Quantcast

Interview with Arne Weingart

I reviewed Arne’s collection Levitation for Agnostics in February, and was really impressed by his poems. He agreed to take part in the National Poetry Month celebration with an interview. Please give him a warm welcome.

1. Faith is a big part of your poems. How has that faith informed the poems in the collection Levitation for Agnostics?

It was never my intention to use faith as an organizing principle for the collection. But if I look at the book as a whole, I can see how individual poems tend to circle around the question of what one can or should believe in. I accept the idea that the need for belief is biologically hard-wired into human nature, so for me, certain things follow. Firstly, that organized religion is useful but inadequate. Secondly, that poetry and art are useful (although ultimately also inadequate)in addressing our collective spiritual need. This particular point of view is a kind of background noise for every poem I try to write.

2. Faith and religion can be very serious aspects of people’s lives, how does the humor you infuse your poems with change that perspective?

The difference between our very real and persistent spiritual needs and our success in satisfying them is the perfect set-up for a joke. Many jokes. Take my faith tradition, please (drum roll, rim shot)! In Judaism’s classical orthodox flavor, there are said to be 613 commandments that govern human conduct. However noble in conception, this is an obvious recipe for failure. And while attempts at “reformation” are laudable and inevitable, the gap between spirit and material world remains. I suppose you could define grace as our ability to balance within that gap; and humor as our appropriate response when grace fails us.

3. Levitation for Agnostics looks to be a first collection for you? How else do you spend your creative hours? Is poetry your first passion?

Yes, this is my first collection. Although I work in a “creative” field — graphic design — poetry is the one thing I am most capable of doing that satisfies my creative impulse. As mentioned above, I believe that poetry (and all art) has spiritual underpinnings that make it indispensable, if often misunderstood.

4. What advice would you give to poets crafting their first collections?

Write without particular focus on shaping a collection. At some point, stop and see what you’ve got. This will require help from other readers (and perhaps writers). This is in direct contradiction to many thematically coherent collections that began and ended as “projects” and that seem to be “about” something that can be concisely and confidently stated. First collections, however, should probably address the concerns of crafting an identifiable poetic voice, the one indispensable qualification for a poet, going forward.

5. Who are your favorite poets?

In no particular order and on this particular day: W. H. Auden, Wislawa Szymborska, W. S. Merwin, Mark Strand, Elizabeth Bishop, Tony Hoagland

About the Poet:

Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, and educated at Dartmouth College and Columbia University, Arne Weingart lives in Chicago with his wife Karen, where he is the principal of a graphic design firm specializing in identity and wayfinding. Recent poems have been published in Arts & Letters, Beecher’s Magazine, Coal Hill Review, Enizagam, Nimrod, Oberon, Plume, RHINO, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Georgetown Review, The Massachusetts Review, and The Spoon River Poetry Review. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his book, “Levitation For Agnostics,” winner of the 2014 New American Press Poetry Prize, will be released in February, 2015.

NPMBlogTour2016

Levitation for Agnostics by Arne Weingart

Source: Book Savvy Public Relations
Paperback, 122 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Levitation for Agnostics by Arne Weingart, 2014 winner of the New American Poetry Prize, questions our faith, which oftentimes is passed down through families as a foregone conclusion.  In “Chopping Roots,” Weingart’s narrator is digging to move water away from the base of his home and protect the retaining wall from eventual decomposition through erosion.  If we have unmoor ourselves from the faith we’ve been brought up with, will be float without direction and is that such a terrible thing?  These are just a few questions asked in these poems.

“…you will simply give up and lean down
into the hillside tearing all your roots out of the ground with
a great explosive twanging leaving a huge and unaccountable
hole we must stare into while
we listen to the river.” (“Chopping Roots”, pg. 86)

In many of these poems the narrator is unmoored and drifting, and structures are erected only to be considered false supports. Weingart also transforms solid objects into theories and mutable things that can be perceived differently and claimed by many. There is a dissatisfaction with what has come before in terms of religious fervor and faith, but at the same time, the narrator is in awe of these beliefs and long-standing institutions. In many ways, the narrator is seeking to become more, to be the creator of “big ideas” rather than just a believer of them.

“Every scaffold is highly
instrumental but exterior to
some central purpose some
permanent intention meant to
resist time and desire and the
inevitable slide of tectonic
earth. To live in scaffolding
is not to be free exactly but” (“A Theory of Scaffolds”, pg. 27-8)

From the sacrifices of ancient people in Machu Picchu to the Jewish religion, the narrator seeks to hold up the faith of these people to scrutiny, while at the same time being respectful. Exploring how religion and faith can bring people together, the narrator also examines how it drive wedges between neighbors and even family. In “Hebrew School,” kids are taught a language that is understood by few, in the way that children do not understand how they could be the chosen people. Despite the disenchantment with religion and faith, Weingart displays a sense of humor about ancestors and their quirks and about overcoming things that can make us different, like stuttering, only to want to be different again and take steps to recapture those differences.

