Lisa Dordal ~ 3 Questions & a Poem

3 Questions and a Poem–in which one of my favorite poets is interviewed and shares a poem.

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QUESTION 1

What do you consider the three most important elements of a poem?

For me, the three most important elements of a poem are authenticity, accessibility, and a sense of surprise or discovery. These are what I consider to be the three most important macro elements. Elements such as sound, imagery, word choice, form, etc. are also essential (of course), but I consider these elements to be subsets of my three overarching elements.

In terms of authenticity, it’s important (to me) that a poem arises from genuine or lived emotion. In other words, that a poem arises from emotions or feelings that the writer actually experienced. This doesn’t mean that poets can only write about themselves or their own life experiences. It means that the emotional landscape of a poem should be authentic. A writer might feel deeply about someone else’s life experience—a life that might be completely imagined or deep in the historical past, for example—and it is the authenticity of the writer’s feelings about such an experience that has the power to create and breathe life into a poem.

I’ve heard a lot of concerns recently about how AI might affect poetry and most of those concerns seem to be really asking how AI will affect poetry publishing, which is very different from the practice of writing poetry. Writing a poem is about entering into a relationship with language, with life experiences, with memory, etc. and being transformed by that relationship. That kind of transformation can’t be affected (in my view) by AI.

In terms of surprise or discovery, I return again and again to Robert Frost’s famous quotation: “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” Writing is a process of discovery such that writers typically learn something—have a new insight about something—in the process of putting words down on a page. Writing is a process of turning the messy emotional, psychological, and spiritual stuff that exists inside us into language that has the power to affect both the writer and people beyond the writer.

Very often, when I sit down to write, I might start with an anecdote, a story that I want to tell. But a poem is not just an anecdote. There should be text and subtext in a poem. Text is the surface meaning and subtext is the deeper meaning beneath the surface. I might need to write several pages before I figure out what I am really writing about—and why I am writing about it. My job is to find the story that needs telling. We all have stuff inside us that wants to be heard and that, over the years, we have maybe ignored or tried to silence. In the process of writing, we might enter a space inside of ourselves that is usually hidden or walled off and we might emerge with material that is yearning to be shaped into language.

In terms of accessibility, I mean that a poem should not be intentionally obscure or clever for the sake of being clever. A poem’s job is to communicate. To convey thoughts and emotions through carefully chosen words and images. The best poems, in my view, are those that use plain, accessible language to tell deeper truths. This doesn’t mean that poems emerge organically—and easily—without any effort. It means that regardless of how much effort goes into the creation of the poem (and poems usually require a lot of effort), the finished poem should sound as if the creation process had been effortless.

QUESTION 2

What’s your best advice for writing poetry?

My main piece of advice is to keep joy front and center by focusing on the process of writing, not the end goal of a finished poem or a published poem. When my love for writing poetry was re-kindled in my late 30s, early 40s, I remember setting aside one day a week to read poetry and it was such a joyful experience. I would sit in my favorite chair with a cup of coffee and a book of poems and just read, read, read. Oftentimes I would write as well—something would usually bubble up during my reading—but I wasn’t goal-oriented in the sense of trying to write a poem. Years later, after I got my MFA in poetry, I entered a time when writing felt more like work, something that was expected of me. And I had to remind myself again and again to return to joy—to return to that joyful state that drew me to poetry in the first place.

Also, it’s important to keep in mind that writing is a two-way conversation—it involves listening and speaking. Listening is the reading part and writing is the speaking part. I make a point of reading a lot and reading widely—not just poetry but fiction and non-fiction. I let my curiosities take me wherever they lead. I would even say that reading—or listening—is more important than the writing or speaking part because listening is what allows people to move to a deeper place within themselves. A place where the “stuff” of poems lives—the wonderful muddy mess from which poems emerge. I always keep pen and paper close by whenever I read poetry because ninety-nine percent of the time, the poetry I’m reading will call something up for me—something from my own experiences that I feel compelled to write down. At that point, I start writing as much as I can on paper—whatever comes to mind. I write until I discover what is it that something inside me wants to say.

In NEXT TIME YOU COME HOME, Lisa Dordal distills one hundred eighty letters she received from her mother over a twelve-year period (1989-2001) into short, meditative entries that reflect upon motherhood, marriage, grief, the beauty of the natural world, same-sex relationships, and the passage of time. The final entries are something between letters and poems—not fully letters and not fully poems but, instead, their own thing—and portray a mother who, despite her alcoholism, maintains an engaged and compassionate presence in the world, one nourished by intellectual curiosity, life-long relationships with family and friends, and active involvement in the larger world.

