there must be a lot of power in that quiet space for there to be an all-out onslaught against it in our culture
interview, with , author Fall Sanctuary. His work can be sampled .
Joanne Merriam: What is your writing process?
Jeff Hardin: I keep a notebook with me at all times and try to write in it every day.
In my teaching of creative writing, I stress what I call the calisthenics of writing.
I do several exercises that I think, as habits, improve how the mind works in regards to crafting poems.
In the same way that a baseball player, for instance, practices laying down a bunt so that, when a bunt is needed in a game, he will be prepared to do so, I think that certain practices, certain exercises, prepare the mind for what a poem might need at any given moment.
Some days I write lists:
objects, memories, titles, questions, opening lines, aphorisms, and similes.
I tell my students (and myself) that we are writing for now, and we are writing for later.
That’s my process:
now and later.
Sometime now for later.
If I have five or ten minutes waiting on a class, I will sit and write as many titles as I can generate in that time frame.
I’m not committing to any of them yet.
I’m just imagining what might be possible.
Or I place myself somewhere (at a campsite where I grew up, for instance) and list every object there.
Doing so teaches me to think concretely, to imagine specifically, to ground myself in details.
Other times, I will sit for twenty minutes and write as many questions as I can think of.
Think of how many great questions exist in poems:
“What did I know, what did I know/Of love’s austere and lonely offices?”
Think of Pablo Neruda’s The Book of Questions.
Think of how many poems you love that begin with a question or that turn on a question.
Questions can be central to poems, and if I’m writing my own poems, I want to have the history of questions at my fingertips, all of my own and everyone else’s. Sometimes items from these lists make their way into my poems, but more importantly I think they exercise the mind to think in these ways.
Yes, everything begins in my journal.
Sometimes I even write whole poems in there.
These are sometimes typed up on one of the three manual typewriters I still use, with revisions occurring during the process.
Eventually, some of these poems are typed again on my computer, inevitably revised again.
Writing, of course, is really about revision, about examining possibilities and coming to an ever sharper understanding of how everything in the space of a text works to shape or illuminate the text.
One draft turns into another draft and into another draft until I have the draft I can take no farther.
Even my published poems are no more than drafts because they are just versions of what might have been, incomplete and partial&they are glimpses of glimpses.
I doubt my process is any different than it has been for any other writer.
I love the process, though.
I’m still smitten with sitting down each day with a sense of expectation, of a word leading to a phrase leading to line break leading to a thought I’ve never had before.
A poem feels like some kind of unexplainable wholeness set down into my life.
My poems may never gather a wide audience, even among poets, but I am not the same person I used to be because of my daily encounter with language.
Joanne Merriam: Have you had to sacrifice anything in the rest of your life to write poetry?
Jeff Hardin: I like to think that I’ve sacrificed many useless selves, many parts of who I once was, in order to write poems.
The part of me that thinks that things don’t matter, that events in my life don’t add up or lead to a larger design, I’ve sacrificed in order to write some poems.
The part of me that leans in the direction of despair and futility, in the direction of arrogance and envy, in the direction of what I’m sure I know instead of what I don’t know, can’t know, I’ve sacrificed in order to write some poems.
I used to sacrifice sleep in order to write.
In my twenties and thirties, I often stayed up very late, especially if I had not written anything that day.
I’ve always been a determined and driven person.
I refuse to give up my quiet time.
I decided a long time ago that there must be a lot of power in that quiet space for there to be an all-out onslaught against it in our culture.
More and more, we are able to spend our days totally submerged in noise and gadgetry, in email and Facebook, in one more episode of Criminal Minds.
I just keep remembering that there is a word for “a clearing space in the middle of being.”
I’m trying to make that space my permanent address.
Joanne Merriam: Southern writers often seem to get lumped together into a single category, as though geography were all that’s needed to understand their work. Can you comment on what it means to you to be located in Tennessee, both for your own work, and for its reception outside the region?
Jeff Hardin: Like anyone else, I am a product of my upbringing, and of course I had no say in this placement.
I was born into my specific circumstances, into my place and age, and I have been shaped by my environment.
My childhood was spent mostly in the woods, near creeks and rivers, near fields and front porches and old people with minds that reached back into the previous century.
I knew people who worked menial jobs, who lost fingers in mill accidents, who never had enough money, who drank and raised hell and sang hymns and shot guns, and who seemed bent near the earth under the weight of their lives.
I think, even as a child, I knew I was both part of, and separate from, the people I loved.
There was just simply something else going on inside my mind unrelated to my geography, and I could not explain these thoughts to anyone.
