Shoreless Q&A with Persea Books
Several of the poems in this collection demonstrate an intimate knowledge of the Florida landscape. What role does this landscape play in the book?
My grandparents settled in Florida 94 years ago and I have spent most of my life here. The Florida landscape is essential to my very being. I don’t make a distinction between where my body ends and where the landscape begins; they are contiguous. One critic put it like this: “Enid Shomer writes of her landscape the way a lover describes the body of her beloved, with attention to each freckle, cleft, and scar.”
These poems are formally graceful and rich with sonic play. How would you characterize the role of form in your poems, especially when exploring complex themes like bodies (human and otherwise) and nature?’
Although I sometimes write free verse, I consider myself a formalist. I work in received forms, such as the sonnet, villanelle, and sestina, but more often in nonce forms—forms of my own devising—many of which are not obvious at first glance. Form has always been a creative constraint for me, a limitation that spurs me to enlarge the metaphoric reach of the poems. In fulfilling a formal requirement I am pushed to create fresher imagery and more pleasing sounds.
The first time I became aware of this magic was in writing the poem “Women Bathing at Bergen-Belsen,” which was one of my first sonnets. This poem’s subject matter is difficult—it’s set on the day of that camp’s liberation and based upon unsparing documentary footage shot by Alfred Hitchcock. At one point I had a chaotic draft that was a page and a half long, and I decided to see what would happen if I rewrote it as a sonnet. The discipline and economy required by the form helped me to convey my reverence for the subject, to bestow the appropriate dignity on what I consider sacred material. After that, I sometimes put my drafts to what I called the sonnet test, which taught me to separate the dross from the essential and to take advantage of the inherent music and drama of the sonnet structure.
Some of the poems in this collection engage with historical and literary figures—Einstein and the pathologist who kept his brain after conducting an autopsy, Keats, and Houdini, to name a few. Do you find sources of inspiration through reading and research?
I love to do research, which I consider simply a form of focused reading. Doesn’t everyone like to disappear down rabbit holes? Though I frequently write autobiographical poems, I just as often find myself fascinated by other people and historical events. I enjoy probing the past for what it tells us about the present and potentially about ourselves. Research allows the poet to speak in other voices, try out alternate lives and personalities. Someone once said that we read fiction to learn how to live. I think that is true of poetry, too.
Some of the poems in this collection are unabashedly erotic. What is the relationship in this collection between language and sensuality?
I believe that after sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell, language is our sixth sense. We couldn’t live without it. In itself language is sensual because it aims to replicate the sensory information we take in as well as sensual and sensuous experience. Writing is all about communicating sensation in a body moment by moment.
I’ve always been interested in giving voice to the erotic. In 2018, I published All We Know of Pleasure, an anthology of erotic poetry by women I had been working on for years. I selected the poems, including some of my own, and wrote the introduction. One of the surprising things I learned during this project was how new this arena is to women but also how quickly they are making up for lost time. Anecdotally it seems to me that women are writing more erotica than men.
In one poem, you write, “Let me forget I’m caught in the trap / of a body.” Many poems in this collection explore illness, medical settings and procedures, and physical pain. In what ways does it feel urgent to portray these experiences?
Unfortunately, illness, pain, and medical procedures have been a huge part of my life. At some point I hope I will be able to write about illness and disability in a more direct and comprehensive way (such as in essays), but so far, I’ve only been able to address these topics obliquely, in poems. Writing about illness is still taboo. First, it is technically and personally challenging to describe the intimate physical details of pain and debilitation. Second, no one wants to come off as a complainer or be thought pitiful. I’ve never wanted to be defined by infirmity.
The poem “In Late Summer,” which is about a Seckel pear tree, ends with the lines, “the weight of sweetness / almost as heavy as grief.” How might these lines represent the poetics of this collection?
Usually, I prefer to end a poem with an image, which enlarges it at the last moment and lends a resonating ripple effect. I rarely end my poems with statements, especially sweeping statements like this one. But sometimes it is necessary, even inevitable. The body, like the seckle pear tree, has its seasons. Grief is a palpable presence in these poems as it is in every life. It has a weight, an embodiment. Life forces us to bend like the seckle pear tree, to find that fragile balance between flexibility and strength.
