Q&A with Jeff Fearnside

  

 

 

Jeff Fearnside is the author of the new poetry collection Lake: Love Poems. His other books include A Husband and Wife Are One Satan. Also an educator, he lives in Oregon. 

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the poems in your new collection?

 

A: This has been one of the longest writing projects of my career so far. The oldest poems in the collection were written while I was still living in Kazakhstan, which was more than 20 years ago.

 

One reason for this is that the collection has grown and my concept of it has changed over time. I originally envisioned a collection of poems focused solely on Central Asia, and in fact, I did end up with enough for such, for Lake is actually two books in one: each of its two main parts, one titled “Central Asia,” the other titled “Oregon,” is the length of a regular full-length collection.

 

When I realized that the main theme of each part was related to love—both love of my life partner Valentina and love of place—it only made sense for me to pair them together.

 

I wanted that long-term arc, to have the juxtaposition of our initial romance with our later married life, which mirrors the juxtaposition of Central Asia to Oregon. I think of it as being a memoir-in-poems, as well as a poetry travelogue in how it moves through the places in our lives.

 

The other reason is that sometimes certain ideas simply take a long time to ferment. For example, the central poem in the Central Asia section—and in the entire book—is the nine-part, 17-page poem “The Love Song of Central Asia.” I had the original idea for it back in 2003. Like the collection as a whole, the concept grew and changed over time.

 

I wrote bits and pieces of it here and there, but it really only became clear to me relatively recently in putting together the book. I needed all that time to process my experiences and what they meant to me and figure out how to articulate that.

 

Q: The poet Allan Peterson said of the book, “The scope is large, and Jeff’s lines sing with passion and authenticity.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I like it! Allan is a poet I respect a lot. I was thrilled he agreed to read my collection beforehand and offer some words on it.

 

The scope of this book is large, and that’s something I intended, as I just suggested. As to authenticity, there’s authenticity of feeling and authenticity of fact. I aimed to nail both in this book. I feel I did.

 

I was honest, even about things that were hard, and though the book is based on my own experience, I was careful in making sure to double-check the facts with research. My wife also acted as a cultural sensitivity reader, and she helped me make sure my depictions of Central Asia were accurate and fair.

 

Ultimately, of course, the final product is fully my responsibility. But yes, I hope what Allan said all comes through to readers: the large scope, the passion, and the authenticity.

 

Q: What do you think the collection says about love?

 

A: Primarily, I hope it shows love from many angles beyond the standard greeting-card variety.

 

I wanted to show some of the heat of initial romantic attraction, and I also didn’t want to shy away from the realities of making a relationship work over a long period of time. That’s romantic love, love of another human, a life partner, with all its joys and challenges.

 

I also wanted to show how important love of place and love of nature is in our lives. All of these are connected. We love people not in vacuums but in particular times and places, and all of it shapes who we are. Nature, of course, is what we come from. We must love that if we are to love ourselves.

 

Q: How did you decide on the order in which the poems would appear in the book?

 

A: A general, though not strict, chronological order seemed to make the most sense because I wanted to track my relationship with my wife over time, which also tracks my relationship to place, since we’ve lived together in the same places.

 

Once I came to that conclusion, the rest was relatively easy to sort out. “The Love Song of Central Asia” was always going to be its own section, and the somonka were always going to form their own section as well.

 

So the order at that point really came down to the order of the sections. I wanted to introduce Central Asia before introducing my romantic love, and I knew “Love Song” was meant to act as the hinge of the entire book, its center of gravity, so that set those sections in Part One.

 

Similarly, in Part Two, I wanted to introduce Oregon first through the somonka before moving on to the sections of married life in the Pacific Northwest.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: It’s hard to say definitely because I don’t tend to work on one project a time before moving on—I prefer to have several projects in various stages of progress. And obviously, I’m drawn to writing in multiple genres. I can’t seem to help it; it’s part of who I am.

 

My chapbook A Husband and Wife Are One Satan, which was published by Orison Books as winner of the Orison Chapbook Prize in 2021, was always meant to be the beginning of a full-length collection of stories set in Kazakhstan.

 

I’ve had an outline to that collection, notes to all the stories, and various stages of drafts in my hands this whole time; it’s just a matter of finishing them.

 

But I’m actually much closer to finishing a different short-story collection. One can never know these things exactly ahead of time, but based on what I’ve completed so far and how the book seems to be shaping up, I believe I need to finish only three more stories to complete that collection. I already know what they are. Given how close I am on that, that’s probably my highest priority.

 

I’m also always writing new poems.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Lake is the first of what I think of as a kind of triptych of poetry books. I wrote them concurrently over roughly the same period of time, and over the years I saw three distinct themes emerge as well as styles, which is how I ended up sorting them out.

 

The first was the theme of love in the poems that came together as Lake. The poems in this group are the most direct and confessional; as I mentioned earlier, they essentially form a kind of memoir-in-poems. There are no personas in these; the speaker is me.

 

The second theme centered around observations of contemporary life by the poems’ various speakers, often through a sociohistorical lens. The feeling of these poems is a little edgier, and while I’m not an experimental poet, there’s probably a little more exploration of form in these. As a teaser, I have some news about this manuscript that I’m not ready to reveal just yet!

 

The third theme was strongly ecopoetic, and these poems are all set in the Pacific Northwest, which further bound them together. This manuscript has gotten some encouraging attention so far—making the final judging round at a very good press, and being named a semifinalist and honorable mention in two other national contests—and so I have high hopes for it.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Jeff Fearnside.