Resonate moments in poems, stories, movies, and songs seemed to point me toward another existence.
They had everything to do with some “truth” outside of my experience, outside of my geography.
When I was sixteen, I used to go into Wal-Mart and find the same album, The Unforgettable Fire by U2, and read the lyrics on the back cover.
The song was “A Sort of Homecoming”:
And you know it’s time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning,
Lights in the distance.
And you hunger for the time,
Time to heal, desire, time,
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape.
I used to stand there and read those words like they were another one of the Psalms.
I realize now those words were like poetry to me.
Later in life, in graduate school in 1990, I used to read and reread the passage on the back cover of Czeslaw Milosz’s Collected Poems:
“To find my home in one sentence, concise, as if hammered in metal.
Not to enchant anybody.
Not to earn a lasting name in posterity.
An unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form, which three words are opposed to chaos and nothingness.”
I may be southern by birth, but like so many other writers in the south, my influences are far-ranging, from Milosz and Szymborska to Transtromer and Neruda.
I’m as influenced by Dave Smith’s Cuba Night as I am by Basho and Issa, by Merwin and Heaney, by Simic, Bly, Grennan, Hirshfield, Valentine, Saramago, Stafford and countless others.
I have no allegiance to a southern tradition per se.
I have an allegiance to what Saramago’s philosophical sentences produce in me when I read them aloud.
I have an allegiance to the meditative mind of Charles Wright sitting in his backyard in Virginia or to the evocations of failed towns in Richard Hugo’s northwest or to the empathetic sensibility of James Wright looking at his beautiful Ohio.
I have an allegiance to the space that opens up in me when I read Stafford’s “Thinking for Berky” or “Serving with Gideon.”
I love the novels and stories of Lewis Nordan and the southern landscapes and characters that inhabit my life now because of his words, but I’m just as enamored with the poems of Albert Goldbarth, whose mind sometimes makes me want to shake my head with wonder and disbelief.
The ending refrain of Coldplay’s “Politik” exerts as much pressure on my work as do certain passages in Flannery O’Connor.
U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” is a kind of Acts 17:28 (“For in Him we live and move and have our being…”) set to music for me, a kind of “Amazing Grace” amped up to fill a stadium and capture the soaring, internal feeling that sometimes overwhelms me.
I guess I don’t believe in a region, except as a place the mind can inhabit as a conversation down through the centuries and across the cultures, from Odysseus to the Misfit to Thoreau to Sophocles to Milton to Ritsos to Amichai to Ghalib.
My poems, for good or bad, have entered into a conversation with voices outside the south.
I don’t know any other way to approach my own poems except within the context of everything I’ve read, which does, of course, include southern writers, many of whom I find central to my life.
Tennessee has produced many splendid poets, among them George Scarbrough, Bill Brown, Lisa Coffman, Katherine Smith, Danny Marion, Linda Marion, Wyatt Prunty, and Bobby Rogers, to name only a few.
My friend Wilmer Mills who died in July 2011, though not originally from Tennessee, spent more than half his life here, so I claim his work too.
I can’t imagine my life without his poems or his friendship, and our twenty-one year conversation creates a context through which I still perceive the world and language.
Even the absence of the poems he will never write creates a context for me.
As for how my poems are received outside the region?
I suppose one measure might be the number of journals that have published my poems for the past 25 years, ranging from The North American Review to Poetry Northwest to the Hudson Review to Hayden’s Ferry Review to Ploughshares to the Caf& Review.
These journals are not in the south.
My first chapbook was published by GreenTower Press (Missouri), my second chapbook by Pudding House (Ohio), and my first book by Story Line Press (Oregon).
I haven’t made a study of my publication history, but I suspect my poems have appeared as often outside my region as they have within my region.
I suspect most poets find this reality to be true.
Joanne Merriam: What’s some writing advice you’ve received, that works for you?
Jeff Hardin: Poet Dave Etter once wrote me a letter where he said that writing poems was closer to inchworms than to cheetahs.
I think he meant that the process is slow and straightforward, that a writer builds toward a vision slowly, that a writer mustn’t be in any hurry, even that success (however one measures success) doesn’t come quickly but through diligence.
I think I’ve always been drawn to that model.
When I was a child, I saw the movie The Pride of the Yankees, starring Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig.
What I took from the movie, or what I valued as a message in the movie&aside from Gehrig’s humility and gratitude&was this idea that through one’s indefatigable work ethic greatness was within reach.
