just one (book) thing: henry hughes

by Dave Jarecki

Moist Meridian, by Henry Hughes

“If you write all the time, you’re going to get more of those “bonuses,” as Stafford calls them.”

Henry Hughes is a very hard working poet, and the evolution of his lines and style is a product of the amount of time he puts in. His second book, Moist Meridian (2009, Mammoth Books), has amazing sea legs as it crosses through some of life’s more interesting passages. During an interview, I asked Hughes about a specific line in one of his more aerial poems, “Flight,” in which he details the fatalistic musings of a traveler aboard an airline. I wanted to find out about his choice to be playful in that moment.

There’s a line in the second-to-last stanza that reads: “The invisible captain speaks of seat belts, / weather and time — and that’s fine if we’re coming back to earth.” You could have started that in so many different ways, but you wrote, “Invisible captain.” Was that phrase ever anything other than “Invisible captain,” and how do you as a teacher get your students to be playful in their writing?

I don’t think the line was ever anything else but “Invisible captain.” Plenty of lines get changed quite a bit, as you well know. Sometimes they even get better.

Just the way it’s there in the sentence structurally, it sounds like the kind of thing I do a lot, especially in my first drafts. If I’m going to modify something, I’ll do it kind of crazily. If I get one out of 10 of them to work, then it’s worth it.

Rereading it, the line feels like it was probably that way since the first draft. Lots of other things in this poem were probably revised, however.

The poem is about religion and God, and the indifference of the universe when you’re up there in a plane. You’re at the mercy of this crazy craft and crew. “Invisible captain” works nicely as a God-thing. And I was just being playful. And I got lucky.

Stafford talked a lot about luck, but I like the Arnold Palmer quote that you’ll find in writing books here and there. He makes this incredible shot, some sort of sand-trap-to-green thing. Someone says, “Lucky shot, Arnold.” And Palmer says, “Yeah, the more I practice the luckier I get.”

If you write all the time, you’re going to get more of those “bonuses,” as Stafford calls them. You’ll pick up extra points here and there.

In terms of getting students to be more playful, I’ve talked with plenty of art professors about this. You can encourage playfulness, you can lighten up on kids a little bit, and you can be conscious about not making them write like you write.

A lot of writing teachers and artists admit to the fact that, unconsciously, we want our students to write like us. We know it’s bad, but unconsciously we do it. We encourage a kind of aesthetic that we love.

One thing you can do is be better about lightening up on your students, letting them do more of whatever the hell they want to do without being careless and stupid. Of course they still need some guidance.

I do think a lot depends on the way we grow up, and who we are, and the way our minds form. There are a million reasons why some people are good at math, or music, or good at finding their way through a crowded city, for instance.

There are also those students that don’t need play. Maybe they need structure. I have some students who just absolutely gush — they bring in five-page poems that are just wild sprawls. I say, “Man, there’s a lot of really neat stuff here, but there’s no form, there’s no care.”

It’s always a paradox. You want to be free and original and organic, but you also want to be artistic and controlled.

Order Moist Meridian from Amazon. Find out more about Hughes’ work at his website.

Dave Jarecki writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction from his home in Portland, Ore. Read and listen to his work, as well as the work of guest writers, at DaveJarecki.com.