My other piece of advice is to be very clear with yourself about what it is that you can control and what you can’t control. I can control (as much as any of us can control anything in our lives) whether or not I spend a day reading poetry and whether or not I sit at my computer and type words into a document. But I can’t control how the world will receive my work. I can’t control whether or not my work will get published. Surrender has to be part of the process. Not just surrendering to the creativeprocess but letting go of the things you can’t fully control in the external world. At the end of the day, I have to be able to say to myself: I’ve done what I can do; now it’s time to rest.

QUESTION 3

What’s the one poem that everyone should read today?

That’s a great question! Though it’s difficult to pick just one. I’m going to cheat and mention two poems that I personally find to be especially meaningful and that perhaps other people might find meaningful too.

The first is Marie Howe’s poem “The Gate” which is about her brother’s death from AIDS at the age of 28. In this short poem—only thirteen lines—Marie Howe uses simple, accessible language that encourages us as readers to think about the experiences we’ve had in our own lives that have allowed us to “finally enter this world.” In other words, what experiences we’ve had that have really woken us up to the state of being alive—which of course means waking us up to our own mortality and the mortality of our loved ones as well. The poem, to me, serves as an invitation to see beauty in the most mundane activities of our lives—activities such as folding sheets, washing dishes, or eating a sandwich. I find the poem deeply moving and I return to it again and again.

The other poem I highly recommend is Ross Gay’s “A Small Needful Fact” which is about Eric Garner, a Black man who was killed in 2014 after being put in a chokehold by a New York City Police Officer, and whose last words were “I can’t breathe.” The poem doesn’t focus explicitly on the way Garner died —though his death is fully present in the poem—but on his work in horticulture, work that, to this day, as the poem suggests, might be “making it easier for us to breathe.”

What I especially love about the poem is the notable tentativeness the poem exudes with its repeated use of “perhaps” and “in all likelihood” and “most likely” in a way that seems to be asking everyone—people all along the political spectrum—to slow down; to not rush to judgment; to see people, really see them, in their full humanity.

I also love the way this poem is in conversation with Robert Hayden’s poem “Frederick Douglass,” written during the 1960s Civil Rights movement, which argues for the necessity of freedom and liberty —“needful to man as air”—for allpeople but most especially for those people who have been hunted and exiled and treated as “alien” in their own country. The poem, in its dismissal of empty slogans and meaningless ceremony, argues that true liberty is represented by “the lives grown out of [Frederick Douglass’] life, the lives fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.”

Well, I guess I just snuck in a third poem!

& 2 POEMS

The Last Time

The last time I saw my mother,
she was sitting in the front passenger seat

of my father’s car. I looked down into her face
through the open window. She looked up at me

and smiled, said hello. Her right hand
resting on the door.  She looked older

than her age, but beautiful.
And luminous. Something in her

already beginning to change. A seed,
buried in the ground, sensing the sun’s

fuller light. She smiled, said hello.
Or maybe I was the seed, she the light.

I’m here, she said. And here was someplace else.

WATER LESSONS (2022)



September 1983

This should arrive in time; I hope the Post Office doesn’t disappoint.
I tried to make the cookies as good as the ones we ate
in Atlantic City, but they aren’t.

We had a lovely weekend at the Lake over Labor Day—
grilling steaks, bobbing around on inner tubes.
Leah’s sister was in town. Have you ever met her? She’s pretty
but in a colder, more sophisticated way. I like Leah’s prettiness better.

Just now, WFMT played “Blue Skies” by Irving Berlin—
his songs were what I grew up with. Happy songs
in Depression America. Yes, I attended Alfred’s funeral.
He was 25. There was a bouquet from his fiancée.

I appreciate the letter you sent. You were 10 when I started drinking,
maybe 9. I’ve put you through a lot of pain.

The dried blossoms are from the mock orange tree in our yard.
I carry your letter in my purse.

NEXT TIME YOU COME HOME (2023)

About the Author

Lisa Dordal is a Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University and is the author of Mosaic of the Dark, which was a finalist for the 2019 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry; Water Lessons, which was listed by Lambda Literary as one of their most anticipated books for 2022; and Next Time You Come Home (2023). Lisa is a Pushcart Prize and Best-of-the-Net nominee and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Robert Watson Poetry Prize, and the Betty Gabehart Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared in The Sun, Narrative, Image, Christian Century, Best New Poets, New Ohio Review, Greensboro Review, RHINO, and CALYX. Her website is lisadordal.com.