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BN: Do you have, like, a short number or small number of favorites among all your poems, or are you like the mother of many children who refuses to choose between them?

AU: Sometimes my favorite poem might be the one that I just finished writing. Sometimes it could be that. But I generally, I don't have favorites. Some of the poems that would be up there, I mean, if I were to categorize, are what I call gifts. I've written some poems and it came to me, I write it down, blah, blah, I get it on paper. And later on I'd look at it and I was thinking, who wrote that? Where did this thing come from? This doesn't happen that often, but when it does, it's a pretty nice feeling. I mean, it's weird, but it's also very nice. It's kind of like, wow, that's a present. [Laughs] What else did you ask on that question?

BN: No, that was, you answered it.

AU: I feel like I start going off on a tangent or something and I forget what you asked me.

VM: No, you answered, and it does sound like a, kind of a divine inspiration, as a gift.

AU: Oh, I know, you were talking about favorites. Okay, I can talk a little more about this, about my favorite poems. I don't know whether you'd call it favorite, but satisfying would be those two long poems, "Basic Vocabulary" and "36 Views of Manzanar." Those were satisfying to me. And I've got a couple of poems that are kind of love poems or flirty poems to my husband, Raul, but those maybe are among my favorites.

VM: Well, since you have been, you have had this really fascinating career, you've also mentored a lot of, you've had great mentors and you've also been a mentor and are still mentoring people who are beginners. And we were wondering what advice would you give to young poets who were starting or aspiring poets starting now?

AU: What advice? Just a minute, I wrote down some things. Well, okay. First, you need to learn how to be true to your own voice. Sometimes new writers try to sound like someone else, or are afraid of being themselves. But you know, trust your own voice. I think it's really important to read other poets and to also hear other poets perform their poems. Revision is really key. For me it is, anyway. So my writing process, I tend to get everything out on the paper. Whatever is driving that feeling, get it down, typing away. And then I go away from it. And then when I come back the next day or days later, then it's revision. And some poems take one or two revisions, others take countless revisions. As to when do you feel it's done, I think... sometimes I don't know if you ever feel done. You might always feel like, oh, I could have done something more, or I could have done something more there. Another thing I'd say to young poets would be it's okay to get rejections, it really is okay. And if you look at biographies of so many well-known writers, they've had all kinds of rejections in their writing journeys, so don't let that discourage you. Another thing is if you're in a workshop or class, be sure you're in the right environment for you. Because I've been in workshops, or I've seen people in workshops where the teacher or whatever, facilitator, just didn't know how to give feedback. Might have been negative or whatever. It's okay for someone to be critical, but there's a way to do it, a way of getting criticism. And you kind of have to know in your gut, is this good for me? Is this helping me? Or no, no, no, maybe I should be in a different setting. Other advice. Other advice would be back to the idea of Buddhism and spirituality: slow down, pay attention, focus, really just look at something. And then just back to the idea of, just trust yourself. Because you know everybody has a unique voice. One of the reasons I felt so strongly about the workshop I had with Peter Levitt was, he in his own right was a very strong writer, poet. If there were ten of us in the room, so nine students and Peter, his feedback to each student was so customized, so unique and appropriate for that person, that none of us sounded alike. You could hear each person's genuine true voice. So that's what you're trying to find as a new writer.

VM: Wow, that's wonderful advice, thank you.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.