Love Letters to Sophie's Mom
Interview with the Author
Love Letters to Sophie’s Mom author Rob Bignell answers some common questions about poetry, his new book, and how he writes.
Q: What is poetry? How do you define it?
A: When teaching poetry, I gave my students these very specific, formal qualities that distinguished it from prose, stuff that was easy to regurgitate on a test. But the more poetry I’ve read and the more I’ve tried my hand writing it, the less inclined I am to follow that formal, technical definition. Poetry simply isn’t so definable.
I suppose on one level, poetry must be musical in its wording and its rhythms. So much of our prose writing – science journal articles, business writing, journalistic pieces – are simply about getting out information quick and fast and pay little attention to the sound of what is written. The appeal of poetry, though, is that sound matters, and sometimes, as in the case of a Lewis Carroll or a John Lennon, it’s more important than even the words’ meaning.
On another level, poetry typically is metaphorical. Or at least good poetry tends to be so. You have to infer its meaning and message. Sometimes, like a good painting, there’s not even a message, but a feeling that’s inferred.
I’d also argue that poetry often focuses more on emotions than facts. Poetry of the past, before prose came to dominate our interactions, wasn’t so concerned about emotions, of course. Today’s poetry tends to be exclusively about emotive aspect of some place, person, object or occurrence.
Yes, there are hundreds of poems that could be trotted out to show that these traits don’t always apply. I’m simply generalizing. In many ways, poetry is like what that one Supreme Court justice said about pornography – he couldn’t define it, but he knew it when he saw it. Likewise, we all know a poem when we see it.
Q: What is poetry’s role in modern society?
A: Poetry may very well be the last refuge of passionate expression in modern society. Our prose is so intent on simply expressing information quickly and skims over the surface of emotions. There’s still a need for emotional expression, though – humans are more emotion than reason, I’d argue. Perhaps that’s why song lyrics are primarily about love rather than scientific theory and why a teenager who feels deep emotion often explores it by writing a poem.
Q: Who are your inspirations?
A: For this volume of poetry, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. I read a lot of him the winter before I began writing these pieces, and when I began editing and revising them, went back to reading him to see how he handled certain complications of craft. Bob Dylan as a lyricist also was an influence, especially during the summer’s editing and revision phase. To a lesser extent, Dylan Thomas, my favorite poet after Shakespeare, influenced me, as his work established the base of what I consider to be good modern poetry, or at least the kind of poetry I’d aspire to write.
Q: How do you come up with an idea for a poem?
A: There are a million different ways. Sometimes it’s a turn of a phrase you think up or dream, and then you build the whole poem around it. Sometimes it’s a metaphor you think is clever and so you construct a poem built on that framework. Sometimes an event or an object burns so strong in your memory that you simply start describing it, and a poem arises. Those were the three dominant methods in how I came up with the poems in this collection.
Q: How do you write a poem?
A: I usually start with a line or image and then expand upon it. Rarely is a poem done in one sitting. As I read other poets or go for long walks, additional lines and ideas come to me. Once I’ve got a lot of loose thoughts, I’ll begin to organize them into lines and stanza, paying close attention to its musicality and the power of the metaphor. When satisfied, I share it with others to get their take and revise accordingly. With others’ insights, I usually end up revising the poems I was particularly proud of!
Q: Which poems from the collection are your favorites?
A: “Hair” certainly is among them. It’s based on a very simple event – playing with a loved one’s beautiful hair as we conversed – yet it was an emotionally powerful event for me. The poem is me going back trying to figure out why that was so meaningful and memorable.
“Moon” personally means a lot. It really summarizes how I felt about the relationship it describes: Deeply, passionately in love, yet unable to understand what was wrong and desperately trying to hold on to that love.
“Birdwings” is in the same vein. It expresses the feeling of powerlessness at being unable to help a person I care for with all of my soul. It’s a little dark, perhaps, the antithesis of “Hair.”
Q: Which poem was the most difficult to write?
A: “The Dance” took the longest to complete. I knew it would be the book’s opening poem and so wanted it to be just so. I tried to force it to be in first person like all of the other poems in the book but soon abandoned that. The metaphors also had to weave in perfect step around one another, and that set some artificial boundaries on me.
Q: Is “Sophie’s mom” a real person? Who is she?
A: Part of the allure of any writing is in its mystery, and telling who the poetry is addressed to would take that away! But they all are addressed to or are about one person, though I think all of us who have been in love can relate to any of the pieces.
I should mention that there is no Sophie. She is made up from a conversation that her “mother” and I had. She said if we could have a daughter, she wanted to name it Sophia. I said as long as I could call Sophia by the nickname of Sophie, that it was fine by me. She agreed and said as a consolation prize I got to suggest Sophie’s middle name. I have one picked out, but only Sophie’s mom gets to hear it.
