Out of St. Louie into the world unbound: an interview with Colleen J. McElroy.

JLH: First, Dr. McElroy, let me thank you for agreeing to grant this interview. Please know that I truly appreciate your time and the opportunity to talk with you. May I begin by asking you what motivated you to become a writer?

CJM: During the '60s, when there was a certain so-called resurgence of black awareness, I attended a number of poetry readings where people read poems about being black in America, poems that to me were naive. I say "resurgence" out of deference to the Harlem Renaissance, a period where writers were more direct in writing about the black experience, and yet naive, because those white poets had no frame of reference to describe that experience. I knew I could do better. Frequently, people ask me, "Well, how did you suddenly become a poet?" I don't think I suddenly became a poet. I grew up in a family of strong storytellers--I learned to tell stories. I refer to my mother as queen of the metaphor. She can offer a metaphor for most anything in a second--usually when she's talking about somebody--and certainly she inaugurated me into Shakespeare early on, quoting him for everything from straightforward questions of "what's that?" to answers about the meaning of life in general. I grew up during World War II, when the men in my family were in the military, and I was surrounded by women. My mother had several sisters and they were all storytellers. I grew up in a hurry with those women, ready or not. Then, in high school and college, I studied drama and speech pathology, both of which required a certain degree of storytelling. As a speech pathologist, I used stories to help people access the way that they spoke before damage to their neurological systems. So, I was already accustomed to storytelling. All of that helped shape me as a poet, but I wouldn't say it was a sudden decision.

JLH: In several of your essays, you reference early influences in your development as a writer, including the storytelling you heard in your grandmother's house. Would you talk a little more about that influence?

CJM: As I said, my mother had several sisters and they were all storytellers. They would gather at my grandmother's house--sometimes having dinner and sometimes just to come over to see how she was doing--and I would hide under the dining-room table and listen to them until they caught me and made sure I was out of the room. Some evenings, my grandfather would come home from work and read to me, but after he died in the mid-'40s, I was likely to go into the attic and listen to records on my grandmother's wind-up Victrola. These were records from at least a decade earlier, and I mimicked conversations. So I spent a lot of time alone, and the storytelling became a part of me, both the way I was educated as well as the way I was amused. Most of my early poems were narratives, and I still prefer narrative poetry.

JLH: Was that also when you developed your fascination with language?

CJM: I'm sure it was. In a way, I listened to two levels of English: my grandmother's homespun stories, passed to her from her mother, and my mother's acquired stories, culled from what she'd studied in college. Make that three levels--all of the 78-rpm recordings and the radio shows I listened to--I learned to listen, rather than watch the world unfold as this generation does with television and the media.

I practiced a lot of sounds from other languages in front of that mirror when I was doing nonsense syllables, but I think the real fascination was the power that language held when those women talked, and when they could hold such a court because they were so skilled at unraveling or weaving a story. That was fascinating to me. So I spent a lot of time listening, and I think that listening helped me understand the importance of language. And my grandfather read me stories about people in far away places; my grandfather had a library of books, most of which my favorite aunt, Jennie, inherited. I grew up with those books and how they could make me "see" stories take shape through words. By the time I became a speech pathologist and I worked with people who had been neurologically impaired, I really became aware of how important language was and how impatient people are when they can't find the words they want. Everyone expects you to be able to talk, to "spit it out," so to speak. It is that connection we have between the word, the spoken word, and the self.

JLH: In a couple of your previous interviews, you mention studying language. In what ways, if any, did your study of language contribute to your writing?

CJM: I studied language, but I don't think that it was so much the formal study of grammar per se, that contributed to my understanding of the nature of language. I read the dictionary. My awareness of how language heightens an experience and my continuing respect for word power, how words work, simply increased my curiosity. As a child, when I was in grade school, I would just open the dictionary and read it. I think that has influenced the scope of language that I use. I am more adroit at using both colloquial and what is called Standard English. Certainly, my study of dialects as a doctoral student led me to understand a lot about regional and geographical differences, everything from English to French, or half a dozen other languages. Language changes by region, and the nature of that change alters metaphors, in some instances by regions. So, understanding regional differences certainly helps me with my writing.

JLH: How did growing up in St. Louis and living as a military brat, as it is commonly called, influence your writing?

CJM: I guess St. Louis gave me the feather duster that enabled me to sort out my experiences. I think I write to understand where I am, not as a way of finding myself but understanding where I am. And the experiences I have had as an army dependent, traveling with my father and growing up in St. Louis, are essential to understanding the experiences I have as an adult, as an intrepid traveler. I don't feel stuck in one place. Perhaps there is also the detriment that I don't feel bonded to any one place, but I do feel bonded by the landscape. Deserts, mountains, rivers hold a promise of what might happen--smells, sounds, the way light changes. Landscapes are very important to me.

JLH: Has your teaching creative writing influenced your writing in any way?

