An Interview with Rose McLarney

Justin Bigos: Rose, there are many things to admire in your forthcoming, first book of poems, The Always Broken Plates of Mountains. The book contains voices, and yet I sense a voice; stories, and yet I sense a story. You have a poem titled “Ars Poetica,” and another titled “Poet,”but there are many poems in this collection that could stand for the whole, the way a leaf of a fern looks like a fern. It’s a big question, but can you talk a bit about how you see these poems speaking to each other? And how did that help you arrange them into the pages of a book?

Rose McLarney: These are my ambitions for The Always Broken Plates of Mountains: A cast of speakers, like a chorus, express the thoughts of people who share a rural background and landscape. The landscape is more than the physical setting in the Appalachian mountains—it’s an atmosphere created by weaving together stories of both personal and larger cultural loss. The poems are not only about romantic love, but perhaps more significantly, about faithfulness to place. Though the perspective in this sequence varies, the poems are united by a characteristic voice. The voices are alike in that they are understated and musical, with tendencies to defer and deflect, as were the voices around me as I grew up. The voices are also united because they speak of love and loss, experiences that are so utterly un-unique that perhaps the only way they can be interesting is to use them as points of commonality.

At least that’s what I hope happens in the book. A significant time for me as a writer was a morning when I was shuffling through my many poems and began to think that they weren’t necessarily redundant because they addressed the same themes, or necessarily at odds because their speakers were different, but that they could work together. Now, reading and writing poems in series and sequences is a kind of acknowledgment that, though poetry can look so concise and definitive, you can’t express a thing well enough all that quickly or easily. Or I can’t. Sequences give me a chance to make the admission that I may never articulate what I want to completely, yet show my continuing best efforts.

Of course, while series allow me to try out different iterations of an idea, they are also limiting. A number of the poems I write just wouldn’t fit in this book. (For instance, some of my greatest pleasures are rather exotic cooking and experimental music and those subjects have no home in The Always Broken Plates of Mountains.) I’m well into working on my second book and, for it, I am trying to write distinctly different poems about another country, another continent, from another point of view, and there will be poems that won’t find company in this collection either.

In answer to your question about how the poems are arranged in the book, they are grouped by and progress through an arc of tones (though nothing as neat as a plot triangle). My intention was for the book to feel as if it resolved—even if the resolution at which it arrives is a message about disappearing, keeping quiet, being still. (Those may be some of the predominant messages I got from mountain culture. I don’t want to romanticize it. Of course, that instruction in humility may have also prepared me to inhabit personas.)


JB: I admire the various qualities of imagery in the book. In your poem “At the Mountain State Fair,” you write, “Rides are lighting up the night,/ shaking people and making them shriek.” The imagery resides in the music of the lines: the long i sounds in the first line, which rises in pitch—suddenly shaken by the long a and sh-sounds and jerky rhythm in the second line. You’ve managed to create the sense of a roller coaster in only two lines. In another poem you write the indelible image of bridesmaids climbing a silo to line “the steel tower/ with fuchsia, powder pink, red, and orange satin.” The image is striking in its colorful juxtaposition. How do poems let you know if they require different qualities of image? Are you mostly listening to the lines or seeing what they summon?

RM: My ideas tend to originate from images. Every night, I make myself write one image from the day in a notebook. The notebook is in no way a journal—you could read it and have absolutely no ideas of the events that had occurred. But the notes give me something to search through for commonalities, and allow me to start poems from a concrete, grounded source.

Only after I’ve got a sense of what I want the poem to say do I let sound drive it. I don’t turn to sound as a source until later because, as much as I am drawn to music, I understand it less and coherence and clarity are big concerns of mine. Yet, sound is essential—and I’m appreciative that you noted it in your analysis—because it is often what lets writing achieve some sort of transcendence, something I didn’t expect, and it is what can save my poems from being overly rational arguments or simplistic equations of image and meaning.

JB: One of the recurring concerns in the book is story. Story is often associated with the South, and your poems both embrace and toy with that association. In your poem, “They Said It Was Too Late,” you write of meeting a man “who told the kind of stories/ I wanted to hear.” In “Jubilation, Then,” the speaker says, “Once, stories . . . were like explosions of elderberries.” And in “Disclaimer,” the speaker mentions a place called “Lover’s Leap,” named for a Cherokee girl who killed herself out of love, but actually is just a place where “a coon hunter” fell over—and lived. The final stanza of the poem: “and you can see why they tell the story/ the way they do,/ and why I prefer their stories.” While the poems embrace story, as it is connected to place, the speakers seem to understand that story is ultimately a fiction, a work of art—and therefore to be savored. How much is your book a defense of story, in the Southern tradition—if it is such, and if there is such—and how much of this is just Rose McLarney being Rose McLarney?

