Award-Winning poet releases ‘Immortal’ new book
IU Bloomington Professor Maura Stanton talks with "Live at IU" about her new poetry book, Immortal Sofa
Maura Stanton has won awards ranging from the 1975 Yale Younger Poets Award to the 2003 Michigan Literary Award and been granted two NEA fellowships. She has published six books of poems, three short story collections (including The Country I Come From, which is about growing up in the Midwest), and one novel (Molly Companion). Her work has appeared in publications that include The New Yorker, The Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, and The Chicago Review. In her latest book of poetry, Immortal Sofa (published by the University of Illinois Press), Stanton finds connections between the everyday and the literary.
Maura Stanton
LIU: Why did you choose to work at IU, and what do you like most about being part of the creative writing faculty here?
MS: I came to teach at IU in 1982. The MFA Program in creative writing was just getting started, and it was an exciting time. I got to see the program grow year by year. At first we only had a handful of applicants -- then word began to spread and we had dozens, then hundreds of applicants. Over the years I've gotten to work with many brilliant, talented young writers who've gone on to publish books of poetry and short stories and novels and win major awards. I think we have a great faculty here -- strong writers who are also excellent teachers.
LIU: What inspires you to write?
MS: The best part of being a writer is that nothing need ever be lost -- even a couple of hours at the dentist can give you material for a poem. One of the poems in my new book was inspired by taking my cats to the vet. Another by finding a dead moth in my bottle of sparkling mineral water. One poem came directly out of teaching W103, our Intro to Creative Writing class. Another from reading about the history of Ireland. Poems start with little details, not big themes.
LIU: What inspired Immortal Sofa? What do you hope people feel when they read your new collection?
MS: The title poem, "Immortal Sofa," was sparked by crossing the ordinary with the literary. The ordinary detail came from noticing all the old sofas that students here in Bloomington leave behind every spring when they move out of their rentals, and then thinking about my own old sofa. The literary detail is a long poem by the 18th-Century poet William Cowper called "The Task." He begins by mocking the epic with the line "I sing the sofa" and invents the history of the sofa. So I decided to write the history of my own sofa. I hope that people who read my collection will find connections -- both familiar and surprising -- to incidents and objects in their own lives.
LIU: What's your writing process?
MS: I usually start a poem with a pen and a piece of paper, but as soon as I get a few lines -- which might take an hour or even a couple of days -- I move to the computer. When I've finished writing, I print out a draft. The next day I begin with the draft and a pen -- but quickly move back to the computer. My handwriting can't keep up with my thoughts.
LIU: Who were some of your early influences?
MS: Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop were important to my development, and I still admire them greatly because of the way they mix common speech and imagination. When I was a student at the University of Minnesota, John Berryman and Robert Bly were the famous local poets, and I read and admired both of them. It was exciting to think that poets lived in Minnesota as well as in England and New England. I was thrilled the first time I heard the word "Minneapolis" in a poem. My first poetry teacher at the University of Minnesota, Vern Rutsala, introduced me to contemporary American poetry. He was a kind and encouraging teacher, and told me about the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
LIU: Describe your relationship with students and what you enjoy about working with writers who are still finding their "voice."
MS: All students are different, so I never try to make them over in my own image. I try to encourage their strengths, and push them to read writers they may not have heard of before. Undergraduates are especially fun to teach, because they're full of energy and imagination and will try anything. Graduate students are sometimes more cautious because there's more at stake, more fear of failure, and my goal is to encourage what they do best but also try to widen their range.
LIU: Who are your favorite writers?
MS: There are lots of wonderful poets around today, with a wide range of aesthetics. I admire Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Yusef Komunyakaa, Claudia Emerson, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon and A.E. Stallings. Lately I've been reading Horace and Archilochous and the Homeric Hymns and Floyd Skloot and Rachel Hadas and Edward Thomas and Patrick Kavanagh. And if I could put in a plug for a terrific novel -- Ha Jin's A Free Life is about the development of a poet as well as about life in America.