CJM: Oh, yes, certainly. Finding the right word is always a part of the speech pathologist's task. I had a patient whose only words left were "I'm sorry," and he used them as one word. And another one who had, what he had left was "my wife." And we could carry on long conversations just using those few words. I understand how flexible a word can be, not so much precision, but words representing intent and content. The task is to find those words that really can paint pictures, that really can draw readers onto the page and make them in fact participate with what is going on in the piece, whether it is a poem or a story. You cannot be casual with language; you cannot be pedestrian with it. You have to do the same thing with language that the dancer does with his or her body. A dancer learns that flinging oneself across that stage too many times can result in a lot of broken bones, and pulled muscles. Things happen to your body if you are too cavalier with it, and the same thing with language. You have to use language as a tool that can be graceful, that can paint pictures, that can make music. Those things are important to any writer.

JLH: How would you describe your creative process as a writer? What is most comfortable for you in your writing process?

CJM: How would I describe it? Oh, it would be haphazard. It's not catch as catch can, but when I'm teaching, I need to have at least three days free for writing, because the first day is getting out of the routine of teaching, the business of making a living into the business of making something out of nothing, creating. The first day is setting up shop, cleaning out the cobwebs, and getting the tools ready--learning to think like an artist. I may not accomplish much by way of writing, but I'm loosening up, flexing my linguistic muscles. I'm relearning how to think like a writer. The next two days, I am intense. I will write for anywhere from six to ten hours. When I was younger with a lot more energy, I could extend that time to ten to twelve hours, but I no longer have that stamina. Still, when I'm really involved, I think it becomes almost a 24-hour process because, even when I'm not sitting in front of the computer, I am thinking about writing. It's the pre-writing stage, preparation stage. I usually keep some handwritten notes because I carry a small notebook in my purse. I keep one by my bed, one by the computer and one by the TV--the latter offers me lots of quotes from shows like "Nova" and old movies. So I've got these various little notes, a stack of little notebooks. I'll be very happy when I finish this novel because most of the notes right now are about that. I don't much worry about the form or pattern of anything when I'm taking notes. Much of the time, I don't even go back to read the notes. Sometimes I do because something incubates early in the morning right as I'm waking up or right before I go to sleep. Usually, it's early in the morning, very inconvenient, you know--the best sleep is early in the morning before you pull on the self-protective shell of the day. I used to do a rough draft in long hand, but I don't do that much anymore. I found over the years that had become just double duty, so I do a rough draft on the computer. For a poem, my pattern usually is to work on completion of a draft by the end of the day, close everything down and come back to it the next day, the important stage of revision. I don't start a collection of poems thinking this is going to be a collection. There'll be a poem here, a poem there, and when I begin to read these loose poems, something clicks. The brain works in its own little peculiar way, going down the same path, and it won't occur to me that these poems are taking a shape or leading toward something unless I look at them as a group. I don't write short stories in the same way; that is, I don't consciously think of a collection. Also, I seem to have less urgency to work through a story. Memoirs, on the other hand, often require my immediate attention. The memoirs I have been writing are somewhat more deliberate--some of those were written at different times and the others were written to make a book.

JLH: Is there a particular time of day or place that you are more creatively productive?

CJM: Well, right now, I'm more creatively productive if I screw myself to the sticking place in front of my computer by midday. I will do all sorts of things to avoid writing, so even though I might go into the study around 10 o'clock--sometimes earlier but usually around 10 o'clock--it may be one or two o'clock before I actually am writing. I might not even get around to opening the program I'm writing in for a couple of hours at least. Maybe it's the residual of being a nonsmoker after years of smoking that I have to have that ritual.

JLH: I was a smoker for years, too, so I have an appreciation for that ritual.

CJM: I would say typically that it's between two to six, although I will chide myself: "It's now 3:30 and you have been sitting here all day. Do you plan to sit in here all day?" And the answer is "I don't know. We seem to be sitting here though." So, I do a lot of talking to myself. But there are times when there is something I want to do, and so I might begin with a kind of shotgun start at 10 o'clock. Then, when that's done, I still have to have those two hours to mess around. On the day when I am starting, after I have been there for a while, that day is kind of scattered all the way through. It's patchwork at most, but I usually don't create anything on that day other than a very rough draft.

JLH: Do you work on multiple pieces of writing or one piece at a time, or does it vary?

CJM: I think I work better these days when I have the demand of multiple deadlines. When I was teaching, I was usually involved with several projects, and I seem to still need that multiplicity. You know, I might be writing a letter of recommendation, or a class review, or an exercise, and the creative piece interferes. So, I haven't found the luxury yet of being able to isolate a piece of writing, except when I have gone to writing residences such as the Rockefeller or McDowell, and even then, I might wind up writing poetry when my goal was prose, because poetry is often more spontaneous for me that way. But most of the time, whatever I'm working on is in the envelope with whatever else I'm doing.

JLH: Has living in the Pacific Northwest influenced your writing?

