Creativity Q+A with Fleda Brown

Fleda Brown, 80, is so much more than her resume: author of 12 poetry books, and four memoirs; Professor Emerita at the University of Delaware; recipient of many awards including a Pushcart Prize. This plain-spoken writer is a fan of Elvis, and wrote a book of poems about him. Water recurs [“There’s so much water you could drown in my writing”]. And then there’s the poetic missive to Pablo Picasso about Guernica. The Traverse City resident came to poetry through her father, and without benefit of a formal plan of study. She just wrote. And read. And made it her job, the work of a long life.

This interview was conducted in July 2024 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Fleda Brown

How did you come to poetry? What was your route?

I guess the route was my father [Phillips Brown], more than anything. When he was in high school, he belonged to a recitation group. They put on robes, and traveled around to other schools and other places, and recited poems. He learned so many poems by heart. My young years were full of listening to him recite poems at the drop of a hat.

Did you receive any formal training? 

Yes. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas [late 1960s] they offered the first-ever creative writing class. That was the only formal training that I got. I was writing poems all the time. When I first started teaching at the University of Delaware [ late 1970s], W.D. Snodgrass was there, and his office was right across the hall from mine. I asked him if could sit in on his poetry workshop, and I did. I guess you’d have to say that’s the only formal training in poetry I got.

I don’t suppose they asked Homer if he got a degree in poetry.

I think it’s totally unnecessary. It’s unnecessary to take a workshop; but you do have to have read a lot. Carefully. Thoughtfully.

What does reading teach one about poetry?

It’s like reading a lot of anything. You begin to get a sense. You begin to get smart about what’s good and what’s not just by the sheer force of all the reading you’re doing. You finally begin to get bored with things that aren’t very good, and then you begin to set your own standards; but that can only happen if the things you’re reading are worthy.

In 2021 Writers Digest published a list of 168 poetic forms. Which of the many poetic forms do you use to build a poem, and structure your writing?

I have, in the past, written a few villanelles, a few sonnets, some rhyming poems. More than anything, I write free verse. These days, I’m not the slightest bit concerned about form. I just write. Lately, I’ve written a lot of what’s called prose poems, which is just a little block of prose that reads like a poem.

Can you identify a characteristic in a prose poem that makes it read like a poem?

Density. The use of metaphor. I think the language needs to be very rich and compressed in a way that an ordinary piece of prose isn’t.

Visual artists – painters, for instance – can send off an order to the Dick Blick company when they need more tubes of paint, especially in certain colors. Writers do not have a word store. How do you approach developing and nurturing your word reservoir so that you have the greatest and best choices — the most color — for your work?

I have a lot of words in my head. Something that helped me a lot — I taught high school for a while [1970-1975] — and I taught a course in word roots. It not only expanded their vocabularies, it was very helpful for me. When I ran across a word I didn’t know I could look at the roots and figure it out. I read a lot, so my vocabulary is pretty big.

Describe your studio/work space.

I just wrote a blog about it [#294]. I’ve just had two books sent off to the publisher, and we’re starting to work on getting them formatted. And because of that, I think I wanted to change my work space. That made me want to clean house, and rearrange. If you read my blog, it’s pretty funny. I ordered three different chairs before I came up with a chair that I liked. And I ordered an ottoman, several of those, trying to get it just right. The way I write: I’m sitting here at a desk right now; but, basically, when I’m sitting at a desk I feel like an accountant. I haven’t used a desk in years. I sit in a comfortable chair with my feet propped up. That means everything has to be at the right height. I have to have a lap desk that gets my computer at the right height. I have to have the right cushion. I have to have the height I need on my foot stool. Other than that, I feel really comfortable having a bunch of books around me; but that’s it. When we’re gone, I just take my lap desk and sit any old place.

What subjects or issues or themes recur in your writing? For instance: Elvis gets an entire volume [The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives, 2004]. Elvis also appears in the 2010 collection of poems, Loon Cry [“Elvis At The End Of History”].

I was working on another book at the time when I started the Elvis book. The other book was harder, and darker, and denser. I don’t know. I just got in the mood. I was a tremendously passionate Elvis fan when I was 15. I thought I’d like to do a book on Elvis. The book is not a praising of Elvis. In fact, I wanted to use a picture of Elvis on the cover, so I wrote to the Elvis Presley estate, and somebody bothered to read it. They said, No, it’s not praising enough of Elvis, so I couldn’t put him on the cover. Elvis is an incredibly fascinating person to me. I’m fascinated by people whose whole lives are devoted to something to the point they become it. He was all music. There was almost nothing outside of music for him. That’s not just interesting; it’s deeply inspiring. Actually, it pretty much killed him; but in a lot of cases, that’s where our best work comes from — when people give themselves to it, entirely.

