Poetry as “Equipment for Living”: an Interview with Alan Shapiro

By English major Kate Stringer 

Alan Shapiro larger image

The English Department will host poet and memoirist Alan Shapiro Tuesday, November 12, at 7:30 in BC 163. An English professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Shapiro has authored eleven books of poetry and two memoirs. His work dwells on themes of loss, family, and domesticity. He has been the recipient of a plethora of awards, including the Kingsley-Tufts Award, the Los Angeles Book Prize, and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award. In an email interview, Shapiro discussed his introduction to poetry, insight on the writing process, and hope for students studying the humanities.

When did you realize that writing was something you wanted to make a central part of your life?

I grew up in an apartment that had more T.V.’s than books. I’m the second person in my family to have gone to college. I spent most of my childhood and early adolescence playing basketball. My ambition was to play in the NBA but alas I grew only tall enough to pursue an MBA. Not the NBA. At end of my sophomore year in high school I went to the Spring dance and got into a fight and had my nose so badly broken that I couldn’t play basketball for several months. So to stay in shape for the next year’s season I started running. Five miles a day every day after work. When the school year came around I ran cross country. When the basketball season started, I was in great shape. I started as point guard on the varsity team. First day of practice, though, I dove for a loose ball and broke my wrist and was out for the season. I got so depressed I began to write poetry. The poetry I loved at the time were lyrics to rock and folk music and through my love of, say, Bob Dylan I became interested in the Beat poets and through the Beats became interested in Walt Whitman, and so on. The more poetry I wrote, the more passionate I became about it. I learned to write the way I learned to play basketball, by watching, studying and imitating the people who did it very well.

You’ve authored eleven books of poetry and two memoirs. What book or poem are you most proud of and why?

I’m most proud of the poem or book I haven’t written yet. Once I finish writing something, I’m done with it, and am concerned, if not obsessed, with the next thing. I think only about the next thing, not the last thing, the one that holds out the promise of finally getting it right. One of the more curious and maddening things about being a writer is that you get better at writing the more you write. But the better you get, the better you get at imagining getting even better, so the discrepancy only widens between the writer you are and the writer you want to become. To be successful over the long haul you have to cultivate a tolerance for inadequacy and failure.

You’re the recipient of many awards, including the Kingsley-Tufts Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. What award holds the most meaning for you and why?

Awards don’t mean anything, except to everybody. They’re like cotton candy: they look ample and nourishing but they evaporate when you put them in your mouth. The only nourishment is the writing itself, what Elizabeth Bishop calls a self-forgetful perfectly useless concentration.

imgres

If you could have dinner with any author, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

The sixteenth century English poet, Ben Johnson. Why? Read his poem, “Inviting a Friend to Supper”, and you’ll know why.

Recently, universities have been in the news because their humanities departments are struggling to retain students in an environment where greater value is being placed on STEM courses. A common worry among English majors is that their major is useless in the job market. As an English professor and an author, why are the studies of humanities important?

Because the humanities educate the whole soul, not just a narrow hyper-specialized set of neurons. We educate right brain and left brain; we study poems and stories because they provide you with equipment for living, not just for making money.