21 Years After Pulitzer Nomination, Poet Spivack Looks Ahead

Kathleen Spivack has been recognized as one of the foremost poets of her generation. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and her work has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker and Harper’s. “Moments of Happiness,” her first poetry collection since 1986’s “The Beds We Lie In,” was released on Nov. 10, exclusively through Cambridge’s Grolier Poetry Book Shop.



The Harvard Crimson: This is your first book since 1986—that’s 21 years since you released the Pulitzer-Prize-nominated “The Beds We Lie In.” Is there a reason behind this long period between releases?



Kathleen Spivack: Two presses folded with my work in proofs. I just hit a period of bad luck. I had other work forthcoming and just couldn’t make a go of it. There’s been a huge publishing crisis. I think it affected a lot of people…But I’ve been writing and have had books ready, ready to go. It’s been a tough time for publishers and for writers.



THC: Do you think that this crisis is the manifestation of a larger trend in general, a trend away from poetry, as it is being marginalized by other forms of entertainment?



KS: I don’t know if I feel it’s any more marginalized then it’s always been. I live in France half the year, and I would say there is a huge interest in poetry in the United States as compared to France.

But I don’t want to be overly optimistic. You have people much more visual with computers and iPods and Blackberries. People aren’t reading. Books are slow. Reading is slow. You have to take your time with it.

THC: What are your thoughts on your past nomination for the Pulitzer Prize?



KS: I was very pleased. But I don’t think it made a difference. I think it was fun that Louisa Solano, who ran the Grolier at the time, threw a party. That was fun. By the time a book is finished you are so much involved in the next book really—because the production of the book takes a bit of time. So you’re already in your next book. I was already in the midst of a book about Robert Lowell, [Anne] Sexton, and [Sylvia] Plath.



THC: How was it to be Robert Lowell’s protégé and work with Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath?



KS: I came to Boston on this wonderful fellowship to study with [Robert Lowell] and he didn’t know what to do with me because no one had done this before. So he introduced me to Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and said “Take care of her.” At the time—still, looking back on it—it was totally scary. Terrifying. But it changed my life. And then we became friends and this went on until their death. They were incredibly kind to me and took my work seriously and helped me a lot.

THC: How do you go about writing your poetry?



KS: Lots of revision. It’s the little things you look at. Like the line breaks, the punctuation, the ‘the’s and the ‘and’s. You could do that forever…Sometimes I’ve felt as if I’ve spent my whole life trying to make a poem shimmer, just shimmer just above the page, to make it just lift a little off the page.

Well, you know, I’ve been working at this for a long time, and once in a while I go, “Yeah, that’s it.”

—Staff writer Sanders I. Bernstein can be reached at sbernst@fas.harvard.edu.