Beyond Elvis, are there any other themes or topics you find yourself returning to in your writing?

Oh, yeah. There’s so much water you could drown in my writing. I’m always writing about the water because we’re at the lake [north of Traverse City, Michigan] a good part of the summer. And, I just love water. I swim as much as I can. So, the water’s always there. Animals are always there. Flowers, wild flowers in particular.

In returning to many of these subjects, is it because you haven’t exhausted your thoughts on them? Or, is it not even a matter of exhausting thoughts, that they’re things that are alive, and keep on giving you interesting ideas?

Sometimes I feel that I’ve exhausted something; but I’ve written three poems about milkweed, and you’d think that one poem about milkweed would have covered it; but I always come at it from a different angle.

What prompts the beginning of a poem or composition?

Nothing is harder than that for poets. It’s not like writing a novel, where you go back into it, and you already have a place to pick up and move on with. It’s terrifying to sit down, and to find the screen blank, and you have to figure out what you’re doing next. A lot of times I feel blank, so I look out the window, or I go for a walk, and I find something that I can start playing with.

What you described made me wonder if you think, Today’s the day I have to write a poem, and then you sit down and write a poem?

It’s not today’s-the-day because I write every day. A lot of times I sit down to write, and there’s nothing. So I say, OK. This is my job. What I do is write, and I’m going to write something. And, of course, that means I end up writing a lot of junk, a lot of trash; but if I do that for a while, I’ll see a phrase, or a line, or something I can pull out and begin working on writing that matters. It’s like being a visual artist. You do a bunch of pieces, and you’re not happy with any of them, then suddenly one is perfect, or really good. And, the only reason you got the one that is really good is because you did all the others. I think it’s a matter of discipline. You just stay at it, and you trust that something good’s going to come out of that.

What do you use to make notes and record thoughts about your work?

I used to do that a lot more than I do now. Sometimes, I turn on the recorder on my phone, and say a few things into it so I remember. I’ve been writing a long time so I’ve gotten really lazy about that. I see young people at poetry readings, and they sit there busily writing little phrases, and I’m just sitting there listening. I guess, after all this time, I just trust that enough is being absorbed. When I need it, it will be there.

When did you commit to working with serious, professional intent? What were the circumstances?

The circumstances were when I started getting published. I didn’t think about it as a hobby; but I did think about it as something I did on the side. I was getting my Ph.D, and I assumed I was going to be a scholar of some sort; but it was great to write poetry. I never liked scholarly research half as much as I liked poetry. After I was at the University of Delaware, I started publishing a few poems in some good places. The first or second poem I published was in the Kenyon Review, and I thought, Wow! Somebody likes what I’m doing. It took over more and more of my life when I realized I could do this. When my first book came out [Fishing With Blood, 1988] I basically said I’m chucking everything else. This is what I do. Fortunately, the University of Delaware was completely fine with it, as long as I was publishing anything that mattered, in good places.

Talk about that motivation to publish, and the support for publishing that comes from universities. The publish-or-perish thing.

I was at a publish-or-perish university. I know that when I’ve gone to do readings at smaller schools, they turn their noses up — I’ve been told, We’re a teaching institution. We don’t do that. I’ve always been a little offended by that. What I’ve found is people who publish are also splendid teachers. I never thought that publishing, or the requirement to publish, ever got in my way at all. It was probably helpful because it kept spurring me on. I just knew I had to get a modicum of work published. Actually, I always thought of the university as my patron. They were taking care of me so I could do this work. And, if taking care of me required that I turn in some [published writing], then fine. I needed taking care of. I needed my salary. I like teaching, too, I have to say.

It’s easy to teach the components of how to write; but it’s a different thing to put your writing into action, go about the process of submitting it, getting the rejections, learning how to deal with that, having success. As a teacher, if you have that experience under your belt, I’m wondering if that gives you another tool?

Oh yes, definitely. It gives you a confidence in what you’re saying to your students. Your students understand that this is coming from your own experience. And, if you have published work out there, it gives your students confidence in what you’re saying to them about how to do it. It’s really important.

What role does social media play in your practice?

