The Art of Levitation

KARAN

Kimiko, thank you for these intricate and layered poems, and for holding the torch for so long. Your work demonstrates such a masterful engagement with form and tradition, here particularly in how you approach Emily Dickinson’s work from multiple angles — a cento, a ghost pantoum, a triolet, a monostich. In “Ode to the Dickinson Line,” you write “Yes, small comfort was enough” — a line that seems to both echo and respond to Dickinson’s sensibility. Let’s begin with the process question. How do you approach writing a poem? Do you start with form, with language, with an idea? Do you have a writing routine? And most importantly, why poetry?

KIMIKO

Why poetry? I can simultaneously engage with the world and disengage. Engage with and without the self, too. In writing, I love the sounds and textures of language/s, the play that can happen. Especially word play that can create a kind of portal from the linear mundane world to a spatial realm. My dearest desire is to apprentice myself to Dickinson, to learn how to make objects levitate off the page.

Practice? More often than not I start with a prompt — respond to the language or imagery in an article on, say, a new planet. My approach is to have the prompt prompt something then to shove off somewhere.

In the past dozen years, I’ve come to given forms as prompts. Sestinas were a particular challenge but I think I’ve written a few good ones, and, I think I’ve taken some instruction from each of the form’s beauty. Whether a form or not, I try to write every day — even if it’s a line or phrase — but let's say, four to five days a week.

In the first workshop I ever took, the teacher suggested we talk back to a poet or poem. That prompt has really become part of my poetics.

KARAN

Your engagement with Japanese poetics, particularly the zuihitsu, seems to inform both your approach to form and your relationship with language itself. In “The Dream of Shoji,” you write “Trying to recall Japanese, I blank out: / it’s clear I know forgetting.” How do you navigate between different poetic traditions and languages in your work? Does this linguistic multiplicity create unique possibilities for form?

KIMIKO

T.S. Elliot used multiple languages in his work so it’s nothing new. And, of course, around the 60s, Latinex writers wrote poems with Spanish (of varying dialects), English, and slang. Early on I felt I was given the permission to write in and combine any languages. It is popular now, but multilingual writing is nothing new. I encourage my students to do the same — and this sometimes strikes them as odd or unusual. Also liberating.

My relationship with Japanese is complicated, in part because I am mixed. And because the various wars in Asia influenced how people looked at me: particularly WWII and the Vietnam War. I did not grow up bilingual but there are words from childhood that are part of my body. And this attachment to Japanese is a tender one. But because I did not do well in college language classes, Japanese can trigger feelings of shame. (Which I've written about.)  I am only now getting over that shame.

All that said, yes, mixing things up is important to me.

Regarding the different poetic traditions, I write in English and my poetic traditions are both Western and Eastern. I don't know where one ends and the other begins.

KARAN

I’m fascinated by how you work with found text and documentary material. In “Found Lines for a Ghazal on Water,” you transform newspaper reporting into a meditation on environmental crisis and human suffering. How do you approach working with found material? Does the process of selecting and arranging these lines differ from your approach to more personal narrative poems? And is this, ultimately, an exercise in form as well?

KIMIKO

Even if the subject matter in an article is interesting, if the language is not compelling, it is not worth using. So that is how I enter into a relationship with an article. That is true for erasures, too — the quality of language is key.

While combing through an article, I look at repeating words or phrases then see if I can use the lines in the service of a particular form. In the case of found lines for a ghazal, I am curious to see: how much of the subject is revealed in those shortened lines, how far I can go before the line collapses into prose, what the repetition does to the ear, and so on.

KARAN

I love “The Nest in Winter” — it creates such a powerful inventory of loss and memory, where even “a margarine container” becomes as significant as “a netsuke from Kyoto.” The poem seems to suggest that the work of grieving involves a kind of curatorial attention where everything becomes equally weighted with meaning. Could you speak about how you approach writing about family, memory, and loss?

KIMIKO

In this more autobiographical poem, because I was dealing with, literally, a hoard of objects, the things themselves became powerful. (Although the objects may or may not be the actual literal stuff.) I pretty much approach writing in the same way no matter the subject — I am prompted by something and then I try to let go and allow the material to take me. Truthfully, I’ve been writing about grief for decades. In a sense, everything is about loss, isn’t it?

KARAN

This is now a staple question for us: There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. I can see all of these elements in your work, but where would you place your work within this framework, if at all? And do you see your poetry moving into a different direction?

KIMIKO

A psychologist friend once joked of professors, "You academics feel things from the neck up." And I think this is true in many literature classes. For me, as a teacher and artist, I want art to be experienced. I want the senses to be stimulated. So I'd say the body. In fact, I am very taken by the French feminists and their project to write the body.

KARAN

Your work often engages with questions of inheritance — cultural, linguistic, familial. In “The Dream of Leaves,” you ask “How to access the material / of the unborn or the infant dream?” How do you see poetry’s role in preserving or questioning these inheritances?

KIMIKO

Poetry’s role . . . as I said earlier, I pretty much treat all material similarly. The writing and revising. It’s art. Whatever is preserved can only be done if the art is both crafted and experiential, yes? I question myself and do so in my poetry. Don’t we all? That said, because poetry can capture a moment, that kind of preservation allows a poem to continue resonating—say, spark something in the body—or fall by the wayside. Tanka poets of the Heian period were using the Japanese language and their work became imbued with, for example, the female body. Emily Dickinson, again, wrote hundreds of poetry and those that have lasted enact her intense emotions. For the tanka poets and Dickinson, what they inherited they adored and rebelled against. I am casting around for a dialectical angle here.

KARAN

As someone who has taught in the MFA Program for Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, what insights have you gained about the relationship between translation and original composition? How does your work in translation inform your own poetry?

KIMIKO

I read translations, study translations. I’ve tried my hand. My students are on the translation track or have taken a translation workshop or craft class . . . but I don’t consider myself a translator. When I have translated a line of tanka or haiku, it is to get closer to the original sense. I like to line up as many versions of a translation then look at the original and a transliteration. I like to line up my own trials. Mostly I use Hiroaki Sato's translations of, for example, Princess Shikishi. When I asked if I could use them, he said, "Do whatever you want, Kimiko!" So I have taken him at his word!
Actually, I don’t know how translators deal with my wordplay as in the poem you quoted above: “Trying to recall Japanese, I blank out: / it’s clear I know forgetting.” How would a translator handle the word “blank”?

KARAN

Congratulations on receiving the 2023 Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement! Looking back at your journey as a poet, what advice would you give to emerging writers?

KIMIKO

Don’t write for prizes.  Don’t write for tenure. Write to be an artist.

KARAN

We’d also love for you to recommend a piece of art (anything other than a poem) — perhaps a song, a film, or a visual artwork — that you find particularly inspiring or that you think everyone should experience.

KIMIKO

When I am in Chicago I visit a particular set of paintings at The Art Institute: six panels on the life of John the Baptist by Pablo di Giovanni. There is something fascinating about the way time and drama are portrayed. I don’t know if everyone should experience it, but I hope everyone has a piece of artwork that so captivates them.

KARAN

Finally, because we believe in studying the master’s masters, we would love to know which poets have influenced you most throughout your career.

KIMIKO

Certainly the classic Japanese writers Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji) and Sei Shonagon (The Pillow Book). Also my undergrad teachers Louise Glück and Charles Wright. And a writer who I met and chatted with a few times and adored — Adrienne Rich. Later Emily Dickinson. . . . Then there’s John Donne . . .