Elaine Equi on Blankness, Condensing Verse, and the Joy of Writing Short Poems

Lit Hub is excited to feature another entry in a new series from Poets.org: “enjambments,” a monthly interview series with new and established poets. This month, they spoke to Elaine Equi. Elaine Equi is the author of nearly a dozen collections of poetry. Her books include Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2007), which was was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and short-listed for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize, and Voice-Over (Coffee House Press, 1999), selected by Thom Gunn for the San Francisco State Poetry Award. In 2023, she was the guest editor of The Best American Poetry.

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Poets.org: What themes do you explore in Out of the Blank?

Elaine Equi: Sometimes there is a clue in my book titles for how I’d like the poems to be read. In an earlier book called Sentences and Rain, I used the title to plant the seed of a mental soundtrack and help create an atmosphere of pleasant intimacy. I hope that Out of the Blank heightens the drama of each word, giving the sense of a startling encounter or revelation.

I tend to write short, concentrated poems, and the white spaces always seem, to me, an aspect of poem-making, rather than simply a background. Is blankness a theme in this book? Sort of. Actually, it’s more like a pre-existing condition.

As a naturally spacey person, I’m fascinated by how many different kinds of blankness there are. When you’re overstimulated, a blank mind sounds appealing. But when you’re struggling to remember something you need to, it’s more problematic.

It’s the same with writing. A blank page can be a site of pure possibility, or if you happen to have writer’s block, of terrible anxiety. About a third of these poems were written during the pandemic, a time when I found it difficult to come up with anything—hence the extreme brevity of several pieces.

In the title poem, “Out of the Blank,” I think I’m making fun of myself for being so desperate and waiting “for Word to arrive / like a messiah in a stagecoach.” Sometimes, the only way to keep writing is to not place so much weight on every word while you wait out the dry spell.

There are also a lot of poems about inwardness, dreams, movies, spirituality, and aging. It sounds so serious when I put it like that, but my take on these things is often pretty silly.

Poets.org: Who or what are your main influences and inspirations in poetry?

EE: I’ve been writing poetry for over fifty years and have been inspired by many different styles and movements along the way. Early on, I was attracted to the casual humor and irony of the New York School, as well as the clarity and precision of the Objectivists. At the same time, I always loved the dreamy, imaginative qualities of surrealism.

Formally, though, one constant that integrates all these influences has been my exploration of the short poem. I see myself as a descendant in a long line of “condensers,” as the poet Lorine Niedecker might put it. I’m thinking here of an incredibly varied tradition, including classical Chinese poetry, haiku, Imagism, concrete poetry, and the minimalist moments of Robert Creeley and Aram Saroyan, to name but a few.

One of the things I like best about short poems is how they allow each word to stand out. I read novels. I like the music of sentences. But when I write poems, I’m very much an atomist—composing word by word.

Poets.org: How do you know when a poem is finished?

EE: That is an excellent question, especially regarding short poems. The “is it enough?”

How can it be finished when it’s hardly begun?

Did it make something happen? Or better yet, as Auden said, did it make nothing happen?

To be honest, I don’t know that everything needs to be finished.

From Sappho I learned that sometimes a fragment is enough.

To Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” was unfinished.

Whether finished or unfinished, sometimes enough is enough.

My poem called “Crayon,” ends with the lines,  “Why must I always / finish my sentences? // It’s as if / and now can’t stop.”

Poets.org: What was your “gateway” into the craft of poetry—the poem or poetry collection that made you fall in love with this literary form?

EE: That’s easy. It was The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca, a New Directions paperback I stumbled upon in a suburban mall when I was a freshman in college. Lorca was my gateway drug. He opened my eyes and ears and mind to the possibilities of the poem. I was definitely hooked and have never looked back.

“Lorca’s Guitar,” a poem in my collection, talks about seeing his guitar in an exhibit at New York Public Library. There’s also a poem called “Weather Vane” that is secretly dedicated to him because he liked and wrote about weather vanes.

Poets.org: If you could pair one of the poems in Out of the Blank with a work of art, song, recipe, or some other form of media, which poem would you choose, and with what would you pair it?

EE: What a terrific idea! I’d pair the poem “My Mother and I Send Each Other Circles” with any of several paintings by the French artist and textile and fashion designer Sonia Delaunay. Her work is so vibrant and colorful, often featuring circles of different sizes overlapping and bisecting each other.

It would be a perfect match for this poem about a ritual my mother and I had. Every morning, we talked on the phone and, before hanging up, we would choose one or more colors and imagine the other person in a circle surrounded by it. My mother used to say these circles were like “a hug with color.” She was very artistic and loved to paint, so it was a fun way for me to share this interest with her.

She lived to be one hundred years old and just died last year. This book is dedicated to her and my maternal grandmother.

Poets.org: What are you currently reading?

EE: I’m just finishing Haruki Murakami’s new novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls. I’m a longtime fan of his writing and think this is one of his best books in a while. I love the way he writes about parallel worlds or different fantastic realities in a matter-of-fact voice.

For poetry, I’m enjoying a fun mix of Go Figure by Rae Armantrout, Data Mind by Joanna Fuhrman, and Tom Postell: On the Life and Work of an American Master.

Poets.org: What are your favorite poems on Poets.org?

EE: I like reading Poem-a-Day with my morning coffee. When I was editing the Best American Poetry 2023, it was an invaluable resource. One of my favorite poems that you featured, and one which I included in the anthology, is “All the Time Blues Villanelle” by Tim Seibles. I grew up listening to blues in Chicago, and I appreciate how this poem, like all good blues songs, can talk about disturbing things but somehow make you feel a little better, or at least, not so alone.

More recently, Poem-a-Day showcased an amazing poem called “herederos de cero” (English translation: “heirs of zero”) by Sheila Maldonado. In it she talks about visiting Honduras, her family’s homeland.

Many years ago, Sheila was a student in a poetry workshop I taught at City College of New York. She was always a standout—so talented and original. It’s gratifying to see that her writing is thriving and finding a much wider audience.

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“enjambments,” a monthly interview series produced by the Academy of American Poets, will highlight an emerging or established poet who has recently published a poetry collection. Each interview, along with poems from the poet’s new book, and a reading by the poet, will be published on Poets.org and shared in the Academy’s weekly newsletter.