Q: What is poetry? How do you define it?
A: When teaching poetry, I gave my students these very specific, formal qualities that distinguished it from prose, stuff that was easy to regurgitate on a test. But the more poetry I’ve read and the more I’ve tried my hand writing it, the less inclined I am to follow that formal, technical definition. Poetry simply isn’t so definable.
I suppose on one level, poetry must be musical in its wording and its rhythms. So much of our prose writing – science journal articles, business writing, journalistic pieces – are simply about getting out information quick and fast and pay little attention to the sound of what is written. The appeal of poetry, though, is that sound matters, and sometimes, as in the case of a Lewis Carroll or a John Lennon, it’s more important than even the words’ meaning.
On another level, poetry typically is metaphorical. Or at least good poetry tends to be so. You have to infer its meaning and message. Sometimes, like a good painting, there’s not even a message, but a feeling that’s inferred.
I’d also argue that poetry often focuses more on emotions than facts. Poetry of the past, before prose came to dominate our interactions, wasn’t so concerned about emotions, of course. Today’s poetry tends to be exclusively about emotive aspect of some place, person, object or occurrence.
Yes, there are hundreds of poems that could be trotted out to show that these traits don’t always apply. I’m simply generalizing. In many ways, poetry is like what that one Supreme Court justice said about pornography – he couldn’t define it, but he knew it when he saw it. Likewise, we all know a poem when we see it.
Q: What is poetry’s role in modern society?
A: Poetry may very well be the last refuge of passionate expression in modern society. Our prose is so intent on simply expressing information quickly and skims over the surface of emotions. There’s still a need for emotional expression, though – humans are more emotion than reason, I’d argue. Perhaps that’s why song lyrics are primarily about love rather than scientific theory and why a teenager who feels deep emotion often explores it by writing a poem.
Q: Who are your inspirations?
A: For this volume of poetry, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. I read a lot of him the winter before I began writing these pieces, and when I began editing and revising them, went back to reading him to see how he handled certain complications of craft. Bob Dylan as a lyricist also was an influence, especially during the summer’s editing and revision phase. To a lesser extent, Dylan Thomas, my favorite poet after Shakespeare, influenced me, as his work established the base of what I consider to be good modern poetry, or at least the kind of poetry I’d aspire to write.
Q: How do you come up with an idea for a poem?
A: There are a million different ways. Sometimes it’s a turn of a phrase you think up or dream, and then you build the whole poem around it. Sometimes it’s a metaphor you think is clever and so you construct a poem built on that framework. Sometimes an event or an object burns so strong in your memory that you simply start describing it, and a poem arises. Those were the three dominant methods in how I came up with the poems in this collection.
Q: How do you write a poem?
A: I usually start with a line or image and then expand upon it. Rarely is a poem done in one sitting. As I read other poets or go for long walks, additional lines and ideas come to me. Once I’ve got a lot of loose thoughts, I’ll begin to organize them into lines and stanza, paying close attention to its musicality and the power of the metaphor. When satisfied, I share it with others to get their take and revise accordingly. With others’ insights, I usually end up revising the poems I was particularly proud of!
Q: Which poems from the collection are your favorites?
A: “Hair” certainly is among them. It’s based on a very simple event – playing with a loved one’s beautiful hair as we conversed – yet it was an emotionally powerful event for me. The poem is me going back trying to figure out why that was so meaningful and memorable.
“Moon” personally means a lot. It really summarizes how I felt about the relationship it describes: Deeply, passionately in love, yet unable to understand what was wrong and desperately trying to hold on to that love.
“Birdwings” is in the same vein. It expresses the feeling of powerlessness at being unable to help a person I care for with all of my soul. It’s a little dark, perhaps, the antithesis of “Hair.”
Q: Which poem was the most difficult to write?
A: “The Dance” took the longest to complete. I knew it would be the book’s opening poem and so wanted it to be just so. I tried to force it to be in first person like all of the other poems in the book but soon abandoned that. The metaphors also had to weave in perfect step around one another, and that set some artificial boundaries on me.
Q: Is “Sophie’s mom” a real person? Who is she?
A: Part of the allure of any writing is in its mystery, and telling who the poetry is addressed to would take that away! But they all are addressed to or are about one person, though I think all of us who have been in love can relate to any of the pieces.
I should mention that there is no Sophie. She is made up from a conversation that her “mother” and I had. She said if we could have a daughter, she wanted to name it Sophia. I said as long as I could call Sophia by the nickname of Sophie, that it was fine by me. She agreed and said as a consolation prize I got to suggest Sophie’s middle name. I have one picked out, but only Sophie’s mom gets to hear it.
Rob Bignell, author
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(c) 2013 Rob Bignell