RM: While I value the way poetry can stay in a moment and I have never been particularly interested in what happens—in events, in action, in change, in leaving—I am interested in story in the sense that I am interested in how the manner of telling makes the meaning. We all know that eyewitness accounts are not dependable evidence, that any two people’s memories of events and exchanges differ. So, whether it’s about a region or a relationship, when you choose to tell a story with nostalgia or condescension or another tone, you are making the history it will survive as longer than whatever the actuality was. If you can stand the story-teller role, there’s a way in which what you know well never is really lost.

The poem you mentioned earlier, my “Ars Poetica,” is not literally my story, which should give you an idea of how thoroughly I take advantage of personas. The speaker’s rarely Rose McLarney. I’m not all that fascinating and I worry about being liked too much. That’s why I am constantly espousing the idea to my students that what could really be most liberating in writing poems is not confessing their autobiographical secrets but becoming someone else.

Perhaps even worse than that for my students, if they misapply my writing advice to their personal lives, is my suggestion that there are truths truer than the truth. To elaborate on what any fiction writer knows: While the chalk mine in “Ars Poetica” might have been a couple counties away from the school I attended, or a man’s diction was not quite so refined, if it is the image of that stripped mountain or the summation of his words that best and most economically illustrates what I want the reader to register, isn’t the altered version the more accurate?

All that said, the poems are representative of, emblematic of, and indebted to direct experience of the landscape and culture in which I live.

JB: Just to clarify: I meant Rose McLarney the poet, not the person. And I’m glad you keep bringing up the idea of persona. I think of all poetry as persona, but unless the voice is, say, Malcolm X or a pencil sharpener, it’s easy to sometimes read a poet’s work as autobiographical—especially if that person is sitting right in front of you in workshop and his or her work shows a consistency of voice and subject. I think this is why workshops discourage commenting on content itself, though I think that discouragement can sometimes handicap discussion. As a teacher, do you think strong workshops allow for both discussion of craft and content? Can you truly critique a voice, not just for the way it sings, but also for what it’s singing?

RM: Well you know, just this morning a colleague asked how I approached Czeslaw Milosz in class and I said, “I’m sorry, but when I teach Milosz, I talk about content.” Recalling that, it seems beyond silly to have apologized for looking at what a poem means, especially when talking about a poet whose perspectives on issues such as war were so un-dogmatic, honest, nuanced, and self-effacing . So, yes, viewing content as an unmentionable is a handicap if it makes poets avoid social commentaries even when times demand them, or avoid the risk of writing poems that are otherwise of consequence. (I’m still trying to figure out how to write responses to environmental degradation that are as valid as Rick Bass’s or Ann Pancake’s, among others’.)

The focus on craft in workshops is well intentioned, in that at least it gives readers a vocabulary with which to better communicate their enthusiasm about the particulars of poems, and steers exchanges away from a focus on qualitative judgments about our personal enjoyment of or identification with a piece.

But I suspect that what makes a good writer (in addition to rigor, etc.) is an empathy for and understanding of and surrender to the things you write about, and the people to whom you write. The problem is that that sounds moralistic, and teaching a worldview might not be appropriate and is certainly harder than teaching, for instance, meter and form.

I can’t make students go out and have the direct educational experience of, say, poverty. Or watching livestock closely enough that you can begin to predict how they move, waiting long enough that they no longer think of your presence, and getting up the courage to make the contact—grab the horns. So I teach what I can in a classroom.

An essential part of teaching is trying to give good models of writing to students. I often start classes with the Larry Levis quote, “The best beginning poets I know are also the most literary: what they demonstrate is a love of poetry rather than a love for themselves.” While I myself had no literary background when I began writing, I think broader willingness to turn your attention to the thoughts and efforts of others is essential. Jack Gilbert also expresses this idea in a way that ties in nicely with the phrasing of your question. From his poem “How to Write Poetry”:

There is a wren sitting in the branches
of my spirit and it chooses not to sing.
It is listening to learn its song.
Sits in the Palladin light trying to decide
what it will sing when it is time to sing.