CJM: Oh, yes, certainly it has. When I have had studios with the view of water, my writing is very different then. Right now, I'm more or less landlocked, and even though I have a view of the ship canal--the link between Lake Washington and Lake Union--my view is such that I can't actually see the water except from a distance. When I have a view of water, a lake or ocean, it's as if whatever I have been doing to keep on schedule or to meet demands or obligations simply falls away. There seems to be that sense of freedom and openness. So, yes, the view makes all the difference. I think it was Richard Hugo who said: "You can tell something about the geography of a writer by the language the writer uses." Not that the writer necessarily is going to write about the landscape, but if the person is in a rural area, the pattern and pace of language are very different than for a New York writer. So it certainly has been true for me. I wrote a story called "The Return of Apeman" that I began in the U. S., but the bulk of the writing was completed in Sweden, while I was visiting there. Europe is full of high-rise multi-family buildings because the war took out most of the single-family homes, and so most of the cities have converted to multiple-family dwellings. I was in an area that reminded me of the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Projects in St. Louis, an astonishingly prison-like complex that failed miserably in providing housing for low-income families. As I looked out of the window of the building in Sweden, I was struck by the similarity of architecture, and the story began to unfold as if I were sitting by a window in the Pruitt. The landscape worked for the purposes of the story, although the location was a continent away.

JLH: You mentioned earlier that a sense of place or geography is important in your writing. Would you elaborate on that?

CJM: You mean the sense of where I am?

JLH: Yes.

CJM: Yes, geography in a broader sense, and not just a pinpoint on a map. Geography is not just the landscape but the people and animals that occupy that landscape. It is also the weather--think Kansas, think dramatic weather the climate both political and natural. In Madagascar, I was tuned into the smallest changes in sounds and smells. I wrote about how the light changed when evening approached the hillside where my pension was located. Quite different from the riot of light and noise when I'm walking down a street in New York City, or the rain beating the rooftops at dawn in Amsterdam. I'm not talking about obvious differences in geography, but rather subtle differences, a poetic sense of place that writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jean Toomer could capture and hold still for a moment like stop-action photography. That is the kind of geography I aim for in my writing. In some ways, it is a matter of timing or of "time." I am fascinated by time: when the light changes, when the noise fades, when smells dissipate--are all markers of time. Geography provides me with a cushion, where I can use a degree of instinct to determine my perspective through all the senses and not just one rush, rush of time. A philosophy professor referred me to a book called What Time Iris. We usually think "what time is it?" and it was about this whole business of how we, humans, have measured time. In my house, I have numerous clocks. Most of them make noise. I have a clock with bird calls that makes chirping sounds, and then I have clocks of chimes and of strikers. But time is also counted by the body clock: daylight versus darkness, hunger versus sleep, safety versus danger. All of that adds to the geography of a place. When I am traveling alone, I need to adjust my body clock to when and where I will eat, and when I am writing, I need to make similar adjustments. So, a lot of what I'm doing as I write is connected to that sense of time, or the lack of it. To bide time, to lose time, to find time, to make time. And that in its own peculiar way is also connected to geography because you're always running against time. When I write, I'm always writing against time. It's how to make the past as vibrant as the present without the reader being forced away from the present. So the past and the present blend--I write, in the present, from the reconstructed geography of the past. I probably got a bit off-field with that answer.

JLH: Yes, a bit, but let's continue. In your autobiographical essay, "Wherever I Am," you indicate that, in your early stages as a writer, you had a lot of support from writers in the Pacific Northwest and you discovered and began to read African American writers. How important was this period in your development as a writer?

CJM: Oh, it was very important. I started writing poems that I thought would be important, that were needed, and ones that I needed to write--believing at the time that I was really the only black woman writing this way. Of course, I had grown up in an American school system where the writers I encountered were dead, and almost always male and most usually white. I think we might have covered Langston Hughes and Phillis Wheatley briefly, but that was it. I didn't really know--and that was one of the surprises of going to poetry readings--there were people writing poems and they were still breathing. My perspective changed drastically. I became a part of a writing community. I hadn't thought of writers in that way; I hadn't thought of writers communicating with each other or belonging to the same craft, to the same school of artisans in the same way that potters, painters and sculptors would be. I think the notion of what writing means gets lost in the "we can all write" assumption, the notion that there is a writer buried in each of us. Perhaps there are stories in each of us, but not necessarily the writers of those stories. In becoming a part of a writing community, I began to understand that writing was a craft, an art form. Most of the time, you feel as if you're reaching for something so elusive yet so familiar, the phrase or word that will crystallize the piece you're working on. And the ability to recognize that turn of phrase is part intuition, part craft, the nod of recognition that other writers offer when the writing works. That's how I met Denise Levertov. We were reading on the same venue, and I was the next reader. She paused on her way out of the auditorium, heard me and left a note. I was an emerging poet at that time, and Denise was internationally respected. I was stunned. "What? This is from whom?" It was one of the milestones in my writing career to be recognized as a poet among poets such as Denise Levertov, Sonia Sanchez, Gwendolyn Brooks, Carolyn Kizer, and Audre Lorde. The wondrous thing of being in print is not that it leads you into a community of people who are special, sometimes a little off the center of things, but toward those who have the same kind of concerns about life and what makes a life. I think that the most rewarding part of being a writer is to know you are a part of a larger community.

