Below is a transcript of a conversation with CMU English Professor Robert Fanning
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty.
When you're writing poetry, when do you know when the poem is done or when do you name the verses you just finished? What is the moment when that title or some of those words becomes a theme that pulls a collection of poems together? CMU English professor Robert Fanning has gone through those parts of the creative process now for a fifth time. His latest published collection is titled “All We Are Given We Cannot Hold.” He sat down with me, and I had the chance to ask him these same questions…
Robert Fanning:
And I saw threads, you know, family and identity and loss and desire. And, you know, the arc of writing a book is a long one, for me anyway, a book of poems, you know, like I said, it can be about a decade. And during that time, my children went from ages 9 and 12, you know, to 18 and almost 21, so they went from being children to adults. I lost my mother during this time as well, so that was profound. And then, so somewhere along the way, I just kept thinking so much about impermanence and the ephemerality of existence, which is a concern of a lot of my work.
DN:
Are you able to write a piece, feel that it has come to its completion, and then let it rest there over that period of time? Or do you feel the urge to revisit and maybe see if there's something different you want to lend to it? And I guess in that same vein, do the words that you wrote then and the emotions and experiences that went into the poems then compared to now pulling them all together. It's two different places, I would imagine.
RF:
Yeah, it evolves over time, a poem. And hopefully, once you've set it aside for months, even years, you come back to it and it still feels true. You're looking for some sort of truth, something that just feels complete, some sort of utterance. And you don't always know what it is. And it's the hardest question to answer when is a poem finished because it's honestly a gut feeling. It's sort of a spiritual thing. That's not to say that I don't change things sometimes. You know, even reading some of these poems just today when I was thinking about speaking with you, I came across a couple lines I wish were different. You know, that's just the, that's just how it goes. You have to call it done at some point. But hopefully, Hopefully, the poems have done the work I had hoped they would do. And I think that's true. When I look at this book for now, I feel like it has accomplished what I had hoped it would.
DN:
I wonder about what you are writing now. Do you feel that the theme will still feature a lot of desire, love, marriage, family, or is what is driving your creative inspiration right now, a different theme, and the poems that might have come a few years ago to right now to what you think might be writing at these, you know, these particular times?
RF:
My work tends to be all over the place. You know, this book is very based in reality, mostly autobiographical, if a poem can be autobiographical. And I've written two other books like that, but then I have published a couple other books that are quite strange, sort of, I don't want to say surreal, but sort of dreamy and out there. So, my work kind of does this pendulum swing between being based in reality and then almost like a dream-driven life or a subconscious thrust. So yeah, so I'm far ahead of this book now. But the work I'm doing now that I've been doing lately is very strange. And it feels weird to talk about things when they're in process. But I got something to do with this line between artificial intelligence and religion. So that's all I'm going to say. I don't quite know what it is yet, but I know it's weird. I can tell you that.
DN:
At least one of the themes that will lend itself to words, words will lend themselves the manuscripts now and the books later. The latest, though, that you have shared, again, is all we are given, we cannot hold. Robert Fanning, thanks very much. Congratulations on the book, and we appreciate you being with us today.
RF:
Thank you so much, David. I really appreciate it.