Babe Ruth might have been the better player, the more natural talent, but Gehrig put up worthy stats.
He became my hero, my measure of what a man might aspire to be.
His famous speech I count as an abiding advice in my life.
I’ve never been too sure about my own talent, but I’ve always dug down and persisted, and the idea of being thankful, no matter what happens, has been central to my thinking.
Michael Stipe, the lead singer for R.E.M., said in an interview one time that a hit song is just the song you write that day.
That idea has been important to me.
I figure that if I just show up and write each day, then one of those days a “hit” poem will be there.
I certainly can’t will a good I just have to be faithful to the process and do the work.
Besides, who can tell which poem will matter to another person, much less matter to a journal or anthology editor?
I’ve written probably
poems in the last decade.
I’ve had five entirely separate manuscripts place in book competitions, not including my book Fall Sanctuary, which received the Nicholas Roerich Prize and appeared in 2005.
The poems I think are “hits” sometimes take years to find acceptance.
Back in 2004 I wrote an abecedarian (“How Many Lives Do You Have?”) using authors’ last names to begin each of the poem’s 26 lines.
As far as I knew, no one had ever published such a poem.
I thought the idea was one of the most inventive I’d ever had.
The poem was rejected for five years by ten or more journals until it found a home at the Hudson Review.
Was the poem a “hit”?
Well, it appeared in a prominent journal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it found a reader even among the other poets in the same issue.
I’ve received more feedback regarding what I consider to be “lesser” poems that appeared in so-called “lesser” journals.
For that matter, I’ve received more feedback from audiences hearing poems that have never appeared in print.
My point, I suppose, is that I shouldn’t be overly concerned with whether a poem is a “hit” or not.
The poem just is.
Once upon a time, it did not exist, but now here it is in the sound of my own voice, which sounds like a voice I don’t quite know in full.
If a poem finds a readership, then I can’t really escape the fact that the poem is simply the poem I wrote one day, nothing more, nothing less.
The day, though, at least for me because I wrote the poem, was definitely a “hit.”
What a cool day it was.
I was alive, I thought about my existence, I entered the rhythm and immensity of language, and I put a few words down on a page.
Sometimes that simple fact astounds me.
To quote Gehrig, “I consider myself the luckiest person on the face of the earth.”
I know this example is probably corny, but several years ago I saw the remake of the movie Sabrina, with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond.
I was struck by the moment when Harrison Ford is at the airport, finally on his way to pursue Sabrina after she has left for Paris.
The woman at the airport counter asks him if this is his first time in Paris.
He says, “It’s my first everything.”
When I am writing, I want that feeling of experiencing language and life as if for the first time, in newness.
Edmond Jabes tells us that a word has a meaning which leads to another which leads to another, which makes us finally realize that we are only at the threshold of the word.
Neruda, at the end of “I Ask for Silence,” says, “Let me alone with the day./I ask leave to be born.”
In the original version of the song “Mercy,” Bono repeats, “Love is come again.
I’m alive again.
I am alive.
I’m born again and again and again and again and again…”
Isn’t that a kind of advice, an aspiration, an acceptance, a celebration of who and what my poems might be, who I might be or become?
I am born, and I am born again, and I am continually born again, seeing the world around me at the level of love.
I am alive.
Again and again.
Check out more poetry-related interviews, reviews and guest posts at .
This was written by joannemerriam. Posted on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, at 7:51 am. Filed under , . Bookmark the . Follow comments here with the .
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Love the title. Introverts everywhere take note it is OK t to be without doing.
What a wonderful generous Interviewee. Jeff Hardin never stepped out of character as either a teacher or a poet.
His answer to what his process is could profitably be read by any aspiring artist.