JLH: You also indicate in the same essay, "Wherever I Am," that your poet husband David McElroy influenced your writing. In what way did he influence you?

CJM: Oh, yes, very early and for a brief time in my writing life. Well, I complained so much about the quality of work I heard at readings that he said that I either had to stop bellyaching and start writing poems, or stop going to meetings. I would show him poems at first, and he made some suggestions. But there was something in me, a sixth sense, about having practiced the art of storytelling and knowing something about the music of language. You can't do a stint on the radio or on television for that matter without understanding how you sound. The hesitancies I have in casual conversation need to be reduced in writing. So, much of what I did in those first years of writing had more to do with my instincts and the experiences that I'd already had.

JLH: Tell me about your experiences in the United Black Artists Guild.

CJM: That was kind of remarkable. A group of black artists got together and wanted to form an umbrella organization that would help them promote their work and also protect them from the vagaries of bureaucracy. The organization offered us a sort of autonomy, a base from which to work that was of mutual benefit to the arts and to the community. One of the things that we did was to stage a sit-in in a former synagogue that was in the Central Area, a predominantly black part of the city, and the city was planning to tear the building down. That structure is now the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, and it is still a vibrant part of the black community in Seattle. In addition, we contributed to art-in-public-places projects, staged readings, and published a literary magazine, Dark Waters, for which I was the editor. Being with that group of artists happened at exactly the right time in my career because I was then a part of something greater. I think that's one of the things I try to tell the students. I don't think, I know that's one of the things I tell students. When your writing is so internalized that you can't see yourself as part of something else, then you're losing out. Your works should somehow reflect the breadth and flow of the people around you, the other writers, not necessarily family and friends and lovers, but certainly the other writers. You need to know whether you are in step or out of step with them because, yes, there are writers who are ahead of their times or they want to go back to an earlier time. The only way you know that is to have that contact with the writing community. Unfortunately, the technological world has moved away from guilds to more of the corporate model these days. Online, artists can keep their distance and remain anonymous. But distance does not lend enchantment to the view; it merely reduces interaction. With the Guild, there was constant interaction.

JLH: Was it during this period that you also began playwriting and screenwriting?

CJM: No, that came much later. When I started writing poetry, all I wanted to do was write poetry. In fact, I used to say I would rather be a mediocre poet than a failed other writer. I hadn't even thought about creating in other genres. Prose seemed too difficult, too complicated, and dependent on contrived plot designs. But I was sucked into fiction because I used fiction to ease the pressures of writing a dissertation--I became a storyteller--and in doing so, found that there were things I was leaving out of the poem--by necessity because it was a poem--that I could put in a story. Then one of my colleagues, who was working for WGBH, recommended me as a writer for a series at the PBS station. And still later, I was introduced to a theatrical director who had read some of my work and asked: '"Would you like to write a play for us?" I was still fresh from working with television scripts, and still very naive, so my response was: "How many acts do you want?"

JLH: Although you began writing fiction before the Breadloaf Workshop, how did the Breadloaf experience contribute to your development as a writer?

CJM: I was very fortunate to have the novelist, John Gardner, look at my work and talk to me about what he saw in it. Certainly, the experience humbled me, but also made me brave enough to think about publishing stories. For the first time, I began submitting stories for publication. You know, I suppose people would say I've been lucky. When I sent poems out for the first time, I submitted five or so to different literary journals, and three-fourths of those magazines accepted something. I remember saying to my ex-husband: "So what do I do now?" He said: "I guess you write more poems." I was counting in those days. "Okay, let's see. I have twenty-one poems and thirteen of them have been published. I guess I had better write about seven more." I didn't know that it was hard, but I quickly learned how difficult it is to get work published. I think being at Breadloaf gave me another look at what I do. So, certainly writing fiction--because, remember, I was a poet--gave me another look at how writers operate down the long road between the first draft and the book. These days, I more often see students who believe that they'll leave a graduate writing program and have their first book published as if the process is a one-on-one relationship. "I got an MFA and I'm gonna get a book." But I know people who have MFAs and never assumed that they would get a book immediately. They are writers who are interested in craft, in that apprenticeship period where you are learning the trade and finding an audience. Although some writers believe they don't have to audition or present a portfolio the way actors, dancers, and visual artists do, the literary magazine is the training ground for writers; it's the way that we announce "Okay, we are out here." Yes, there have been writers who have sent manuscripts over the transom, but those days are rare. On the other hand, we have more avenues of publishing, from vanity presses to online resources. That is not to say that publishing is a free-for-all, but that the avenues of apprenticeship are greater.

JLH: Which is easier for you, writing poetry or writing fiction?

CJM: Poetry is much more rewarding. I don't know if it's easier, but certainly it's more rewarding. It gives me more of an exuberant feeling when I finish a poem. When I finish a short story or piece of fiction, all I want to do is take a bath and sleep. I don't want to think about it; I don't want to deal with it. But with a poem, I want to go back to it, maybe because I can carry the poem in my head in ways that I can't carry a piece of fiction or prose.

JLH: How do you view yourself as a writer? Do you describe yourself as an African American writer?

