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Poetry pays off
Local writer wins Idaho Prize
Emily Simnitt
The Idaho Statesman | Edition Date: 04-20-2005
Local writer Alvin Greenberg loves his job
— and it's paying off.
The poet/novelist/essayist recently won the national Idaho Prize
for "Hurry Back," his latest collection of poetry. The
prize comes with a $1,200 honorarium and publication of the winning
book, which you can pick up Thursday at a book launching/reading/signing
at the Log Cabin Literary Center.
This summer, Greenberg is off to an artists' colony in Switzerland
for three weeks with his wife, Janet Holmes, who is also a poet
and teaches in the MFA program at Boise State University.
He'll spend the remainder of the year working on a "novelistic notion
brewing for a long time."
You'll have to wait to see what this is all about — "I don't like
to talk about projects I'm working on. It drains the energy," Greenberg
says.
But he was more than happy to sit down for an hour to talk about
"Hurry Back," his life as a writer and the status of poetry
in today's culture.
Greenberg moved to Boise about six years ago when his wife took
the BSU teaching job.
Before that, Greenberg taught English courses for 34 years at Macalester
College in St. Paul, Minn. He calls himself a late bloomer, not
coming to writing until he was in his 30s, after he'd worked on
a graduate degree in English literature.
How did you get started writing?
"The problem with being an English major is you spend your time
reading great literature and you look at what you've written and
you see this incredible gulf. I'd come to that moment and quit.
"Then the impulse to keep writing would return. Each time I went
back the gulf didn't seem as big. I don't know that the gap closed,
but it no longer seemed big enough to discourage me."
You write poetry, fiction and non-fiction essays. You say you don't
consider yourself a regional writer, so what inspires you? What
are your influences?
"Everything. It's not that there's no landscape in my writing. There
is. But there's also influence of ideas, other writers, the things
that influence all of our lives, like world politics and those other
two great themes: love and loss.
"There are a number of poems about loss in this collection, but
there are a lot of poems about love, too. I like to think the book
moves in that direction, from loss to love.
Is there anything in particular that's happened in your life to
bring you to writing about these topics now?
"There are always things happening in our lives. I don't know if
I want to get into a lot of details. I think for any of us, there
are things that become central to our emotional lives.
What is your advice to aspiring poets? Is there a place for poets
in our culture? Why should people read poetry?
"There's probably more poetry being written now than there ever
has been in history, more poetry books being published than ever
before. What we're missing is people buying these books.
"People should read poetry for the same reasons they read fiction
and nonfiction, because, as famous poets have reminded us in the
past, it's got the news. It's about who we are. I don't think any
one genre has a lock on it. We're all trying to do the same thing.
"Read, read, read. It's the equivalent of the real estate professional
saying, 'Location, location, location.'"
So what's on your to-read list? You mention other writers as forces
of influence in your own writing. Who are these writers?
"We've recently lost three wonderful writers: poet Robert Creeley,
novelist Saul Bellow and Frank Conroy, one of our great non-fiction
writers. I may not have been reading them this week or last, but
they've been people who've influenced me my whole life.
"We were in San Francisco recently and went on our usual book buying
binge at City Lights bookstore. I picked up the new Ian McEwan novel
"Saturday," a posthumous collection of A.R. Ammons (one of the great
poets of our time), and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by
Jonathan Safran Foer. Right now, they're sitting on a chair. I look
at them every day and think, 'Soon.'
"I'm a slow reader. It's an indulgence. I'm not in any hurry. There's
no way I'm going to have time to read everything I want to read."
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