A chat with Jane Hilberry

As part of the visiting writer’s series, CC’s own Jane Hilberry will be performing a joint reading with her dad, fellow poet Conrad Hilberry this Thursday, December 10th. They will be reading from a book of poems that they compiled together called, “This Awkward Art.”

I met up with Jane for an interview earlier this week to discuss her book and the process of its making.

MS
How do you come up with the title for “This Awkward Art”? Who thought of it and why is it applicable to the book? I noticed you used the word “awkward” in one of your poems. Does it come from that?

Jane
We went through lists of phrases from the poems we included in the book- but nothing worked exactly. Anyway, I was reading my dad’s book called “After Music,” a book he dedicated to me, and I noticed that in the dedicate that he described our mutual love for making poetry as a love for “this awkward act.” But I also think that the parent child relationship is kind of an awkward act. Thus, the title, “This Awkward Art.” It stuck.

MS
How did you come up with the idea for this project, how long have you been working on it and how did you go about working with your dad? Did you write the poems together?

Jane
The idea for the project has been percolating for a long time. We actually had a draft of the book about 5 years ago. We actually didn’t work on the poems together or even write them all in the same time period. My dad came down here (to Colorado Springs) to put them together with me. We each just had a pile of poems (some already published?) that we pulled out and tried to organize in a way that clearly related them in an almost conversational way. Obviously some of it was pretty natural and easy to do because we share history as father and daughter- and much of our poetry talks about my sister, Katherine, who died at age 9. We just chose poems that seemed to speak to each other. However, some of the more miscellaneous poems surprised us with their common subject matter. These groupings happened naturally. For instance, the respective sections about crickets, Vermeer and hearts.

MS
How did you both end up writing poems about the same Vermeer painting and Vermeer in general? Was that purely coincidental or did Vermeer have a strong presence in your child hood home? You do mention that your sister had a poster of Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Jane

Pure coincidence. We never even talked about Vermeer that I can recall. But my sister did have the poster. So maybe Vermeer did have a presence in our family culture. It’s worth thinking about.
MS
Would you say your father had or has an influence on your writing style? Did he help you get into writing to begin with?

Jane
Yeah of course he did. I started writing poetry at about 15, and before then, my dad knew that I was into it- so he would ask what I thought of his poems as he wrote them. He also had a constant parade of poet friends who would come over and talk about craft. These conversations influenced me. I also sort of grew up within his style- A style I would characterize as elegant, strong and graceful. I hope that I emulate that. The challenge to be as good as he is has inspired me. as well. As far as the similarities and differences in our style, we both use plain accessible language, we are both image based poets and we both like to play with metaphor. However, we differ in that my dad tends to be very oblique when dealing with emotion or emotional subject matter. I went the opposite direction- most likely to establish my own ground or perhaps as a reaction to his style.

MS
I noticed that your writing voice “Crazy Jane” didn’t seem to be present in this book. Is she in there at all? Did you leave her out on purpose?

Jane
You’re right. Crazy Jane isn’t present in this book of poetry. That wasn’t on purpose, but it makes sense that she isn’t in this book because I think the Crazy Jane voice is my way of escaping from or differentiating myself from whatever emotional baggage I might have. I think crazy Jane is a voice that represents the wilder part of my psyche.

MS
I noticed that the image of the train is recurrent in your poetry in this book. What does the train mean to you as a symbol? Not only did the train occur in your poems about your sister- but it also occurred in the poem (….) as an emotive device to describe a vibrating, energetic sensation.

Jane
As a symbol the train has a big place in my psyche. In reading the book, you might ascertain that my sister literally died by falling between two cars of a train. But you’re right, the train does appear in other poems without the “freight” that it carries in my poems about my sister. A poem I have in mind is from my book Body Painting that utilizes the image of the train as a metaphor for love. It is a love poem. I guess trains represent forward motion to me- a sort of traveling through life’s stages. Also, when I was a kid, my family would take a lot of train rides and our neighborhood was sort of arranged by train tracks if that makes sense. We would play on the tracks a lot. So the recurring train imagery probably has to do with that as well.

MS
The poem of yours that we’re posting on the Leviathan blog is called “Epithalamion.” Epithalamion is a character of Greek myth, and the title of a poem by sixteenth century writer, Edmund Spenser. Was your poem influenced by Spenser’s poem at all? I noticed that his poem mentions two sisters right at the very beginning.

Jane
Actually, I wrote my poem without ever having read Spenser’s poem, though I’ve read it since. The name Epithalamion can be derived originally from the Greek myth, but more specifically relates to my poem in that the Epithalamion is a Latin wedding song- and my poem is about My sister’s youthful expectation that getting married is an easy thing. a given thing- while the speaker conceives of marriage as something that is anything but simple.

Epithalamion

for my sister Kathy, 1952-1961

Lying on your cots in the train compartment you shared,
you and Marilyn talked before bed, while I slept, a baby.
She asked you if you were ever going to get married.
“Of course,” you said, your life at nine still perfect

and marriage another snapshot to be taken of you
with your dazzling smile. But Marilyn has children now
older than you were when you stepped off the train
in the dark by accident, and I, an adult,

find nothing in marriage uncomplicated, nothing pure.
We have imagined you living on, through the years,
the trajectory of your life following its true course
in the realm of absence, without friction or gravity,

while our lives grow sad, with the routine sadness
that tarnishes the lives we pictured as children.
All you can say is “Of course,”
as if all questions were direct, all answers simple.

Your face in the snapshots never changes,
your smile never diluted by doubt. You will never know
the fear of death that makes me turn to my lover in bed
and hold the astonishing warmth of his body beside me.

—-

Jane is (one of) my advisers and a beloved professor of Colorado College since 1988. Please go see her read with her father, Conrad Hilberry, at Gates Common room (in Palmer) at 7pm tomorrow(Dec. 10.) This Awkward Art is truly a beautifully put together work of art and I promise that you will enjoy the reading. If not for the sake of hearing poetry, go to support lovely Jane Hilberry. She is an inspirational woman who gives her support freely.

Look forward to more interviews with The Visiting Writers Series, a monthly CC poet feature and posts of interviews with random pre-mortem modern poets as well (all coming to you from your editors.) We’re establishing this blog from a poetry community angle as thats what we’re most familiar with, but we hope to incorporate posts featuring all mediums soon. As in now! We can do the research for this, but we’d like your help!

Remember, feel free to post your own work. your own ideas. rants. interests. anger…etc.