CJM: I describe myself as a woman, a woman who writes, a woman who is black, a woman who teaches, a woman who takes chances, who sometimes doesn't fall on her butt when she puts herself at risk. But it's all about the "woman" creating something, making something, whether it's in those early days when I was scrambling the numbers, to paint by numbers, or now when I'm trying to finish a novel. In the past, my creativity has included dance, and pen and ink, and watercolor sketches; now it also includes photography. It's about being me, being able to create something. I am always aware, of course, that I'm an African American with a degree and a peculiar checkered background of travels and professions, which makes for a different kind of writer. I am aware that I can wear many hats and that I have seen a great deal of the world, and all of that goes into the creativity.

JLH: Do you believe that there are specific characteristics that distinguish African American writers from other writers?

CJM: If there's a characteristic, I think it has something to do with expectations. I'm always struck by that story Great Expectations which evolves as if there is some sort of celestial pact that was made, and we are going to achieve this because of that celestial pact. And it's not as if black writers are going to toil and sweat and tote that barge, but I think the perspective is decidedly different. I think that you know you need to write your story, that it's not going to fit that general norm, that there are things out there that don't mean as much to you as they might to someone else, that it's not necessary to dissect every follicle in order to say "I am," because there are other ways in which the world gives you that perspective on who you are. So I think being a black writer does have its special attributes. It can enrage you, because there are so many hurdles. It can enhance your work because you do see both sides, like the Janus of the actor's face. You do see both sides of the culture, of the society, of the country you're in. And if you're lucky, if things work for you, you'll be able to use those perspectives without becoming trite. Gabriel Garcia Marquez said he would always be grateful for having been born into a family and culture that presented him with many of the mysteries of life; he had no need to stumble into another culture's angst. Black writers share a similar milieu; they have no need to do what Toni Morrison calls, "playing in the dark"--that is, creating a way of shaping the "Other" that will allow them to work through moral dilemmas. As a black woman, I tell you now I have about all of the dilemmas I can handle for one lifetime, courtesy of racism and sexism, and I don't have to create an "Other" in order to explore them. I think it's probably the touchstone of black writers, i.e., Invisible Man, and The Man Who Cried I Am, to explore the perceptions of race and culture without appropriating someone else's point of view. That, as Toni Morrison points out, is one of the consistent failures of white writers, from the book Uncle Tom's Cabin to the more recent film, The Last King of Scotland. The black character is legitimized only with the presence of white characters. If I'm watching a film and it's about New York and I don't see any black people on the streets, this is not about New York. This is about the filmmaker. That's why I don't watch certain films because I know they're slanted either with the absence of black characters or with the use of white characters to authenticate the story. In The last King of Scotland, Forest Whitaker does a marvelous job of portraying Idi Amin, and he did not need a white actor to define the dictator's character. That's not the real story. This is why I began writing poetry; it's my story and I need to tell it my way. I think that's a part of being a particular kind of writer.

JLH: Like many African American writers, you are highly autobiographical in your writing. Do you consciously use autobiographical experiences or do they just seep in?

CJM: You know, we are surrounded everyday in every aspect of life with the autobiography of whiteness. I started writing because that didn't speak to me. There are things that I notice that white writers wouldn't notice. This is why I began writing poetry; I needed to tell my story my way, despite the accusation that the work is too autobiographical, or too confessional. I don't believe that language exists without personal experience. After working with neurologically impaired patients, I know how important it is to be able to express who you are and where you are. So I can't avoid the elements of autobiography. This is how I see the world. In the movie Blade Runner, which is an adaptation of the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, a character says, "If only you could see what these damn eyes have seen." Damned or not, the autobiography recounts the experience. That's what I attempt in a piece of writing. I'm trying to show the reader what I see from the inside. How can I do that without using autobiography?

JLH: I have also noticed that you, unlike some African American writers, use dialect sparingly. Is there a particular reason?

CJM: I use it with certain characters. I try to use it regionally with specific dialects, but I'm fairly adroit with English. I can use dialect if I want to, but after fifty years of being on the loose in this world, I don't do that anymore myself. When I first began to speak German, my pronunciation was very particular and peculiar because it was German with a Missouri Southern accent, which the Germans found quite amusing. Now, I am much more adept at code switching, shifting between regional dialects when I need to but not as a "rule of thumb"--the shifts come to me as naturally as tying my shoes or pouring a glass of wine. So-called "standard" English is as easy for me as Southern black dialect, but my working language, my teaching and writing language, is "standard" English, meaning it's less regionally and culturally identifiable. In many respects, this enhances my ability to use languages other than English in that it somewhat reduces translation issues. This is not snobbery, but a way of facilitating communication in a number of situations. In high school, a classmate, Grace Bumbry, spoke Southern black English but sang opera in Italian. That was my first experience with language shifts. She was really singing that aria; she was really singing in Italian, and it was still Grace, who could be a little incommunicative at times, but had a voice that transported her beyond the boundaries of St. Louis. That is what I work for with my writing voice. I'm here and I've been to all of these places. I don't think you can study other languages and retain a geographically specific dialect. As clumsy as I am with Chinese, I'd never even get close to it if I kept with that Missouri dialect. But having attempted Asian, European and African languages, I have lost that strong Missouri overlay, except when I need to conjure it up.