JB: Two of my favorite poems in this book have goats in them. In the poem “In Admiration,” you write a love poem to goats, animals that herd together when in danger, and “let wolf, dog, any other// save them from deciding/ which will be sacrificed.” As if the reader is not already weeping with love for goats, you end the poem with the image of the goats “beside each other,// heads bowed—/ heads with horns// and still, they bow.” The last poem I read that had as beautiful a human love for animals was Maurice Manning’s “Panegyric Against the Consolation of Grief.” I know that you own some goats and other animals, and I think you have some experience farming. Please talk about your goats. It will make me happy.

RM: I don’t deserve to be called a farmer. I used to work for a nonprofit that served Appalachian family farmers so I understand their lot and there was a time when I was making progress towards producing food myself. But just as I was expanding my livestock operations, my teaching and writing opportunities also expanded and I am choosing the white collar route.

I do still have plenty to say about goats, though. I learned about self-sufficiency in general and certain skill sets in particular as I taught myself (mostly from kids’ 4-H books, which were at about my level) how to care for goats, poultry, cattle, zebus, and other livestock; how to recognize symptoms and give injections; how to earn the trust or obedience of nonverbal beings; and so on.

We spent yesterday hand-digging a grave for a goat (rather than composing poems or prepping for classes as we should have been). We dug a hole, we put something we wanted to be rid of in the hole, we filled it back up with the same dirt again, and (in spite of the addition of the mass of the body) all we ended up with was a sunken spot and disturbed grass. Caring for animals, there is often a point when you will no longer get something practical out of them such as a cut of meat. You won’t get something personal such as affection. (Ill animals have off-putting behaviors.) You won’t get something artistic such as unusual, visceral image. (I’ve banned myself from writing anymore about livestock in the new book.) But you are still responsible for the animals, and that’s important. Sometimes, the only thing I get out of animals is larger and harder than a lesson: questions about how I could have ever presumed to be responsible for, to own, to make decisions about, any other life, or considered agriculture—human intervention in the natural world—a virtue. Everything doesn’t have to be turned into a product, a poem, to be significant.

Nevertheless, to bring this back around to poetry, what makes that Maurice Manning poem one of my favorite poems, is that it takes on the challenge of being “against the consolation of grief” and succeeds. It looks to what could be called simpler times and the more basic natures of animals with true tenderness. But it doesn’t force from its examination an unrealistic lesson, on how the “rural scene” can be saved or redeemed, or anything else.

JB: I’m so happy that you also love that poem. I’ve read it many times. There are certain poets (Raymond Carver and Antonio Machado are two more) who amaze me in how they can get away with such direct declaration of emotion. I think most poets of our generation would be unlikely to begin a poem, as Manning does, “Yes, my heart is sore and heavy-laden.” While not all of us are writing the “skittery” poem Tony Hoagland has written about, we do seem to be very suspicious of stated emotion, preferring instead something like “emotional complexity”—a recurring phrase in blurbs and reviews that has always bugged me. Is there something to be said for the powerful, simple emotion in poetry? Don’t we usually tell our students to not wear their hearts on their sleeves (and secretly envy them when they do)?

RM: It’s not just students writing poems that I envy. It’s those animals that butt in anger or bay with desire, people who go more directly through their lives. The most moving words that have been spoken to me personally were not said by writers, but less mincing speakers who just went unabashedly for meaningful expression. (See the compliment in the first line of the book’s title poem, or various lines of dialogue borrowed from physical laborers, woodworkers with their terminologies, backwoodsmen.)

My grandmother’s advice for social situations—“speak softly, leave early”—applies well to poems and how they effectively deliver messages. (The admonition, when dancing, to “leave space for the good Lord between you” may be relevant too.) Though she may have claimed it was advice about how to be modest, I think it’s really about how to be intriguing, charming.

Similarly, the point of subtlety in poems, to my mind, is to ingratiate yourself to the reader so they’ll pay careful attention, rather than to avoid emotion altogether. In workshops, I am always asking writers what’s at stake, and to reveal more of the occasion for poems, rather than to view poems as something in which to veil meaning.

These lines of Louise Gluck’s offer worthwhile thoughts on candor: “It is true there is not enough beauty in the world. / It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. / Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.” However, for me, there is an excess of beauty and the more challenging, very emotional task is to distill and do justice to some bit of that.

JB: I agree that there is an excess of beauty in this world—and it takes something even more than “candor” to praise it. By the way, did your grandmother get that line about speaking softly and leaving early from Flannery O’Connor? That really rings a bell.

