Answers for Kailee

Kailee is a high school student who wrote me a note one day.  Here's our correspondence:

Hello Annie,

My name is Kailee Hocker. I live in Hiawatha, KS and I'm a junior in High School. Our english teacher wanted us to do research on a famous poet that we like; as well as contact them in any way and ask questions. I looked at a lot of poets and I thought your poems were very pretty. I would really like to get to know more about you. So, please e-mail me back ASAP :) I have some questions I would like to ask you regarding your poetry!

Thank You.

Your New Fan,

Kailee Hocker :)

Dear Kailee,

Thanks for your email.  It's always nice to hear from people who appreciate my poems!  I'm really busy working on my next book of poetry, so I can't answer your questions in detail.

You can find out a lot about my poems and how I wrote them in the Readers Guide to Calendars here:  There are also some interviews at my website here, and some audio interviews here

But if you still have a particular question about a certain poem that you feel you can't find the answer to anywhere else, email me back and I will try to answer as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of facts you might like to know just to get you started:

The original title of "Pearl" was "Voyeur."

The second stanza of "The Intellect of Woman" was written 10 years after the first.

"Imbolc Chant" has four different meters in it, and it was written to be danced.

Above all, please be sure to hear my poems aloud--it's how they were meant to be heard.  You don't have to actually read them aloud (though that would be great) -- you can also read them aloud silently by hearing them inside your head as if they were spoken.

Enjoy!!

Love and blessed be,

Annie Finch

PS  By the way, is Hiawatha named after Longfellow's poem?  That is a wonderful poem!  Here is my blog post about listening to the whole poem in one afternoon:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/04/audacity-of-voice-the-poet-as-actor-michael-maglaras-hiawatha-marathon-and-how-i-made-my-cd/

The part about Hiawatha is in the last 3 paragraphs.

Dear Annie!,

I would like to start off by saying... I am terribley sorry for the LONG amount of time it took me to get back to you. I feel aweful. I did not see that you relplyed back to me! Plus I have been very busy with athletics and other school work. I feel extremely estatic that you replyed back to me tho! :) I was hoping you would. There are many questions that I would personally like to get from YOU... If that's okay :)
 
1) How did you begin to write poetry? Age?
2) What inspires you to write? People? Places?
3) What do you enjoy most about writing?
4) Are there other poets that you look up to or that inspire you? Who? Why?
5) Did you always want to write?
6) Do you do it as a hobby... or is it a job?
7) Where do you like to concentrate and write your poetry? Why?
8) Do you ever get stuck on a poem or get stressed?
9) What is your favorite poem you've written? Overall? (Any poem from any poet)
10) Last but not least... What quote of advice do you give admirers and fans to live by? :D
 
I know it's a lot! But I really wanna know a lot about you! Just answer them as best as you can. 
 
Also...The thing about Longfellow's poem... The Song of Hiawatha... Umm... Well I am not completely sure. I asked my mom about that one. She said she thinks it is modeled about his poem. I mean we have a street named Longfellow up by my High School and Hiawatha is an indian name. Our school mascott used to be the Redskins (unfortunately now the Redhawks). But I guess it's  about a lil' indian boy named Hiawatha... but I'm not sure if it's actually linked to our town. I will do some research on it though! I think my grandparents actually have the poem (A.K.A. pretty much a book lol) at their house. So I will try to see but Im not sure! :( Lol
 
Your New Fan,
 
Kailee Hocker :)

Dear Kailee,

Here are your answers. I hope they are helpful.  I am planning to post them on my blog to that other students might be able to find them useful.  Do you mind if I use your name there, saying that you wrote asking me these questions? I can just say"Kailee H.," or I can just not use your name and say "a student."

Good luck finding out about Hiawatha. It does sound as if a lot of people in your town used to love that poem, at least!

Annie

             1) How did you begin to write poetry? Age?


   I began to write poetry at age 7 or 8. I think it might have been a school assignment, but I just never stopped. I showed some poems to a librarian in the public library when I was 9, and she sent them to a magazine which published them.

2) What inspires you to write? People? Places?

Feelings that come from people, places, ideas, or experiences.

3) What do you enjoy most about writing?

The feeling of doing what I am meant to do.

4) Are there other poets that you look up to or that inspire you? Who? Why?

Yes, there are hundreds. A few of them are W.B. Yeats, George Herbert, Langston Hughes, Rumi, Audre Lorde, Gerald Manly Hopkins, Thomas Hardy, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Hart Crane, John Keats, Sara Teasdale, Gwendolyn Brooks, Basho, Frank O'Hara, Marina Tsvetaeva, Hafiz, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Odysseus Elytis, Sylvia Plath, Edmund Spenser, and Emily Dickinson. Each of them inspires me through their skill in poetic language and music, and I look up to them because they had the courage to follow their unique path and"Wh vision.

5) Did you always want to write?

Yes

6) Do you do it as a hobby... or is it a job?

It is a calling.  I guess you could say that a calling is sort of a combination of a hobby and a job.

7) Where do you like to concentrate and write your poetry? Why?

Sometimes I like to have people around--in a cafe, on a train, on a plane, on a bus--and sometimes I like being alone--at a desk, or lying on my bed, or outside in nature.  Either way, it's better when I'm not interrupted.

8) Do you ever get stuck on a poem or get stressed?

Sometimes, but then I try to just leave it alone and do something else until I can come back with a fresh approach.

9) What is your favorite poem you've written? Overall? (Any poem from any poet)

A lot of my poems feel like favorites. A few of them are: "Walk With Me," "Summer Solstice Chant," "Landing Under Water," "Butterfly Lullaby," "Chain of Women," "Goddess,"

and "October Moon."  I have hundreds of favorite poems by all the poets listed above and by others.  Some of the first poems I loved when I was young are "Where Go the Boats" by Robert Louis Stevenson, "Your Catfish Friend" by Richard Brautigam, "Little Tree" by e.e. cummings, and "The Tyger" by William Blake. Other favorites are:  the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Seafarer", "The Flower-Fed Buffalo" by Vachel Lindsay, "Nuns Fret Not" by Wordsworth," "A Birthday" by Christina Rossetti, ""The Illiterate" by William Meredith, "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, and "Do Not Go Gentle" by Dylan Thomas.

10) Last but not least... What quote of advice do you give admirers and fans to live by? 

 "If it harms no-one, do what you will."