JLH: Are there one, two or three major themes that dominate your poetry and fiction?

CJM: Yes. Travel would be one, going from here to there by whatever means. Recently, I listened to a Nina Simone CD. She sang about moving as long as the trains are running, and I realized I would have to say as long as the planes are flying. So that's one. The other one is families and how they function or don't function--what makes a family. The extended family, restricted family, nuclear family, urban family, nomadic family. In many respects, families in this country are becoming nomadic in a different way than the traditional family has been. And then storytelling. How we keep each other abreast of what's going on whether it's a casual or formal kind of storytelling. Did I tell you who I saw in the grocery store the other day? That's storytelling. The French singer Charles Brassens said, "Call me childish, but my favorite phrase, at this end of my life, is still 'Once upon a time....'" Whether it's the formal "Once upon a time," or the storytelling that gets translated into sometimes good and sometimes very bad television, it is still a form of the old tradition. So, I think those would be three themes that continue to dominate my work.

JLH: In many of your short stories, either family or environment affects characters in such a way that they succeed or do not succeed. Is such characterization related to your focus on family?

CJM: Yes, the family structure, what is that structure, who dictates what that structure should be? Certainly, it doesn't fit comfortably. I think I did watch those family shows of the 1950s, but it might as well have been science fiction. It didn't necessarily fit the families I had. "Leave It to Beaver," that's one fantasy, and "Father Knows Best."

JLH: The characters in your short stories are very diverse. I am thinking now in particular of two of your stories, one about Jesse James, "A Brief Spell by the River," and "The Woman Who Would Eat Flowers." These stories seem to be out of the ordinary and rather atypical of the African American story. Is this a function of your diverse experiences in living and writing in different cultures?

CJM: I think it is somewhat a function of that, but also the stories that are out there now are more a function of who is accepting what kind of story. I'm not convinced that I'm the only African American writer who would write a story like "A Brief Spell by the River," but I think not all of them would be heard. When you think of Nella Larsen's work, you think of her as being singular during the Harlem Renaissance, but she wasn't. It's just that she got widely published, and she has shelf life, which is what I'm hoping my writing will have. So yes and no. I certainly wanted to write some futuristic stories, because again I was familiar with and friends with science fiction writers like Octavia Buffer, but I don't like hardware science fiction. It's still about family; it's still about telling stories and trying to make sense out of what happens.

JLH: In another one of your essays, you indicate that magical realism is important in your writing. Would you talk about your use of magical realism?

CJM: Well, what I mean by magical realism is the sometimes inexplicable occurrence that changes the course of life. Sometimes the inexplicable occurs because of a particular person--a character that is closely identified with magical realism. When I taught a literature class called The Trickster in the Modern Novel, one of the exercises I gave students was to spend a couple of weeks thinking about tricksters they have met, and at first they would say, "I do not know any." Then, suddenly they would say, "Whoa, I know a lot of them." So that's a part of magical realism. Being aware that there are not always straightforward logical answers for everything or for everyone you meet. Intuition, when you think you have either seen this place before, a deja vu, or when think you've conjured up something that wasn't there yesterday but you thought of it, may be an instance of magical realism. I remember I wrote a story about drones, robotic war missiles, called "The Simple Language of Drones," and these missiles came in from seemingly nowhere. A couple of years later, I saw drones in telecasts of the Gulf War, and that's scary. But as some of the science fiction writers would say, "We create something one day and it appears the next day." Perhaps that's right. I used to think that there were ideas that sort of circled the planet, like invisible spheres. They touch down and smear everything from Iraq to Moscow, and then they go back up again. All of these people would have this similar notion, which might explain why there were certain pyramid structures in various parts of the world. But I think certainly with writers, there is a kind of communal, ancestral pattern that is evoked in the cloaks of life. Often you get off into that zone and you forget about reality because you are trying to figure out why the happenstance has appeared. In my stories, I generally have a character who sometimes seems to appear by happenstance. There is one story where the young girl is divinating a beau, a boyfriend of sorts, and he appears, coming down the alley. So, my magical realism isn't necessarily shazam or abracadabra. It's the chance occurrence, how to make the ordinary extraordinary, without symbols flashing or lightning striking.

JLH: In your poetry and fiction, especially your poetry, St. Louis appears to have become a mobile, symbolic metaphor through which you view the world. Is that a fair assessment?

CJM: Oh, yes. It is my Atlantis. Just when I think it's out of sight, there it is again. I keep going back to it; I keep diving back to see what was it, what was there, what did it give me. I had to come to terms with my early desires to get out and the fact that it dominates my imagination. Why is that? Why can't I get rid of this ghost? So I dive into it now as if there's something there that's going to help me through, things I can pick up, and sometimes it's secondary. In the novel I am writing now, the main character is from St. Louis, which means that I can, if I want to talk about my grandmother, go back to St. Louis to enhance the character's development.

