Chard deNiord
- Georgetown University - USA, United States of America -
Chard deNiord is the author of seven books of poetry, In My Unknowing (University of Pittsburgh Press 2020), Interstate (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), The Double Truth (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Speaking In Turn with Tony Sanders, Gnomon Press, 2011, Night Mowing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), Sharp Golden Thorn (Marsh Hawk Press, 2002) and Asleep In The Fire (University of Alabama Press, 1990). He is also the author of two books of interviews with eminent American poets titled Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs, Conversations and Reflections on 20th Century Poetry (Marick Press, 2011) and I Would Lie To You If I Could (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018) and several artists books in collaboration with Brian Cohen at Bridge Press and Michelle Burgess at Brighton Press. He cofounded the Ruth Stone Foundation with Bianca Stone and her husband, Ben Pease, and then served as a trustee of the Ruth Stone Trust from 2010 to 2021. In 2001 he co-founded the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College with Jacqueline Gens, which he also co-directed until 2008. He retired in the spring of 2020 from teaching at Providence College, where he is now Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing. He is the essay editor at Plume Online Poetry Magazine and serves as a board member of the Sundog Poetry Center in Vermont. For the past ten years he has worked as the executive producer of Nora Jacobson’s documentary film on the life and work of the poet Ruth Stone titled The Vast Library of the Female Mind. He lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife, Liz.
Chard deNiord (Georgetown University - USA) participates in the Versopolis USA mobility project, a collaborative initiative between Versopolis and the Formal Consortium of U.S. Universities and Institutions Dedicated to Poetry.
This Or That
As both a poet and essayist, I struggle with Samuel Coleridge’s criterion for poetry in writing poetry, as well as prose pieces, that is, putting “the best words in the best order.” I write a poem and then feel after completing it, Why write another poem on any subject since I have captured a bit of something here in “memorable speech.” At least so I think. Why not just quit now? I, of course, must ultimately leave the question of my poems’ quality and success up to my reader, I know, but nonetheless, I need to satisfy myself enough initially, if only briefly, to write the next poem.
I write an essay and think I have a lot more to say on this or that after I finish it, but this is enough for now. I write a poem and question its brevity. Not enough verbal adequacy in either case. Neither suffices in capturing any final “word” on any of my subjects since subjects by nature, are both mercurial and infinite. Which is, as any serious creative or critical writer comes to realize soon enough, is both the blessing and curse of writing. I know, for instance, that I, for one, could write about a single subject forever if I so desired, whether it be about plums or ants or love. All subjects are inherently irreducible in objective, subjective, and imaginative ways. Mix the three and the muses go wild.
Soren Kierkegaard wrote that “purity of heart is to will one thing.” This raises the question, at least for me: So, just how can writing serve as an alembic for “purity of heart, especially when there are infinite subjects about which to write, many of which are so desultory and even wicked that they pose a seductive threat to any purity of heart? Emily Dickinson answered this question by writing obsessively about what she called her “flood subject”, namely, immortality, which, in turn, permitted her to write about any Earthly subject, material or otherwise—flies, loneliness, pain, happiness, ecstasy, death— as synecdoches and metaphors, as well as just things themselves. This nexus between the actual and abstract is precisely where the liquidity of the subject matter flows. Precisely where one thing becomes another while remaining itself with no less sovereignty in the irony of being, which Dickinson would, no doubt, capitalize.
And then there is the oxymoronic admixture of prose and poetry, the prose poem, which the wizardly master of the form, Russell Edson, defined as a “cast iron aeroplane that can actually fly.” Forms function as anodynes for the agony of both prose writers and poets. I switch back and forth to keep my spirits up and my muses appeased, at least for the time being.
Always the next poem or essay because the last one was only an ellipsis. Any writer knows his or her future in the “business”, whether personal or professional, rests precariously on the precipice of uncertainty. Will the muse visit again? Will the next poem or essay resonate with my readers? “If you have to be sure, then don’t write,” advised John Berryman to his student W.S. Merwin, which Merwin recounts so memorably in his poem “Berryman”.
So, I keep scribbling in the dark beneath the bright light of my desk lamp after many decades of failing repeatedly, and not always better, striving for what Philip Larkin called in his poem “Talking In Bed” “a unique distance between myself and isolation” where “It becomes still more/ Difficult to find/ words at once both true and kind/ Or not untrue and not unkind.”
Essay written by Chard deNiord
Poetry
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TABLET /
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SECOND PARADISE /
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THE OTHER /
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HELOISE TO ABELARD May 19, 1115 /
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DUMUZI TO INANNA /
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CONFESSION OF A BIRD WATCHER /