I have added a number of his phrases to my projects and inspiration for 2012 doc that I keep on my desktop including that he grew up knowing people who seemed bent near the earth under the weight of their lives. Wonderfully evocative.这是个机器人猖狂的时代，请输一下验证码，证明咱是正常人~请在这里输入关键词：
科目：高中英语
来源：学年吉林省长春十一中高一下学期期末考试英语卷
题型：阅读理解
It is winter in many parts of the world. For some areas, that means snow. Maybe even lots of snow. If you don’t have to drive in it or remove it, snow can be very beautiful. When snow covers everything around you, the world looks like a “winter wonderland”. That is the name of a very popular song about winter. Richard Smith and Felix Bernard wrote the song back in 1934. There are hundreds of recordings of this happy song.But winter is not always such a beautiful and happy time. It’s cold outside. You try hard to keep warm. The days are darker and shorter. The sun rarely shines. The leaves on the trees are brown. It isn’t surprising that some people are sad in winter. And some people dream about being somewhere else where it’s warm and pretty—like the state of California. The Mamas and the Papas recorded this famous song “California Dreaming”. During the 1960s, many other famous rock groups released songs about winter. Here is a poetic song by Simon and Garfunkel called “A Hazy Shade of Winter”. They sing about life and hope and possibilities.In 1968, the group Blood, Sweat and Tears recorded this gentle, sad song about winter. They sing about a lost love and forgotten memories in “Sometimes in Winter”.In the early 1990s, Tori Amos wrote and recorded the beautiful song called “Winter”. She enjoyed singing about winter when she was a child. Finally, on a happier note comes this song written and recorded by Fountains of Wayne in 2003. They sing about a snowstorm in a New England town. Nothing unusual there. But instead of being sad or tense about the snow, they write a song about it.【小题1】 The underlined sentence “For some areas, that means snow.” probably means& _____ .A．In some areas, when it’s winter, it must snowB．In some areas, it often snows in winterC．In some areas, it’s important to snowD．In some areas, people like snow in winter【小题2】 According to the second paragraph, winter is _____ .A．beautiful and happyB．happy and warmC．lovely and hopefulD．cold and sad【小题3】Which of the songs can bring us hope of life?A．Winter Wonderland.B．California Dreaming.C．A Hazy Shade of Winter.D．Sometimes in Winter.【小题4】What does the passage mainly talk about?A．Winter in different areas.B．Different ideas about winter.C．Songs about winter.D．Winter is cold but happy.
科目：高中英语
来源：2015届湖南凤凰华鑫中学高一下学期第一次月考英语试卷（解析版）
题型：完型填空
Ever since I was little, my favorite season was
winter. I loved to play in the snow and enjoy the hot chocolate.
____36_____, winter never gave me the special
gift of snow on my birthday. I would ask my grandmother ____37____ it
didn’t snow on my birthday. She would laugh and tell me I asked too many
questions. ___38____one day, she promised that she would make it snow on
my next birthday.
That year, ____39____ my birthday, my
grandmother died.& I was sad but angry because she had promised to make it
snow. The day of my sixth birthday, I woke up and ran to the window, hoping to
see just one snowflake. But there was no snow. I felt mad at my grandmother.
She had broken a promise.
But my sixteenth birthday, I had lost all hope of
getting my snow, even though I still wished for ___40____. During my
party, I stayed with my friends and family and was truly happy. I ___41___
the best time ever! Then I saw the white snow ____42___down all around.
I was so excited that I ran around screaming and laughing. My friends all
laughed ____43___me, but I didn’t care.
When I ___44____home, my grandpa said he had a
gift for me. I was ___45___ because he had given me a gift. It was a
small white box, which looked old. I opened it. There was a crystal snowflake(水晶雪花) with a card that said, “Happy Birthday.”
How could this be? My grandpa said it was my
grandmother’s final ___46____ on my “sweet sixteenth”. I cried.
I was ___47_____ that my smiling grandmother
angel was and had been watching over me.
1.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．Certainly&&&&&&& B．Unfortunately&&& C．Importantly&&& D．Luckily
2.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．when&&&&&&&&& B．how&&&&&&&&&& C．whether& D．why
3.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．But&&&&&&&&&&& B．Or&&&&&&&&&&&& C．Then D．So
4.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．on&&&&&&&&&&& B．after&&&&&&&&&& C．before&& D．in
5.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．it&&&&&&&&&&&& B．her&&&&&&&&&&& C．him& D．me
6.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．had&&&&&&&&&&& B．was&&&&&&&&&&& C．played&& D．feared
7.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．fell&&&&&&&&&&& B．to fall&&&&&&&&& C．fallen D．falling
8.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．with&&&&&&&&&& B．at&&&&&&&&&&&& C．from D．off
9.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．arrived at&&&&&& B．remained&&&&&& C．got& D．entered
10.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．excited&&&&&&&& B．confused&&&&&& C．pleased&& D．frustrated
11.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．order&&&&&&&&& B．mistake&&&&&&&& C．wish& D．decision
12.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．certain&&&&&&&& B．angry&&&&&&&&& C．sad&& D．anxious
科目：高中英语
来源：学年辽宁省葫芦岛市五校协作体高三8月模拟考试英语题
题型：单项填空
Kunming is called& “Spring City”, but it _____ snow in winter.
