Doug Holder interviews poet Sarah Hannah

TAGS

Download or edit the free picture Doug Holder interviews poet Sarah Hannah for GIMP online editor. It is an image that is valid for other graphic or photo editors in OffiDocs such as Inkscape online and OpenOffice Draw online or LibreOffice online by OffiDocs.

Holder interviewed Hannah on his Somerville Public TV show " Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer." She read at the Newton Free Library Poetry Series, which Holder directs. Hannah tragically committed suicide. She was a professor at Emerson College in Boston, and the author of : "Longing Distance." ( Tupelo Press)

Interview with poet Sarah Hannah: A Poet within \u201cLonging Distance\u201d


Interview with poet Sarah Hannah: A Poet within \u201cLonging Distance\u201d

Sarah Hannah is an educator, a poet with a PhD from Columbia University, and a sometimes rock musician. Her poems have appeared in \u201cBarrow Street,\u201d \u201cParnassus,\u201d \u201cGulf Coast,\u201d \u201cCrab Orchard Review,\u201d and others. Her original manuscript which became her first poetry collection \u201cLonging Distance,\u201d was a semi-finalist for the \u201cYale Younger Poets Prize,\u201d in 2002. Anne Dillard describes her collection as: \u201c\u2026an extremely moving work. I\u2019m struck by her intelligence of emotion and her unmistakable voice\u2026Sarah Hannah is a true original.\u201d She currently resides with her husband in Cambridge and teaches at Emerson College in Boston. She was a guest on my Somerville Community Access TV show \u201cPoet to Poet/Writer to Writer.\u201d

Doug Holder: Can you tell us about the \u201cYale Younger Poets Prize\u201d which \u201cLonging Distance,\u201d was a semi-finalist for?

Sarah Hannah: That was a sort of near miss. That was in 2002. That was the year Tupelo Press accepted my book. I found out I was a runner up by phoning the editor, (not the judge) who was W.S. Merwin. The editor told me he remembered the book, and it was a semi-finalist, and it was a strong book.

Doug Holder: A lot of folks claim a PhD can ruin a poet. You learn how to write academic papers, but you forget how to write poetry. This does not seem to be the case with you.

Sarah Hannah: It ruined me in the sense that while I was writing my dissertation, I felt that I didn\u2019t have time to write poetry. But I think the PhD made me a better poet. It forced me to really study poetry deeply. You have to grapple with ideas that are foreign to you. You read more than just contemporary poets. You learn to become a better writer.

Some people become sidetracked. They go into a PhD program and they emerge as critics not poets. There are more people around than you think that are poets and scholars.

Doug Holder: How did you come up with the title for your collection \u201cLonging Distance?\u201d

Sarah Hannah: I was writing a series of sonnets about a messed up love affair. You know \u201cabsence makes the heart grow fonder,\u201d an all those clichés. So I came up with a line while I was in the country watching my husband scale a rock. I thought of the line: \u201cI keep you at longing distance.\u201d I thought it was just going to be another sonnet in the sequence. I wrote the sonnet, but then wound up expunging it from the book. I kept \u201cLonging Distance,\u2019 as the title.

Doug Holder: From our email exchanges I get the impression you haven\u2019t had an easy life.

Sarah Hannah: I lived a hardscrabble life. I\u2019ve seen life disintegrate . I wanted to put back my experiences in more metaphysical or formal terms.

I grew up in Newton, Mass., in the Waban section. A lot of neurosis going on there. I would say seven out of my eight high school friends were bulimic. I was not. My mother was hospitalized at the same \u201csummer hotel\u201d Anne Sexton visited.

Doug Holder: How does your teaching at Emerson College fit with your poetry?

Sarah Hannah: It\u2019s fitting beautifully because I am teaching poetry, as opposed to composition. I am teaching traditional form to graduate and undergraduate students. I teach a hybrid literature and writing course.

Doug Holder: Why did you move from the bright lights and big city of New York to the more provincial environs of Boston?

Sarah Hannah: I am a lover of the underdog. Boston is the underdog to New York. I felt I had to come back. You know: \u201cMy end is my beginning, my beginning my end.\u201d I have always missed Boston. I am a loyal person that way. My husband and I purchased a house in Cambridge. It\u2019s right in the Central Square area. It\u2019s a very diverse city. I often write at the \u20181369\u201d Coffee Shop or \u2018Grendel\u2019s Den,\u201d in Harvard Square. I feel rooted here.

Doug Holder: How does the lit scene here compare to the \u201cBig Apple?\u201d

Sarah Hannah: There are a lot of readings here like N.Y. I lived in N.Y. for 17 years. It took me 8 years to get \u201cout\u201d there. It seems much faster out here. I have a book though, that makes a difference. I was worried. It took a long time for me to establish myself in New York City. But I didn\u2019t loose my contacts because I maintained my connection to the journal \u201cBarrow Street,\u201d and now I am an editor there.\u201d
Eclipse

Every so often I am dilated; the pupilsSwallow everything\u2014a catchall soup,Two cauldrons, stubborn in the bald glare
Of bathroom light. They are hunting sleep\u2014The sea grass, the blue cot rocking;In sleep I am a Spanish dancer,
Awaiting my cue at the velvet curtain,Now and then groping for the sash,Or on horseback, abducted, thumping
Through pampas. I sleep too much;I curl in at midday, sheepish,In strange rooms. Clouds are hurrying by\u2014
The walls, a wash of white; still my eyesAre mazing through their dark gardens,The great lamp shut, the crescents duplicating.
It is only a temporary state of affairs.The sun boils behind the moon.

Free picture Doug Holder interviews poet Sarah Hannah integrated with the OffiDocs web apps