By Yong Shu Hoong

From gyrfalcons to crows, American poet Moira Linehan writes often about birds – not just as metaphors that she uses to derive meanings, but perhaps also as a reminder of how birds, exquisite and fascinating, can be a comforting constant in our lives. In the poem 'Wild Swans at Winter Pond', she observes two swans and their three cygnets: "I watch them paddle. Who will be the first to leave? I remain / transfixed. A pair of swans and their young contain me and a pond."

Readers who have had the good fortune to discover Linehan's poetry will find themselves wandering, welcomed, into her beautiful thoughts, even when the terrains are sometimes paved with adversities and sadness. Her debut collection, If No Moon (2007), is a meditation on love and loss, with many poems in memory of her late husband. The winner of the 2006 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry open competition, it was published by Southern Illinois University (SIU) Press. It was named an Honor Book in Poetry in the Massachusetts Book Awards 2008.

Her second collection, Incarnate Grace (SIU Press, 2015), charts her struggles with breast cancer – with wit and candour, and once again, astute insights. In 2016, it was also named an Honor Book in Poetry in the Massachusetts Book Awards.

After careers as a high school English teacher and an administrator in high tech and academic settings, Linehan now writes full-time and occasionally leads poetry writing workshops. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College and lives in the Boston area.

Her latest collection, TOWARD (2020) – published by the Wipf and Stock Publishers imprint, Slant – touches on another recurring theme: her Irish ancestry. Her publisher's website states that, in her new book, she "makes us believe that landscape is destiny. As the book unfolds, we come to inhabit the land- and sea-scapes of the wild southwest of Ireland, the islands of America's Pacific Northwest, the poet's home in Massachusetts; and then round again, back to the land north of Dublin."

1. What are you reading right now?
I want to give a shout-out for a book I just recently finished, Niall Williams' This Is Happiness. It's a lyrical novel set in the rural west of Ireland as electricity comes into a small parish there in the middle of the last century. It's an important and timely story about love and seeking redemption. But as a poet who writes about landscapes, I was captured from the beginning of the second chapter (and mind you, the first chapter was just one sentence) where Williams has found words for every aspect of rain and arranged those descriptions into their own compelling music. To illustrate how captivated I became by Williams' writing, I immediately started the book all over again when I finished the last sentence.

By way of poetry specifically, the recent death of Irish poet Eavan Boland had me go back to her prose work, Object Lessons, and her long poem, 'Anna Liffey'. A friend of mine has me reading Gray Jacobik's Eleanor, autobiographical monologues in the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt.

2. If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play, or poem, who would you be and why?
One of my favourite pieces of sculpture is Camille Claudel's The Waltz. This woman, who was Rodin's assistant, muse and mistress, was institutionalised for the last 30 years of her life by her mother and brother. I would love to play Camille in a movie of her story. It would make me find a way to sense how to turn materials such as bronze and marble into grace personified. And I would be honoured to mourn all her lost art that was never able to be created. 

3. What is the greatest misconception about you?
In terms of my writing: that it is easy for me to make poems. That they arrive whole cloth.  

4. Name one living author and one dead author you identify with most, and tell us why.
I was sickly as a very young child. Nothing really serious. Mostly colds that would turn into pneumonia; I would be in bed for long periods of time. We did not have a TV then, so my father read to me. Endlessly. What I remember is his voice, the rhythm of it, as he read aloud from Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Psalms, saints' lives, 'The Highwayman'. I don't identify with any of these dead authors. But I felt then, and still, the beat their lines held. I want to replicate such rhythms in my work.  

As for a living author: during my MFA programme (Vermont College), I found Louise Glück. I began to see how she made use of line breaks to express ambiguity. Or to hold more than one possibility. As I put together my first collection, If No Moon, I worked to take advantage of that device. I still do.

I have also been influenced by the work habits of artists. I go to exhibits of the works of Picasso to see the range of his work, its variety, and what influenced him: African masks, the early film industry, other artists such as Whistler. I have studied Monet's series of haystacks and the cathedral doors at Rouen to note the changes in light that he captured. And for the years, when Andy Pettitte was a pitcher for the Yankees and they were playing my team the Red Sox, I watched what he did to focus: how low he pulled his cap down, how he looked in so that he saw only the signs his catcher was giving him, how he ignored the raucous stadium when he was on the mound. From them I learned breadth of subject matter, precision of detail, and concentration. 

5. Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
Yes, writer's block is real. One way I deal with it is to cut it off at the pass. That is, I take the advice Hemingway gave, I believe in A Moveable Feast, and stop when I'm hot in the middle of a poem or revision. That way, when I return to my desk, I have something specific to pick up and continue. There is nothing worse than a blank page.

I also feel that having a routine helps. Mine is rather prosaic. I go to my desk every morning. I like to begin with new work. If that is not "available" to me, I go to recent work, work-in-progress, and work on the next draft. Then I turn to reading and/or journaling. And if/when all those measures come up empty, I re-read my recent journals to figure out what has been on my mind, what I am repeating or going back to, and use that matter as a trigger.

6. What qualities do you admire most in a writer?
I love reading lyrical pieces. As a poet, I admire writing that embodies the experience being described. I am especially attuned to the use of the sonic quality of words across a line or stanza or whole poem.

7. What is one trait you deplore most in writing or writers?
I get very impatient at readings when the author's introductory comments are too explanatory. I get annoyed when the comments about a poem are longer than the poem itself. I am there to hear the art. "Let's get to it!"

8. Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or piece of advice from a writer?
I love the opening of Seamus Heaney's poem 'Postscript':

And sometime make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And light are working off each other…

I love the ending of that poem:

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

I love the way that poem maps the beginning of Yeats's poem, 'The Wild Swans at Coole'. And I love the way Heaney's lines keep flowing on, in contrast to Yeats's many end-stopped ones.

9. Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I
hate to talk on the phone. I want to see the other person's face.

10. At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy, or an action thriller to watch, which will you go for, and why?
Oh, that totally depends on a myriad of factors. Who's in the film? I follow certain actors and try to see whatever they do. I am a big Meryl Streep fan, as well as Helen Mirren and Judi Dench. Or, what sort of mood am I in? If I am under a lot of stress, I want a good mystery or thriller but not a lot of violence just for the sake of violence.

11. What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite word?
I work to find the precise word for what I am writing about. And then I work to be careful not to use it again.

My least favourite is when someone calls me, a senior citizen, "young lady". Or when I read an article about someone in their late 50s who died in a car accident or fire, and the person is called "elderly". Please!  

12. Share any two lines from a recent poem, or a new poem you're currently working on.
To give an example of my interest in paying attention to sound across a line, here is the beginning of a new poem titled 'Again, the Moon':

Above the oaks' stripped branches, then behind them,
February's full moon begins coming back down
to earth.

14. What is the best time of day for you to write?
First thing in the morning. Early. Before phone calls from friends or family. Before robocalls. Coffee first, and then, to my desk.

15. If you had a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
Mary Oliver, Eamon Grennan and Seamus Heaney. Grennan and Heaney both had very Catholic upbringings as I did. While I think both of them walked away from the religion of their youth, they still mined the vocabulary it gave them. For me, it's as if the vocabulary itself opened doors to explore deeper dimensions in their subjects. I am interested in the ways, consciously and unconsciously, that can happen. Mary Oliver found a sacred element as she explored nature. I am interested in that way of looking at the world.

16. How have the landscapes that are ever present in your latest poetry collection, TOWARD (2020), provided a portrait of you as a poet?
Oh, my. That is a good question. I would begin by saying, at a superficial level, those poems show me as a walker. A walker who tries to pay attention to what she sees. And hears. But, just as you asked what of me is present in my landscape poems, I am interested in interrogating nature: What of the Creator of the universe remains present in creation? I want to go for the numinous that resides in this world. Clearly the arts of photography and painting work to show that also. My question of myself: what can the art of poetry show that other arts cannot? I go for that.

17. What would you write on your own tombstone?
Well, that has already been done. Those who have read my work know I am a widow. When my husband died, I had my name inscribed below his on his tombstone. All that needs to be done is add the year I die. But, to respond to what I think is the spirit of this question, as well as the middle section of my collection TOWARD, I would have the following added:

"This woman loved, and was loved by, Dan Ounjian."  

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