&&&
A. shall&&&&&&& B.
can&&&&&&&&& C.
must&&&&&&&&& D. might
科目：高中英语
来源：2014届海南琼海嘉积中学高二上教学质量监测（三）英语试卷（解析版）
题型：阅读理解
We experience different forms of the Sun’s energy
every day. We can see its light and feel its warmth. The Sun is the major
source of energy for our planet. It causes the evaporation (蒸发) of water from the oceans and lakes. Sunlight also
provides the energy used by green plants to make their own food. These green
plants then provide food for all organisms(生物) on the
Earth.
Much of the energy that comes from the Sun never
reaches the Earth’s surface. It is either reflected or absorbed by the gases in
the upper atmosphere. Of the energy that reaches the lower atmosphere,30% is
reflected by clouds or the Earth’s surface. The remaining 70% warms the surface
of the planet, causes water to evaporate, and provides energy for the water
cycle and weather. Only a tiny part, approximately 0.023%, is actually used by
green plants to produce food.
Many gases found in the atmosphere actually reflect heat
energy escaping from the Earth’s surface back to the Earth. These gases act
like the glass of a greenhouse in that they allow energy from the Sun to enter
but prevent energy from leaving. They are therefore called greenhouse gases.
When sunlight strikes an object, some of the energy is
absorbed and some is reflected. The amount reflected depends on the surface.
For example, you’ve probably noticed how bright snow is when sunlight falls on
it. Snow reflects most of the energy from the Sun, so it contributes to the low
temperatures of winter. Dark-coloured surfaces, such as dark soil or forest,
absorb more energy and help warm the surrounding air.
1.According to the passage, the root( 根本的) cause for weather changes on the Earth is &&&&&&&&.
A．the atmosphere
surrounding the Earth
B．water from
oceans and lakes
C．energy from
the Sun
D．greenhouse
gases in the sky
2.Only a small part of the Sun’s energy reaches the
Earth’s surface because most of it is &&&&&&&&.
A．absorbed by
the clouds in the lower atmosphere
B．reflected by
the gases in the upper atmosphere
C．lost in the
upper and lower atmosphere
D．used to
evaporate water from the oceans and lakes
3.We learn from the passage that &&&&&&&&.
A．all living
things on the Earth depend on the Sun for their food
B．a forest
looks dark in winter because it absorbs solar energy
C．only 0.023%
of the energy from the Sun is made use of on the Earth
D．greenhouse
gases allow heat energy to escape from the Earth’s
surface
科目：高中英语
来源：学年湖南凤凰华鑫中学高一下学期第一次月考英语试卷（带解析）
题型：完型填空
Ever since I was little, my favorite season was winter. I loved to play in the snow and enjoy the hot chocolate.____36_____, winter never gave me the special gift of snow on my birthday. I would ask my grandmother ____37____ it didn’t snow on my birthday. She would laugh and tell me I asked too many questions. ___38____one day, she promised that she would make it snow on my next birthday.That year, ____39____ my birthday, my grandmother died.& I was sad but angry because she had promised to make it snow. The day of my sixth birthday, I woke up and ran to the window, hoping to see just one snowflake. But there was no snow. I felt mad at my grandmother. She had broken a promise.But my sixteenth birthday, I had lost all hope of getting my snow, even though I still wished for ___40____. During my party, I stayed with my friends and family and was truly happy. I ___41___ the best time ever! Then I saw the white snow ____42___down all around. I was so excited that I ran around screaming and laughing. My friends all laughed ____43___me, but I didn’t care.When I ___44____home, my grandpa said he had a gift for me. I was ___45___ because he had given me a gift. It was a small white box, which looked old. I opened it. There was a crystal snowflake(水晶雪花) with a card that said, “Happy Birthday.”How could this be? My grandpa said it was my grandmother’s final ___46____ on my “sweet sixteenth”. I cried.I was ___47_____ that my smiling grandmother angel was and had been watching over me.【小题1】A．CertainlyB．UnfortunatelyC．ImportantlyD．Luckily【小题2】A．whenB．howC．whetherD．why【小题3】A．ButB．OrC．ThenD．So【小题4】A．onB．afterC．beforeD．in【小题5】A．itB．herC．himD．me【小题6】A．hadB．wasC．playedD．feared【小题7】A．fellB．to fallC．fallenD．falling【小题8】A．withB．atC．fromD．off【小题9】A．arrived atB．remainedC．gotD．entered【小题10】A．excitedB．confusedC．pleasedD．frustrated【小题11】A．orderB．mistakeC．wishD．decision【小题12】A．certainB．angryC．sadD．anxious
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