Interview with Cathleen Calbert and Debra Bruce-Kinnebrew’s class at NE Illinois University

Cathleen Calbert: Hello Debra & class, I'm here whenever you all are ready.

Debra: Hi Cathleen--We're here--

Christina: Do you have your students read your work?

Cathleen Calbert: I guess that's to me, Christina? I don't make my students read my books! But I do bring in some poems to class . . .

Debra: Cathleen, This is a small Honors World of Poetry class, and we've never done this before. Should we just fire away?

Cathleen Calbert: Sure, have at it. I'm happy you've been reading Bad Judgment and am glad to (try to) answer any questions.

Tanya: Was the poem, Dead Boyfriend, based on an actual experience or did you just make it up? what kind of thinking sparked an idea to write about a subject like this?

Cathleen Calbert: Hi Tanya. Yes, I have a dead boyfriend in my closet . . . No, actually, this poem comes from a # of things I tell my students not to do. That is, it was inspired by a film--Truly, Madly, Deeply--which then inspired a dream, with the poem following hard upon.

Debra: This reminds me how often we assume that the poem is autobiographical. Are many of your poems not based on your own life, or is this poem an exception in being inspired by a movie?

Cathleen Calbert: Yes, my students (and myself as well) are always struggling with that. I keep saying "speaker" to them, but many poems challenge that notion, especially, for example, when a poet uses her daughter's name in a poem. I think my own poems are a mix of surreal and realistic narratives, for the most part. Sometimes though I forget that something didn't actually happen to me--like "When Forever Began." What the mother says my mother did say, but the bar experience is fictional.

Michael: Hi Cathleen. I noticed a lot of your poems are similiar in fashion to Sylvia Plath. Are you or were you inspired by her techniques as a poet to come up with your own poetry?

Cathleen Calbert: Hi Michael. I love Plath and love being thought of in relation to her. She still blows me away--to me hers is a story of when technique met tragedy, and the poems remain.

Debra: Cathleen, Some of the students were surpised by the sex in "Dead Boyfriend," and we talked about the anger in the poem--a revenge poem, making me think of Plath, too--what would you say about this and about the general subject of language and subject in poetry--what readers expect and what they might actually find in contemporary poetry?

Nickole Brown: Hi, Debra. I'm coming in quite late. . . you have my apologies, but I got hung up in a meeting. . . It looks like everything is running smoothly here.

Cathleen Calbert: That's interesting. A revenge poem. I think of it as wistful, but I am perhaps odd . . . I'm trying to give my own students a tour of contemporary American poetry, & our current stop is Sharon Olds. I find students are still really surprised about the sex in a book like The Gold Cell--the celebration of it but not the prettification of it. I think it says something that these poems still take us aback, that we're not as jaded in terms of subject matter as we might think.

Ashley: Cathleen, when you where putting your book together did you have a certain theme in mind for it?

Cathleen Calbert: Hi Ashley. That's a good question. As I wrote individual poems, I didn't have a theme in mind. Only after getting a # of poems together did I begin to see a pattern emerging, & then I was inspired to try to complete that pattern, to fill in holes. I think of Bad Judgment as my sex and death book, but perhaps all books are sex and death books. There is a movement in Bad Judgment from loss to recompense (as Wordsworth might say)--from singlehood and death of friends to a new love and marriage.

Ashley: You also seem to have a lot about new life and puppies in your book how does that fit in?

Cathleen Calbert: Well, puppies are one of the world's best things, I think. And there a lot of babies floating through the book as well . . .

Christina: You also have angels and vampires, vampires especially. It seemed, considering the plot line, that the angels were pre-marriage and vampires during/post-marriage. Does this have any significance?

Cathleen Calbert: Uh oh! The Vampire of Marriage . . . Hmm. I'm interested in the vampire as a psychic drain or symbol of indulgence. I have a new poem just called "Teen Vamp," spoken by a young woman who believes she is an actual vampire (there's a whole subculture of vampirism online). Actually, I had a lot of angels floating through my first book of poems, Lessons in Space, & before I managed to get that book published, in 1997, I saw book after book of poems emerging with "angel" in the title, so I began stripping my book of angels, but I was intrigued by that zeitgeist. Why angels? And the good Catholic girl in me also, I think, was troubled by the appropriation of angels--that's where "The Last Angel Poem" comes from.

Michael: A lot of poets, when writing books, have trouble choosing their first poem to start it out. What made you decide to put When Nights were full of sex and churches as your first poem?

Cathleen Calbert: I think I wanted to open with a bit of a bang (not to pun), & to me it set the mood for the loneliness & desire that come through in the poems that follow.

Tanya: why did you call the book Bad Judgment and how did you pick the picture for the cover?

Cathleen Calbert: Yes, it wasn't until after Sarabande was kind enough to publish the book that I realized I might have opened myself up to something: "Talk about 'bad judgment,' Cathleen Calbert's new book of poems . . ." Luckily, no one chose to use the title for mockery. I liked the title. I always like it when a poet takes a regular old saying and makes it a title for a collection of poems--like Michele Boisseau's No Private Life (if I have that right). I also thought the title poem captured some of the themes I was working with throughout the book. As to the cover, Sarabande also kindly asked for author suggestions, & I wanted something beautiful, so I began combing through art books. While I may not look like the Venus of Urbino, my dog does look quite a bit like the puppy in this painting.

Christina: How do you come up the actual look of your poems, for instance in bad judgement you make the poem zig-zag down the page?

Cathleen Calbert: I have a penchant for zigzags, but I don't know if I can justify them. With the title poem, I did think of someone going back & forth, of swerving from one thing to the other. I do like to have some variety in how the poems look on the page. One assignment I give to my students in my poetry workshop is just to change the look of one of their poems--to see how only a visual shift can change the poem even if everything else is left the same.

Debra: Do you consider your poems musical, or do you think that their visual form (typographical) is essential? If we hear"Bad JudgmenT without seeing it, do we lose something?

Cathleen Calbert: I guess I hope the poems work both ways--on the page & on the stage, but I think the experience of them must be different. For example, like (I think) many contemporary American poets, I don't especially acknowledge line-breaks when I'm giving a reading--reading the line-breaks sounds too dorky to me, & I want a more "natural" sound when I read--but I hope that they still serve a purpose if someone encounters the poem on the page.

Debra: This will be the final question: could you tell us--if you're willing--which poem in Bad is your personal favotire and why? And which one is your least favorite and why?

Cathleen Calbert: Tough questions! I know I like reading "My Dead Boyfriend" & "Bad Judgment," so I guess this must mean that I like them. I tend not to read "Trinity" since I'm a little embarrassed to do so. "In Praise of my Young Husband" is a matter of some mortification for my husband, so that's always fun. And I feel less attached to " Beyond the Power of Positive Thinking." I really enjoyed hearing your questions & hope the answers worked okay for you. Debra, thanks very much for inviting me, & students, thank you too.

Debra: Cathleen, thanks so much for spending this time with us. And thanks, Nickole, for setting the whole thing up. We've enjoyed discussing this provocative book!

Ashley: Thanks!

Tanya: Thank you!

Christina: Thanks
Nickole Brown: Thank you both so much for participating! I'll send a transcript of this your way soon.

Cathleen Calbert: Thanks & bye all. Thanks, Nicole too.

Michael: thanks