I probably wouldn’t do any of that social media stuff — except that it seems like I need to, that it’s important. If you’re writing, part of your job — whether you like it or not — is marketing, which I don’t like, and I’m not very good at, and I do the best I can. So, I use Facebook to let people know if a book’s coming out. And, I have a blog. I do these things because I have to keep people aware of what I’m doing. I wish I were younger. Young people are so savvy about how to do this. I don’t even understand Instagram very well much less the other media that kids use. If I did, I could get the word out better.

In that prehistoric time before social media, how did you get the word out?

It was harder. All I could do was get in touch, personally, with people who might invite me to read. The press [publisher] would ask for a list of people that they could inform I had a book coming out. That was about all I could do back then.

I want to talk with you about your poem “Dear Pablo Picasso re: Guernica,” from the 2021 book Flying Through A Hole In the Storm, 2021. There is a line in it that really snagged me: “… Did you think you could redeem anything by art …” Guernica is Picasso’s depiction of the Nazis bombing the Spanish village of Guernica, and the horrific results. I’ve wondered if, over time, this painting has done anything to give people pause for thought. So, extrapolating from that: How does creative work redeem anything?

I’ve talked about that in my brain for many, many years. Sometimes there are people out doing things that have more obvious value, and sometimes I think, What am I doing? I’m sitting here writing these poems. There are so many things that need to be done in the world, and I should be doing them instead. Not that I’ve moved past that. Take Guernica for example: This is what art has to do. It has to show us to ourselves. That’s the redeeming thing: This is what we are; this is what we’ve done. And if we don’t show us to ourselves in a way that wakes up us, makes us take notice, it’s no use. Picasso just took that story, and turned it into a strange and interesting piece. You can’t help but pay attention to it. I don’t know if [art] changes anybody’s heart or mind. It’s there in front of us like a mirror: This is what we’ve done. This is what we do with our art. And if we’ve created something beautiful, then we — at least — can see that this is what beauty looks like. Or, if it’s a portrait of something ugly, then this is also what people are like.

I believe that the arts, all of them, give us powerful tools of expression. I’ve thought a lot about the role of the arts in translating the world in ways that only the arts can do: through interpretation, or abstraction. We’re not there as reporters; but we’re there to masticate, and digest, and shoot out a response. When the planes flew into the Twin Towers, I received a letter from a friend who is a hand weaver, and in it she wrote, Why am I doing this work when stuff like that is happening? My immediate response was she is doing something life affirming. I see that as inherent to all the arts. 

I agree. Any time an event or an image goes through another person, it becomes a translation. We learn so much about what we’ve just seen. Back to the Twin Towers. When that event runs through the mind or intellect of an artist, then whatever is written or painted becomes another thing. It’s a connection between the event, and the artist, or the observer, or the reader. It’s a deeper, and another, connection.

How do you negotiate, translate, and explore the world through your writing? Your 2016 book, The Wobbly Bicycle, is one example. In the introduction you wrote: “How does a writer deal with her cancer? By writing, of course.” Talk about this.

That book is unusual for me. I’ve never written a book quite like it before. I wrote it, week by week, and I wrote it as blog posts. When I decided to turn it into a book, I had to do a little tinkering. It was my way of making it through. I would sometimes lie in bed at night, feeling horrible, and think about what my next post would be? How am I going to talk about this moment? And how I’m feeling? And what this is like? It pulled me through that event, those six months, that year. It made it useful to me. It made the experience useful in another way.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative practice?

I love living here. It was a choice, and kind of a scary choice because we’d been on the East Coast for over 30 years, and I had to give up being Poet Laureate of Delaware to move here. I wondered, What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Of course, I knew why we were doing this. We’ve had a cottage north of [Traverse City, Michigan], that we’ve had for 100 years. It feels more like my home. So, Michigan became my place. It’s very much where I want to be. Everything about being in Michigan fits me better than being in Delaware, and I’m sorry to say that.

Did you know anyone, when you were growing up, who had a serious creative practice? Did you have any role models?

Nope. I didn’t. Not any. The only role model I had was my father. Once in a while he’d write silly poems. That was it. I didn’t know a poet.

Who has had the greatest and most lasting influence on your work and practice?

I can’t think of just one person. It’s an accumulation of reading poets I admire. There’s nobody who stands out because each one has given me something different. All those things have melded together. A lot of people who do an MFA program, for example, will look for the rest of their lives to a beloved teacher in the MFA program. That’s wonderful, and I’m sorry I didn’t have that. I was just all on my own the whole time. I did teach in an MFA program, so maybe there’s an MFA person out there thinking of me, which would be nice.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

My husband, Jerry Beasley [professor emeritus and former department chair of English at the University of Delaware, and author]. He has a Ph.D in 18th Century literature, and is a very good reader, and scholar. He’s not a poet. He reads my things, and reads them from the point of view of an intelligent reader. So, I don’t need a poet reading my work, and advising me, although I have a group of poet friends who do that for each other. What I really need is, first of all, is to hear from Jerry, and have him say, This works for me. He’s not always right. Sometimes I don’t agree with him. Most of the time, he’s smart about what I’m doing.