JLH: Each of your collections of poetry appears to have a different focus. How do volumes like What Madness Brought Me Here and Queen of the Ebony Isles differ, for example, from later volumes such as Bone Flames and Travelling Music?

CJM: As I said, it was not a deliberate notion that I started writing these poems. I didn't start by saying I'm going to make a book, but as poems came together, I could see the connections between this poem and that poem. And perhaps when I close the collection, maybe my mind jumps to something else, and so I start seeing other connections. I try not to write the same book over and over again. I often explain to students that a story or a subject is much like a crystal, that a crystal turns just slightly; and each time it turns, you see light reflected in a different way. So that's what I'm hoping each book does, that it reflects or refracts light of the past in a different way. What Madness Brought Me Here really is a collection of selected works from other books with the exception of the last section, which is new poems, and those poems started by accident when I was driving to California. Several days I kept noticing one shoe on the highway, and I just said, "Where's the other shoe?" So the shoe poems started. And the last poem was written because I gave a reading and a Native American writer was there. At another reading some months later, that same person was there, and he said: "You know those shoe poems that you wrote. On the way home from your reading, I saw a shoe on the road, and I thought that's odd. And I drove a little further and there was another shoe. So I stopped the car, and I picked them up. They were a set and I'm wearing them tonight." I decided I would write the poem about the lost shoes that were found, but that it would be the last poem of the series. Deliberate as a series, but the linchpin was serendipitous.

JLH: While your writing is obviously within the African American literary tradition, you often extend beyond it in search of links in the human continuum, particularly across cultures. Do you agree with this assessment of your poetry and fiction?

CJM: Yes, I do. In the same African American tradition, I think it's more that my poems are about migration. John Steinheck characterized Americans as having a need to get underway, to go anywhere from any here. There's always a sense of movement stemming from diaspora, which black writer Robert Buffer refers to as "the open journey." The "wayward and the seeking," Jean Toomer called it. Certainly that is a part of my quest across cultures. I don't know if I am finding home or taking home with me, but certainly there's that sense of movement. And I found a kinship in other cultures, in other situations for different reasons. Also, in traveling, I have sometimes arrived in a country and I've met someone who says, "We have translated a book of yours." I say, "Really? Nobody told me." Their sense of my work and how it fits with their notions of life on this planet has intrigued me, so that there is some sort of cultural overlap. I don't think I could write in isolation. I don't think I could write the black and white of life in America without knowing how that life is shaped by America, as opposed to other countries.

JLH: You also indicate that you have come to see yourself as a stranger or a guest in your travels, one who remains a stranger, and that this is really at the heart of your success in poetry and in folklore. Would you talk a little about this subject?

CJM: Well, I felt that before I uncovered the proverb from Madagascar: "Enjoy yourself to the fullest, but always remain a perfect stranger." And certainly that's been the case in my academic life. Here I take advantage of being on a campus, of having an advanced degree, but I know that does not make me "one of the boys." I'm always aware of that. I enjoy what I get out of it, at least as much as I can, but I attempt to remain a perfect stranger, to partake without appropriating, to appreciate without judgment. I think this keeps me from wanting to change others in order to fit my expectations. I'm not going to change anyone to fit my expectations. So as writers, it is the same thing. There will be people who love what I do and people who just can't deal with it. There's always one person at a reading who throws out the derisive comment: "What makes you think you can write about--" or something of that nature. "When you write so much about your experiences, do you think this limits you?" Why would I feel limited by my own experiences? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Sometimes the questions are transparent--not so much about why I write but why I, as an African American, have pursued writing. There are days when I simply can't take those kinds of questions seriously, regardless of how aware I am of the hidden agenda. "So why were you in Yugoslavia?" I might answer, "Well, it was because I couldn't get to Venus or Mars that year." I need to remain that perfect stranger, the stranger who knows I can get only so close, but the same thing goes for whomever I'm looking at. They can really get only so close. And we have that sense of decorum, where we acknowledge each other, but we don't force those boundaries.

JLH: Are there any particular African American writers who have influenced you?

CJM: Yes. I would say Toni Cade Bambara for one. I love her sense of the short story. Toni Morrison. I can't grasp yet how she does it, which is just swell. I'm glad she does it; I'm very, very happy that she does it. Al Young, who I think has a fluidity to his writing that is enviable. He writes like a jazz musician. I love Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada. He's wonderful from the very first sentence of the book. And I think of all of these writers I have known. I think of Marilyn Nelson, who is a poet and who has a marvelous sense of turning a subject on its head. And many young poets, such as Nikki Finney, who challenges traditional forms. So, yes, there are a number of African American writers who have influenced me.

JLH: What in your opinion is the current state of African American writing nationally? African American women now seem to have become the avant-garde in American literature.

