Q and A with Athens Writer Sara Baker

Why is the book called Brancusi’s Egg?

When my father was dying, I was in Paris. He was hospitalized in Athens. When we left, I had an intimation that my father was very sick. He had been in the hospital a couple of weeks when I got a call that he was doing worse. I had taken my daughter to a Brancusi exhibit and Notre Dame, and all of those experiences were melded in my mind. When I came home, my father was in a coma and he died shortly thereafter. I never got to say goodbye to him. This poem was written out of my grief for him. It ‘s my way of understanding his death in particular and death in general.

Would you describe yourself as a poet, a fiction writer or an essayist? You write in all three genres.

I’m a writer. I would say almost all writers start out writing poetry. I gave up poetry for a period of time because I could never live up to my own idea of being a poet. I believe a work of poetry is the most demanding art form. I used to identify as a fiction writer. It was only when I was teaching and I started encouraging families to find their own voices that I found my way back to poetry in a more authentic way. It wasn’t freighted with the kind of expectations you might have if you are in academia. The emphasis for me changed from how well-crafted something was to how authentic something was. Craft is important. You want to learn your craft in order to convey your experience, but it is equally important to be as authentic as possible.

If you sit down to write something, you’re trying to convey an emotion or an experience, not an idea. I think that’s a misconception about poetry-- it’s about an experience. The poet is bringing the reader into her experience. Craft is how you use language effectively. A poet has to use language in a way that reflects her own voice and experience.

What happened for me was that in encouraging people to find their way to write about their experience, it loosened me up to find my own way of doing that. It brought me back into paying attention to my own experience.

Does poetry matter?

I think it matters more than ever. What’s sad is that people used to grow up reciting poetry and learning poetry in school. What’s happening is that’s being marginalized so much in favor of a technological or informational bias. The curriculum is biased toward information. It’s a big concern to me that poetry’s no longer a part of people’s everyday life. If you sing church hymns or  read the Bible, that’s poetry. People now think of poetry as something rarified and precious instead of a part of the daily living of life.

I love the poem "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" by William Carlos Williams. The end of the poem says,  It is difficult

             to get the news from poems

                    yet men die miserably every day

                            for lack

             of what is found there.

Do you have any recommendations for someone who is coming fresh to poetry?

They could go to The Poetry Foundation and just skim around.  They have so many poets. William Carlos Williams, he’s so direct and simple. Naomi Shihab Nye is very good, really easy but wonderful. Li Young-Li is a wonderful poet and very accessible. These are people that some people have never heard of, but when I taught, these poets seem to speak to my students.

Sara Baker is reading from her new chapbook, Brancusi's Egg, Sunday at 4pm at Avid Bookshop.