How do you feed/fuel/nurture your creativity?

I’m unable to walk past something in print without looking at it. I read crummy novels, and I read good novels, and poetry, and magazines. I read everything.

One doesn’t usually have on the tip of their tongue the name of a poet who has become fabulously successful. Poetry doesn’t seem to enjoy the same kind of public awareness and embrace that other art forms do. When Edgar Allen Poe published his poem “The Raven,” people were waiting breathlessly to read it. When it came out there was all sorts of conversation about it. People used to pay attention to these things. Can you reflect on why contemporary poets don’t get enough love? 

I think it was Louise Gluck who said winning a big prize didn’t change her sales that much. She never sold many books, and no poet sells many books. This is a different time. It’s a very visual time, and people are watching tons of movies, and reading other things. Poetry requires slowing down, and being very quiet with the poem no matter what kind of poem it is. Not many people slow down anymore. Some poets and some poems have gotten very esoteric, and that doesn’t work for ordinary people. By “ordinary,” all I mean is people who don’t often read poetry, or who haven’t studied it. I think that’s been a problem. If you look at some of the 19th Century poets, the point was to write for ordinary people who just like poetry. Those poems still work. [Some of contemporary poetry] has turned internal. I would compare it to is painting. Painting used to reproduce what you see in front of you. And then, it went inside and pulled at what you’re feeling, and turn that into part of the image. When poetry did that, people lost interest. It felt like something they didn’t know how to read. They couldn’t get hold of it. If it happen to be something like Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman” — a good story that was told in a rhythmical way that rhymes at the end — people get into that; but we’ve lost ordinary people. Poems have become too esoteric for ordinary people, and by that I mean people who aren’t used to ready poetry.

I think, generally, many people believe they won’t “get” a poem. It makes me wonder: Do we value the things that poetry can do, and does do, enough that we make it a priority to provide people with more experience with poetry? To be exposed to it so they can begin sorting things out for themselves?

I’ve spent a lot of effort on that. When I was at the University of Delaware, I got a grant. For one whole year, I wasn’t teaching, and went around to the secondary schools and talked to teachers about teaching poetry. I tried to help because what I’ve seen is secondary school teachers are scared of poetry, so they don’t teach much of it. They haven’t been trained. Now, I write a poetry column [On Poetry] every month in the Traverse City Record-Eagle. For me, that little column is like teaching Poetry 101. I pick poems that ordinary people who aren’t used to reading poetry can get hold of. And, I talk about it. The way that we can influence people is to constantly keep poems in front of them, and talk about them, and start with ones that are not so hard to understand. It’s like anything else. It’s like reading. You don’t automatically know how to read a difficult novel; you work up to it.

What drives your impulse to make?

I don’t have the slightest idea. It’s what I do. Outside my house there are some roses that just keep blooming. I don’t think they have any other impulse except to bloom; it’s just built in to do that. Apparently, writing poetry is just built in. I don’t think I could easily quit. [Poet] James Wright was still organizing his last book, lying on his death bed. And my friend, Sydney Lea, with whom I’ve written a book, he’s 81, and he’s writing more poems than he did 20 years ago. And, he just wrote a novel. It’s like it just comes out of him. It’s what you do.

While still with the University of Delaware English Department, you served as Poet Laureate of Delaware from 2001-2007. What’s the Poet Laureate’s job description?

I’ve been asked that a bunch of times. I think it depends upon what the poet laureate wants to do. I had the strong support of the Division of the Arts in Delaware, and they got me readings at lots of different places all over the state; but I consider that my role was to encourage poetry. If you have a poet laureate the reason is to bring visibility to poetry where it otherwise might not be. My favorite project was to ask people to submit poems. I picked 12 people based on their submissions, and I took them down to what was then called the Biden Center, a retreat facility on the beach in Lewes, Delaware, to spend a long weekend.”  We did workshops and read poems, and a bunch of those people have published books. It pleases me so much to see the success of some of those people.

Read more about Fleda Brown here. She also publishes a monthly column in the Traverse City Record-Eagle. On Poetry, a commentary, appears in the Northern Living section.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.