RM: That grandmother’s reading material was probably limited to the Bible and women’s magazines. My other grandmother, who was mercifully unconcerned with appearances, did read O’Connor, though. We wrote each other letters all through my childhood and when I look back at my earliest poems and find a surprisingly old voice I imagine it’s because my first writing was an exchange with an old woman. (Lately, people haven’t told me I’m an old soul as much as they used to. I don’t think I’ve tapped into some sort of joie de vivre, but rather, that I’m getting old enough that that’s no longer flattering.)

JB: There is a very palpable acceptance of change—to the land, to industry, and to human relations—in the pages of your book, but there is also a respect for the past and its traditions. How do you reconcile these ideas?

RM: I do respect the past. In an attempt to write poems with a lasting quality, I like to draw imagery from a time when things did not so quickly become dated and disposable. And imagining those who inhabited this land before me—noting the sunken spot in the floor always in front of stoves in old houses, from years of women faithfully standing there, or the silky wood always at the tops of stiles, from years of men pressing their hands there each time they climbed over—both gives me a sense of company and puts me in my place, as one in a succession.

Perhaps even more than I respect the past, I respect the human tendency towards nostalgia. I recognize that a lot of us feel it, and I don’t think it’s a terrible fault. Southern literature is associated with nostalgia, but major figures like Faulkner and O’Connor and Agee were just more direct in indicting the South for causing its own decay by clinging to tradition than a lot of regional writers. I see the inclination to note that things aren’t like they used to be everywhere. It’s here in the Susan Sontag essay, “Unguided Tour,” on the page the creative nonfiction textbook beside my desk has fallen open to. (“I took a trip to see the beautiful things. Change of scenery. Change of heart. And do you know? What? They’re still there. Ah, but they won’t be there for long. I know. That’s why I went. To say goodbye. Whenever I travel, it’s always to say goodbye.”) It’s a theme in the Anthony Goicolea exhibit I saw last week. (The contemporary American-born artist addresses the nostalgia about Cuba his immigrant family taught him by creating mythological family portraits of people and places he has never directly known.)

Going back to what I said before: Many of my poems might seem like love poems to people—and some are, love poems to concepts of people entertained at some point, if not to exact individuals—but they are more deeply about love for a place, and a place in time. I use the love poem because the one who got away or the one you’ll never get over seems to be an idea to which a reader of any background can relate. Right now I am very happy, but sufficiently telling the person I love how I love him still eludes me. That means that inadequacy, or at best, imprecision, remains a major theme of what is purely a love poem, just as it is in a poem that deals with themes of heritage. At times, my poems react against the downtrodden, make-do kind of perspective that is the heritage in quarters of Appalachia I’ve known. Other times, I think having a work ethic and little expectation of ease can help a poet—that’s when I’m sure getting to keep trying to tell it right is a good way to spend my life.

JB: I spent this morning on my concrete balcony in north Texas reading this book, and I thank you for transporting me for a little while to the mountains of southern Appalachia. The book is beautiful, and I am happy that in a few months the world will get to read it.

RM: There’s a long period between when a manuscript is accepted and when it is published, so in a way, my own book is already transporting me back too. I am happy that I can capture and pass on the stories I have had the good fortune to hear, and thankful to the people who let me listen.

This is sounding like an acceptance speech, but I have to say I’m also thankful to writers who have influenced me, regardless of where they are from, and for people who read, teach, and edit poetry who have pleasantly, surprisingly, wanted to listen to me. Fellow writers have provided encouragement and (even though I often find the word over-used and cloying, in this case it seems earned) community closer and kinder than that of a small town.

Three Wishes

To have two long-legged dogs
named Thither and Yon,
loyal to me. A man
who hears when I say, Let me alone,
and lifts me over fences and creeks

anyway. And an understanding
of the moss that lines paths
through the woods, if it
invites me onward, or
to lay down where I already am.

from The Always Broken Plates of Mountains by Rose McLarney.
© 2012 by Rose McLarney. Printed with permission by Four Way Books.

Four Way Books will publish Rose McLarney's book, The Always Broken Plates of Mountains, in 2012. She was awarded Alligator Juniper’s 2011 National Poetry Prize and the Joan Beebe Teaching Fellowship in 2010; was a finalist for the Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly Fellowship this year; and is currently a nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in publications including The Kenyon Review, Orion, Painted Bride Quarterly, Provincetown Arts Magazine, and New England Review. McLarney earned her MFA from Warren Wilson's MFA Program for Writers and teaches writing at the college. She grew up in rural western North Carolina, where she continues to live on an old farm.