~ Delta Poetry Review ~

- Interview and Book Review -

 Larry D. Thomas Interview by Dixon Hearne

Thank you for sitting down with us today. I know you’re a busy person. We are so pleased to talk to you about your inspiring poetics, and we know our readers will enjoy what you have to share with us.

DPR: When and where did poetics take root in your creative life? Were you immediately consumed with desire?

LT: The first time I remember being “struck by lightning” with poetics was when I was in middle school and was instructed to memorize and subsequently recite to the class Poe’s “Raven.” I shall never forget the pulsing rhythms of Poe’s lines and the powerful musicality of his word sounds. As haunting as the meaning of the poem certainly is, I was so absorbed by the rhythmic musicality of its language that the poem’s meaning was only of secondary importance to me.

Another “lightning moment” of my interest in poetry occurred when I took an upper-level course in modern American poetry during my studies at the University of Houston, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature in 1970. The professor of the course was brilliant and led the class through an in-depth study of a number of modern American masters, including Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and T. S. Eliot. A large percentage of my own poetry stems directly from my creative imagination, and to a significant extent, I attribute that defining aspect of my work to the primacy of imagination in the poems of Stevens.

At the time I received my B. A. degree in English literature and was drawn particularly to the genre of poetry, I never thought about writing poems myself. My plan was to continue my studies in literature, obtain a doctorate, and teach in a university. Life, however, had other plans for me. Very early during the year I graduated from college, my wife gave birth to our lovely daughter, and later that year, I was drafted into military service immediately upon obtaining my degree. I spent four years in the U. S. Navy as a correctional counselor in the naval correctional facility in Norfolk, VA. Early in my military service, I was mysteriously compelled, completely out of the blue, to write a poem about a brilliant sunset I witnessed with thousands of birds spiraling from the sky to their roosting places, and I never stopped composing poems from that time on. It was as if I were “called” to write poetry that evening in Norfolk, Virginia, as strange as it may seem. After my discharge from the U. S. Navy, I was employed in the adult probation field for twenty-three years until I retired in 1998. From 1998 to the present, I have been privileged to write poetry on a full-time basis.   

DPR: How important do you think it is to experiment with form, or to at least have background knowledge of the way certain forms of poetry work?

LT: I think experimentation with form is critical to the development of any serious poet. Although most of my poetry is written in free verse, I have also composed and published quite a number of poems in form. My form poems are generally rhymed couplets, tercets, or quatrains. When I write in form, I attempt to employ a lot of slant rhymes so subtly utilized that the reader may not even notice that the poem is written in form. In my opinion, the employment of too many pure rhymes may make a poem amateurishly “sing-songy.”  

DPR: What kind of poetry or aesthetics appeals to you? Any specific example?

LT: I love all kinds of poetry, both classical and contemporary, which reflect a high degree of poetic craft. A poet should approach the crafting of a poem as an accomplished sculptor approaches the shaping of wet clay. Words are to the poet what notes are to the musician; pigment to the painter; and precise physical movement to the ballerina or danseur.

When I was a small child and received my first set of wooden alphabet blocks, I clearly remember the joy of learning to arrange them into simple words. That experience made me see letters and words as three-dimensional building blocks which I could one day arrange into towering cathedrals of poems.

DPR: What is it about the American Southwest and the South that turns your thoughts to poetry? Where do you feel most at home?

LT: I feel equally at home in both West Texas and the American South. Although I was born and grew up in the harsh and somewhat alien landscapes of West Texas, I moved to Houston at the age of twenty and resided there for forty-four years. I have always been intrigued by the dichotomy of harshness and incomparable beauty which characterize Western landscapes, and I have frequently incorporated them into what I consider to be much of my best poetry. I firmly believe that the use of “place” by a poet is merely a blueprint he/she can follow to achieve the “universal.”

Although much of my work, especially that in my early collections of poems, is indisputably “Western” in both landscape and cultural ambiance, it stems almost entirely from my creative imagination as I have never actually lived on a ranch, raised cattle, etc. In fact, my bloodline heritage is deeply Southern. Three of my grandparents and my paternal great-grandfather were born and reared in the Mississippi Delta (western Tennessee and Mississippi) and relocated to West Texas in the late eighteen-hundreds (my paternal grandfather was born in Texas). All of them worked their entire lives as tenant cotton farmers and hand-picked cotton, much like the Black slaves on the plantations. Even my mother and father, who were thirty-nine and forty years old, respectively, at the time of my birth, hand-picked cotton into their late twenties when my father went to work at a Mobil service station. In my early childhood I was fascinated by the countless stories I heard from my parents and my grandparents about their experiences on the tenant farms. In addition to these stories, I grew up on Southern “comfort food,” immersed in voices of Southern dialect.

My “place poems” are not limited to West Texas and the American South. One of my book-length collections of poems, The Lobsterman’s Dream: Poems of the Coast of Maine, is set entirely on the ruggedly beautiful Maine coastline.

DPR: You have received many awards and wide recognition for your excellent writing. How do you approach writing poetry? Is it generally mood-driven, image-driven, emotion-driven, place-driven, or event-driven?

LT: When I begin the composition of a poem, I often have no idea what the subject matter of the poem will be. My poems often start with a single image, an image around which words begin to coalesce, first into phrases and ultimately into poetic lines. I spend whatever time is necessary, usually a few hours, and remain at my desk until I complete a rough first draft of the poem. I will then spend a great deal of time revising the poem until I get it where I feel it needs to be. I learned early in my writing career the importance of both “play” and “concentration” in the composition of good poetry. I sincerely believe that the urge to creativity continually rages in the poet’s psyche like a swift river and that the poet, as if with an empty cup, may still a tiny portion of that river and work it into a poem, with hard, focused concentration and a little good fortune!  

DPR: Drawing on your long and celebrated career, what pearls of wisdom might you share with novice poets?

LT: I would share this: 1) Read, read, and never quit reading all of the good poetry, both past and present, you can get your hands on; 2) Study the craft of poetry as if you were a novice jeweler learning how to cut and polish a precious stone to perfection; 3) Dedicate as much time as absolutely possible to writing on a regular basis; and 4) Never, under any circumstances, stop believing in your poetry’s worth.

DPR: Who influences/inspires your approach to poetry writing? Do you often find yourself writing in the same voice or style?

LT: My influences are the great literary masters who have preceded me and a number of poets who are still working. I write in numerous voices and styles, determined entirely by what best serves the individual poem on which I am working.

Book Review by David Armand

In a Field of Cotton: Mississippi Delta Poems by Larry D. Thomas

Blue Horse Press, 2019  ISBN:978-0578466200

Cover art: Photograph by Jeffery C. Alfier