Saturday, October 26, 2013

Poetry as Medicine Questionnaire: Ryan Collins


O Happiest of Saturdays to you. October is healing me right up: the house smells of sage, my toddler is wearing a flannel shirt (if you didn't know already, this is goddamn adorable), and I've been reading this: 



Good, good stuff. 

And another gift: some words from Ryan Collins, who was good enough to answer the Poetry as Medicine Questionnaire. Ryan is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Dear Twin Falls (H_NGM_N, 2013).  His poems have appeared in American Letters & CommentaryAsymptoteBlack ClockColumbia Poetry ReviewDIAGRAMForklift, OhioHandsomeiO: A Journal of New American PoetryPEN Poetry SeriesSporkTransom; the Hell Yes Press cassette anthology 21 Love Poems; & many other places.  He is the Executive Director of the Midwest Writing Center & an English instructor at St. Ambrose University, both in Davenport, IA.  He plays drums in The Multiple Cat & curates the SPECTRA Poetry Reading Series in Rock Island, IL, where he lives.

He's a wonderful dude, and here are his answers.


1.  Can poetry be medicine? As in:

Can it heal our bruised-up world or our bruised-up brains?
Can it foment revolution?
Can it make us want to go out and fight another day?
Can it be prayer?

Yes poetry is medicine.  Poetry heals.  At least it can.  It does for me & a lot of other people I know.  I think this is evidenced best when there are moments of tragedy—local or global—and people turn to poetry.  For example: 9/11 turned a great many people toward poetry—as a means of expressing how they felt, as memory, as recovery, as a way of trying to address or understand in some way this terrible event that even now, 12 years after, seems unfathomable, beyond understanding.  I think this impulse is deeply humane, genetic.  We are trying to understand our damage & heal after it via language.  Saying the names of our wounds releases them somewhat from our bodies, allows us to recover while still recognizing that which almost killed us.  It also allows us a medium to put our minds & our lives & our hearts & all the triumphs & pain they endure out in the world, into a sort of healing community, if you will, where we see that our alienations are shared, that we are not alone as our alones would like us to believe       

2.  If so, what poets/poems are your medicine?

Dear lord.  There are so many.  Let’s start w/ a friend: Matt Hart.  All of his work is really important to me, but in particular his poem “Amplifier to Defender”—it’s one of those great ars poeticas, a poem that I turn to & read aloud w/ the full force of my lungs anytime I feel in doubt or beaten down or anywhere near giving up on something (or myself).  What Matt says about the possibilities/capacities of language & its resulting materials, about living attentively & enthusiastically & completely, about friendships & relationships & how language operates to build & sustain them, just resonates so deep in my bones that the poem has a very real restorative effect on my whole being.  Here’s a video of him reading it, so you can see/hear what I mean.


Others: Rebecca Wee’s Uncertain Grace is especially important to me, for its compassion & vividness & treatment of loss, grief & everything that comes with them.  It’s a briilant book & she has been my poetry guardian angel for years.  Frank O’Hara’s “To the Harbormaster,” Kenneth Loch’s “Some General Instructions,” Joshua Clover’s “Union Pacific” (really his collection Madonna Anno Domini is one of my all-time favorites), Arielle Greenberg’s Given, Dorothea Lasky’s AWE.  Anything Kiki Petrosino writes.  Wow, there are just too many heroes to name check.  I think Dean Young’s book on poetics, The Art of Recklessness, offers a way of looking at creative process that provides revelation, surprise, prayer, communion, exuberance, bewilderment, joy & pretty much everything I find terrific & healing about poetry & poetic practice.     

3. How do you make use of this medicine? 

Practice—writing, being generative w/ language I have to be very therapeutic, especially when I’m writing away from myself.  I’ve been playing drums for most of my life & I find the kind of mindset I’m able to get into when I’m playing drums is very similar to that when I’m writing.  Obviously the mental/physical demands are very different, but the ease & relaxing of my mind are very similar.  When I’m not doing at least one of these things on a very regular basis, I get swampy, lethargic, grump-city & feel mostly blah about everything.  I read as much as I can, but working/grading essays takes much of that space.  Poems are great in this context b/c if I’m dragging ass, or my head is in some bad space, I’ll break out some poems I love, read them out loud & I feel better. 


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