Ask The Author: Elizabeth Cantwell

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These three wonderful poems from Elizabeth Cantwell were in the August Issue. Now, Elizabeth discusses structure, sparrows, and continuity.

1. What made you choose to move the poems from prose shape to stanzas and then back again?

Originally these poems were highly structured. I had this whole formal thing worked out with syllabics and stanza shapes and … the more I worked on them, the less the lines felt like they wanted to do that. So I started listening to the lines, which I really should have done in the first place, and this is where they ended up.

2. What is the last sparrow you’ve heard?

I googled the bird that appears in the opening credits of Twin Peaks and it’s not any kind of sparrow after all, it’s something called a Bewick’s Wren. Nevertheless. I’d like to call this bird a sparrow. The way it cocks its head is so lonely.

3. How is continuity a problem for you?

You know how sometimes you are driving, and you’re on this road that you’ve never been on before but you’re sure it connects to another road- the road you want to be on? And just as you’re getting close to where you’re sure it connects, the road decides to end instead, and now you’re in the middle of some stupid neighborhood in a cul-de-sac and someone’s kids’ plastic toys are out in the yard, and the clouds above look like rain? I think my brain is constructed entirely out of these roads.

4. What would you ask a martian to do for you?

Help me translate a Martian poem into English. What do you think a Martian poem would be about? Maybe about something very cold. Relationships that ended years ago, cucumber sandwiches. Also, let’s be real, I would probably also ask the martian to do an E.T. impression, because the 7-year-old in me would be unable to resist.

5. What weapon would you prefer to be reincarnated as?

The secret one. The sheathed one. The one that will go its whole life without being used. The one that is powerful precisely because it has never been used.

6. Where are you less than complete?

Oh, everywhere. Everywhere.