My grandparents settled in Florida 94 years ago and I have spent most of my life here. The Florida landscape is essential to my very being. I don’t make a distinction between where my body ends and where the landscape begins; they are contiguous. One critic put it like this: “Enid Shomer writes of her landscape the way a lover describes the body of her beloved, with attention to each freckle, cleft, and scar.”
These poems are formally graceful and rich with sonic play. How would you characterize the role of form in your poems, especially when exploring complex themes like bodies (human and otherwise) and nature?’
Although I sometimes write free verse, I consider myself a formalist. I work in received forms, such as the sonnet, villanelle, and sestina, but more often in nonce forms—forms of my own devising—many of which are not obvious at first glance. Form has always been a creative constraint for me, a limitation that spurs me to enlarge the metaphoric reach of the poems. In fulfilling a formal requirement I am pushed to create fresher imagery and more pleasing sounds.
The first time I became aware of this magic was in writing the poem “Women Bathing at Bergen-Belsen,” which was one of my first sonnets. This poem’s subject matter is difficult—it’s set on the day of that camp’s liberation and based upon unsparing documentary footage shot by Alfred Hitchcock. At one point I had a chaotic draft that was a page and a half long, and I decided to see what would happen if I rewrote it as a sonnet. The discipline and economy required by the form helped me to convey my reverence for the subject, to bestow the appropriate dignity on what I consider sacred material. After that, I sometimes put my drafts to what I called the sonnet test, which taught me to separate the dross from the essential and to take advantage of the inherent music and drama of the sonnet structure.
Some of the poems in this collection engage with historical and literary figures—Einstein and the pathologist who kept his brain after conducting an autopsy, Keats, and Houdini, to name a few. Do you find sources of inspiration through reading and research?
I love to do research, which I consider simply a form of focused reading. Doesn’t everyone like to disappear down rabbit holes? Though I frequently write autobiographical poems, I just as often find myself fascinated by other people and historical events. I enjoy probing the past for what it tells us about the present and potentially about ourselves. Research allows the poet to speak in other voices, try out alternate lives and personalities. Someone once said that we read fiction to learn how to live. I think that is true of poetry, too.
Some of the poems in this collection are unabashedly erotic. What is the relationship in this collection between language and sensuality?
I believe that after sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell, language is our sixth sense. We couldn’t live without it. In itself language is sensual because it aims to replicate the sensory information we take in as well as sensual and sensuous experience. Writing is all about communicating sensation in a body moment by moment.
I’ve always been interested in giving voice to the erotic. In 2018, I published All We Know of Pleasure, an anthology of erotic poetry by women I had been working on for years. I selected the poems, including some of my own, and wrote the introduction. One of the surprising things I learned during this project was how new this arena is to women but also how quickly they are making up for lost time. Anecdotally it seems to me that women are writing more erotica than men.
In one poem, you write, “Let me forget I’m caught in the trap / of a body.” Many poems in this collection explore illness, medical settings and procedures, and physical pain. In what ways does it feel urgent to portray these experiences?
Unfortunately, illness, pain, and medical procedures have been a huge part of my life. At some point I hope I will be able to write about illness and disability in a more direct and comprehensive way (such as in essays), but so far, I’ve only been able to address these topics obliquely, in poems. Writing about illness is still taboo. First, it is technically and personally challenging to describe the intimate physical details of pain and debilitation. Second, no one wants to come off as a complainer or be thought pitiful. I’ve never wanted to be defined by infirmity.
The poem “In Late Summer,” which is about a Seckel pear tree, ends with the lines, “the weight of sweetness / almost as heavy as grief.” How might these lines represent the poetics of this collection?
Usually, I prefer to end a poem with an image, which enlarges it at the last moment and lends a resonating ripple effect. I rarely end my poems with statements, especially sweeping statements like this one. But sometimes it is necessary, even inevitable. The body, like the seckle pear tree, has its seasons. Grief is a palpable presence in these poems as it is in every life. It has a weight, an embodiment. Life forces us to bend like the seckle pear tree, to find that fragile balance between flexibility and strength.