangelical Christian. I’m a lifelong atheist, but we got along fine until he told me that I should get religion because no one could be truly happy without God. This advice changed my life. It inspired me to write a poem about him and send it to the secular-humanist magazine Free Inquiry. They accepted it, and that’s how I discovered I could write poetry. I’ve had over 200 poems published since, so it was the most valuable advice I’ve ever received, but not because I took it. I’m still an atheist and always will be.
Has the coronavirus pandemic changed how you approach your craft?
I’ve written several poems about the pandemic. Here are three.
When patients need intensive care,
Its allocation must be fair.
Coronavirus is a curse;
Discrimination makes it worse.Originally appeared in The New York Times Debatable Newsletter.
The Soul Selects Her Social Distance
The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door.
She keeps her social distance of
Six feet or more.Unmoved, she notes the careless crowd
Outside her gate;
Unmoved, she notes the feckless folk
Still tempting fate.I’ve known her from those foolish people
Choose none
Then turn her mind to friends she’s meeting
By phone.Originally appeared in a New York Times online group of coronavirus-related poems and in The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin.
“Think two years ahead”
Really gets me seething,
Fighting down my dread
That I won’t be breathing.Originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal in a piece titled, “Readers Share Their Tips on Pandemic Fatigue,” in response to the advice, “Think two years ahead.”
What does literary success look like to you?
Having my work published and enjoyed.
What are you looking forward to?
Rejoining the world, now that I’m fully vaccinated.
Where can readers read more of your work?
Many of my poems are online, but they may be hard to ferret out, as I have other things online too. I have pasted some poems below.
Better Company
Do your friends want to reform you?
Do they try to mend your ways?
Do they prod you to get moving:
Jog, recycle, fill your days,
Start your own organic garden,
Eat more carrots, eat less fat?
Well, there’s always my solution –
Blow them off, and get a cat.Originally appeared in The Providence Journal.
Death Can Be Good
Death can be good.
I’ll tell you how.
Just have it come
Decades from now.Originally appeared as a letter in Time Magazine.
Restless
If you tell me to rest
Because that’s what I need,
It won’t seem like rest anymore.
For when “Rest!” is a call
I’m instructed to heed,
You’re turning rest into a chore.Originally appeared in a letter in The New York Times Book Review.
A New Twist
Breathes there the cat with tail so long
That it gets twisted up all wrong
And knotted, tangled, coiled, and curled,
Instead of splendidly unfurled?
If such there be, release it well
And let its glory grow and swell
Till once again it waves unbound,
Untied, unfettered, and unwound.Originally appeared in The Providence Journal.
Professor Superstar Turns 65
Today is your 65th birthday.
Your status is ever so clear.
Your colleagues have set up a tribute
Extolling your shining career.
They bask in the secondhand honor
That flows from their honoring you.
They thrill to the visiting speakers,
Who radiate eminence too.“Society’s far too unequal,”
Your colleagues are prone to lament.
But strictly within their profession,
They worship the top one percent.Originally appeared as a letter in The Chronicle of Higher Education online.
My New Year’s Resolutions
Every day caress my cat,
Brush him to a golden sheen,
Surf the Net and see the world
Here on my computer screen.
See that every single meal
Features cookies, pie, or cake.
Resolutions on this list
Surely I will never break.Originally appeared in The New York Times Metropolitan Diary.
“I’ve Been Bad”
“I’ve been bad,” you gravely told me.
So I asked what you had done.
Did you sneer at someone homeless,
As he sweltered in the sun?
When you saw your buddy shoplift,
Did you shrug and just keep quiet?
”None of that,” is what you answered,
”But I cheated on my diet.”Originally appeared in The Providence Journal.
Because She’s So Popular
She’s welcomed and flattered and favored and kissed.
She’s always invited; she’s first on the list.
She glides through the envy that always awaits her.
Because she’s so popular, everyone hates her.Originally appeared in The Providence Journal.
Trexit
Here’s one thing Trump has made perfectly clear:
Nixon was hardly this country’s nadir.
Let us rejoice now that “Trexit” is here!Originally appeared in a letter in The Boston Globe.
I Am So Lucky to Be Here
My daughter keeps telling me I am so lucky to be here.
She means instead of in her five-bedroom home,
Which always has space for another child
But not for a grandmother in a wheelchair.
I am so lucky to be here.
My room is yellow as the sun,
Which warms my face
When I roll out onto the porch
And endure people I have nothing in common with
Except age and abandonment.
For so long I dreaded being shut away from the world,
But I am so lucky to be here,
The best nursing home in Rhode Island,
Instead of where I would be if people knew
That what killed my unfaithful husband
Was not an accident.Originally appeared in The Providence Journal.