CJM: Well, I think it was so difficult for black women to get published in past years, which is why you had such singular focus on women writers like Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, and a handful of others. I absolutely adore the work of Anne Spencer, who has a poem called "At the Carnival," yet very, very few contemporary writers know about her. After World War II, more men were getting published, but not a lot of women, at least not at first. The '60s began to change that. Also, I think women have been more daring in trying new ideas, becoming more empowered both by gender and color. Audre Lorde comes to mind right away. In general, contemporary African American writers moved away from the tradition of plaintive slave narratives; they transformed the art of narrative to encompass more than black/white relations, cutting across geographical boundaries, as with Giovanni's Room, or time boundaries, as in Beloved. They write about the body, they write about the ocean. They make time stand still, they push it forward. They write about home, about being some place else, and I think that's what has made the difference. The voices right now seem more varied, and I don't think they need to keep holding the same page but find new ways of probing the same subject. There are so many subjects to probe.

JLH: Over the span of your career, how has your life as a writer changed?

CJM: How has my life as a writer changed? Well, I have a lot more to do.

JLH: You have certainly done a lot already.

CJM: No, I always have that fear that this is it, that I'm not going to finish anything else. Writing is hard work. It's moving thoughts around in your head that did not exist a second ago, and no matter how many times you've thought about this subject, this time you have to make it new and different. Each time you hope that the arrangement of words is a little better, a little smoother and more evocative than the time before. But nothing is predictable. For me, it is a slow process. Writing must have a period to incubate where I can sort through the experience and cull a reflection of that part of my life from what is left. I haven't particularly adhered to any theory of writing. I do explore philosophies such as notions of time, but that means magical realism, tricksters, the unspoken, notions of the unspoken, sacred language, language of spirit and emotion. So in that respect, my life has changed because I've accumulated all of these items, and I have become my own explorer. I discover and I continue to explore. And rye learned to come to terms with the surprises: why am I here when I could be comfortable, at home watching reruns? Certainly not at home writing. Yet I've not sooner begun to unpack when I start to think about my next trip. Writing is much the same. The relief of having finished a writing project is almost immediately replaced by the anticipation and anxiety of beginning a new one. Each bit of writing is a journey into unexplored territory, and getting there is the most wondrous part of the task.

JLH: Your writing in recent years has attracted increasing attention. To what do you attribute the increased attention to your work?

CJM: Oh, I don't know how to explain it. I really don't. I'm still sort of awed by it. Someone said to me that they were in Wales and they went by this bookstore. In the front of the bookstore, the window was covered with copies of Jesus and Fat Tuesday. Why are they reading my work in Wales? I don't know how the word travels, but I know it does. And it's fascinating. I put it out there and it takes on a life of its own. I just had a poem included in an anthology called The Medusa Reader. It's been years ago since I wrote that poem. I think it must have been in the first or second collection. I don't know how they found that poem. This person was really diligently looking for everything that had the word "Medusa" in it. And here I am in a book with Freud and Apollinaire. It makes me pause.

JLH: It is amazing that most writers indicate their compelling need to write. In their own way, all say "I must write." What about you?

CJM: Got to do it! Yes, we have no choice. When I'm doing a workshop, usually somewhere else, I say to people in the workshop: "If you can get out of this business, do it now. Don't wait because if you wait, you won't be able to get out." It's like a spider web; you get caught up and you can't get out. You just keep trying to write your way out and the web keeps getting stickier. Yes, I have developed certain notions about why I write the way I write, that whole notion of using the page as a reflection of time, yet I try to avoid the stock framework of an organic beginning, middle and end. Yes, I do use the natural world, but I try to make it extraordinary. So, I've been through all of that business, but I think it's still a residual part of me that I write because I have no choice. When I am not writing, I don't know what I'm doing. My energy has been funneled into the task of writing and it shapes my life.

JLH: One final question. What can your audience expect from you next?

CJM: I don't know. I want to finish this novel, Hannibal's Children. I do, I do, I do. I don't want to put it down again because I have put it down at least three or four times. In the meantime, I've written five other books, but I don't want to do that. I want to finish this book. So, I am hoping they can expect that. I have a collection of poems, entitled Sleeping with the Moon, that was published by the University of Illinois Press in the fall of 2007. It is my first collection in eight years, but already I am deeply into the next collection, which will be far more political than my previous work. I think I've reached an age where I can speak directly about subjects that I used to frame in more subtle ways. I've matured, as my writing has matured, and my language has become more direct, the images more overt.

I love this planet for all of its faults, but we inhabitants are not taking care of it. We are not taking care of home. We are just not taking care of home. The working rifle, Diseases of the Earth, is also a poem that takes us to task, and hopefully, reminds us to take care, take care, cherish the home we have here. One of my colleagues, the poet Heather McHugh, sent me a book called The View of Earth from Above. She had heard I was ill, and knowing how important travel is for me, wanted me to have a book that reflects the expanse of the planet. "This will let you travel a little. I know you might not be able to travel this summer." This fits my need to write about travels. I'm working intermittently on a collection of travel memoirs, tentatively rifled Traveling with White People. Can't get much more direct than that. My illness slowed me down somewhat but I have resumed traveling and the book is very important--a gift, and I always cherish gifts. That book is all about the balance of man and earth. We are making a mess. Someone said--there's a joke and I can't remember whose joke it is--that God comes back and says, "Where are my dinosaurs?" Let's hope that we have some answers.