Poet David Groff joins me today to chat about his new poetry collection, Live in Suspense.
Bio:
David Groff’s new book of poetry is Live in Suspense, published by Trio House Press in July 2023. His previous poetry collections are Clay (Trio House Press, 2013), which received the Louise Bogan Award, and Theory of Devolution (University of Illinois Press, 2002), selected for the National Poetry Series.
In addition to being a poet, David is an editor and teacher. Formerly a senior editor at Crown, David is an independent editor and publishing consultant, focusing on narrative nonfiction and literary and popular fiction, working directly with authors, literary agents, and publishers.
Since 2007, David has taught poetry, nonfiction, and publishing in the MFA creative writing program of the City College of New York.
What do you enjoy most about writing poems?
I love initial spark, the little flame that ignites when I write down an image, a phrase, an idea, which builds line by line to a bright light that lets me see new things. I love being surprised into richer apprehension of my life and our world. And I love knowing that ultimately I’ll connect with readers and share my words, which I hope will spark and delight them.
Can you give us a little insight into a few of your poems – perhaps a couple of your favorites?
In Live in Suspense, I’m writing about those moments when you’re poised to have an experience that will change your life forever. I think that the older and wiser we get, the more aware we are that were always living between destinations, that our lives are always awesomely in flux. Sometimes I imagine that life is constantly a suspension bridge, that we are always in transit from one place to another, even as that new place becomes a bridge to new experiences. Sometimes that means loss, and many of my poems are elegies. But other poems speak to this sheer intensity of change, of living in the world fiercely aware of the mystery about what comes next.
In one of my poems, called “Suspense,” I’m with I’m listening to a friend in a restaurant and realizing he’s about to tell me something that will change us both forever. And the moment of waiting for him to speak, was so intensely powerful. The last line of the poem is, “I live in suspense.” That’s where my title came from ultimately. I think we all live in suspense.
A number of the poems are about my father and mother, returning to their lives and lamenting their loss. But they too reappear in my life and my poems as sustaining people, who still have things they need to tell me. So there is mystery there. In other poems, I retell Bible stories and explore my relationship with my childhood Episcopal faith. There are also lots of love poems, and poems confront the cost of chronic illness, including AIDS/HIV.
What form are you inspired to write in the most? Why
I love the power of rhyme, and even more of the intensity of alliteration, the way words and letters collect on the tongue and create new meaning and voice. So I sometimes write in ballad forms, and I play with rhymes that might unpredictably chime.
But most of all I’m fascinated with the power of the sentence, how much action and variation we can get into subject-verb-object, and how that cause and effect can animate the poem. Some poets write more in collage mode, breaking up sentences. But I love how the sentence interacts with the line breaks. And I love the energy that can come from the super long sentence. Many of my poems are all one sentence. You need to take a deep breath before you start!
What type of project are you working on next?
After each of my books, I find that I want to experiment in new ways. As a book editor, I tell all the authors I work with not to write the same book over again, but to do something new, to test how they can use their voice in new registers, while still relating to their readers. I also encourage them to play. And that’s what I want to do right now: to see how prose poetry works, and to see how different forms, like letters or villanelles, shape my work and open it up.
And even though I’m a New York City boy, I’m fascinated by nature, and how nature interacts with our landscapes, including urban ones. So you may find me writing more about squirrels and pigeons, and the seagulls in Hudson River Park. Live in Suspense is filled with bugs—the desert stink beetle, the cricket, and the gribble, a kind of ship termite—and I’m hoping to introduce more fauna into my new work.
When did you first consider yourself a writer / poet?
I wrote my first poem when I was seven. It was about snow, and it was free verse, which somehow I had heard of. My father put it up on his study wall. In college I was torn between wanting to go into politics and wanting to write poetry. Poetry won out, and even though I consider myself a politically engaged person, I feel that I can best contribute to the planet by sharing the most artful and resonant words I can come up with. Most of the time I don’t regret not running for the Senate!
How do you research markets for your work, perhaps as some advice for not-yet-published poets?
Whether I am working with authors who are my clients or teaching poets in my MFA program, I’m a proponent of getting up from the desk and out of the house, of sharing your work—of becoming a culture worker who is out there, supporting other writers, sharing and buying their work, and otherwise showing up.
For poets and prose writers alike, the more you interact with others, in person or online or on the page, the more you’re going to learn about publishing your work. The more you read, the better you’ll write, and the more likely you are to be able to find homes for your work alongside those writers you admire. I tell my poets that when they read a poetry book they admire and relate to, they should look at the acknowledgments page to see where other writers have been published, and then pursue those same venues.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I love writing by hand. Whether it’s poetry or prose, I think there is something visceral and connected when the brain is animating the fingers. The physical process of it inspires me. I’ll copy over a lot of my writing again and again,, both poetry and prose, before I type it up. Typing your work makes it static somehow, fixes it, objectifies it, which is really useful, but at later stage. The only issue with this for me is that my handwriting is terrible, and sometimes I can’t figure out what the heck I wrote. You’d think I was a doctor.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was a little boy I wanted to be an architect, even though I had trouble spelling the word. I loved the idea of creating structures, and I still do. I like to think of my poems as constructs that we can enter together, designs that can delight and change us.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
So many of us are afraid of poetry. I feel it myself, that when I approach certain poems I fear I’m not going to get them—that I’m supposed to decode them the way I was taught in English class. But I think if we slow down and approach a poem from a place of curiosity, patience, and need, we can savor it, see how it evokes the world, see what its mysteries are, and let ourselves live in suspense.