Levitation for Agnostics by Arne Weingart, 2014 winner of the New American Poetry Prize, is a straightforward look at faith and ancestry, the ideas and mores that bind families, and the questions that should be asked about their tangibility and their applicability to our own lives, as we live them. Like in “Recursion,” as the rocks are skipped across the lake no matter how many times they reach the shore, the poet needs to question and continue to question because there is much more to learn and be taught.

Rating: Quatrain

About the Poet:

Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, and educated at Dartmouth College and Columbia University, Arne Weingart lives in Chicago with his wife Karen, where he is the principal of a graphic design firm specializing in identity and wayfinding. Recent poems have been published in Arts & Letters, Beecher’s Magazine, Coal Hill Review, Enizagam, Nimrod, Oberon, Plume, RHINO, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Georgetown Review, The Massachusetts Review, and The Spoon River Poetry Review. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his book, “Levitation For Agnostics,” winner of the 2014 New American Press Poetry Prize, will be released in February, 2015.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mailbox Monday #353

Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia at To Be Continued, formerly The Printed Page, has a permanent home at its own blog.

To check out what everyone has received over the last week, visit the blog and check out the links.  Leave yours too.

Also, each week, Leslie, Vicki, and I will share the Books that Caught Our Eye from everyone’s weekly links.

Here’s what I received:

Jane Austen Lives Again by Jane Odiwe from the author for review.

When Jane Austen’s doctor discovers the secret to immortal life in 1817, she thinks her wishes have come true. But when she wakes up from the dead, a penniless Miss Austen finds herself in 1925, having to become a governess to five girls of an eccentric and bohemian family at the crumbling Manberley Castle by the sea. Jane soon finds she’s caught up in the dramas of every family member, but she loves nothing more than a challenge, and resolves on putting them in order. If only she can stop herself from falling in love, she can change the lives of them all!  Inspired by Jane Austen’s wonderful novels and written in the tradition of classic books like Cold Comfort Farm, I Capture the Castle, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Jane Austen Lives Again is an amusing fairy story for grown-ups.

Fudge Brownies & Murder by Janel Gradowski from the author for review.

Culinary whiz and reluctant amateur sleuth, Amy Ridley, has a lot on her plate. Her very pregnant best friend, Carla, can barely move from her couch per doctor’s orders. So Amy is tasked with preparing meals for the expanding family along with baking endless pans of brownies to quench Carla’s pregnancy cravings. Not only is she playing chef, but she’s also trying to convince the mommy-to-be that she needs to have a baby shower. But when a restaurant owner is murdered at a blogging conference, Amy finds herself in a race to catch the killer before the baby is born.

As Carla’s baby bump gets bigger, so does the list of suspects. While Amy pares down the potential murderers and staves off disgruntled cooking competition rivals, the clock ticks down, the baby’s arrival draws closer, and the danger grows stronger! If Amy doesn’t watch her back, she may be the next member of the competition going down.

The Diary of Emily Dickinson by Jamie Fuller, illustrated by Marlene McLoughlin, which I picked up at the library sale shelf for 50 cents.

The discovery of Emily Dickinson’s poetry after her death unleashed a series of mysteries and revelations that astonished those who knew her and continue to intrigue readers today. Who was the reclusive woman who wrote these wise and beautiful verses? Slowly answers came and, with them, more questions. Why did Emily continue to seek the advice of Thomas Wentworth Higginson when he never recognized her genius? To whom were the mysterious “master” letters, written at the height of her poetic creativity, addressed? Why did she keep most of her writing secret from her family? Did she hope for eventual fame? Answers to such questions could have been suggested in 1916, when, during reconstruction of the Dickinson house in Amherst, Massachusetts, a worker discovered Emily’s secret diary hidden in a crevice of the wall of the conservatory. Unfortunately, he kept the discovery to himself for many years. Only now has this remarkable document, edited and annotated by Jamie Fuller, become available to Dickinson admirers. Such is the premise of this unique fictional work. The diary begins in March 1867 and ends in April 1868. During this span Dickinson recounts the revelations and trials of her day-to-day life, from burnt puddings to professions of undying love.

With discriminating insight, Fuller helps extract from Dickinson’s cryptic style her views on God, family, nature, death, love, poetry, fame, and her role as a woman in a patriarchal society. Most of all, The Diary of Emily Dickinson is an exquisite account of what it means to live the writing life, to live for poetry. Author Jamie Fuller has given us a fictional diary based on close readings of Dickinson’s writings and contemporaneousmaterials, that is so sensitive and sympathetic, so delicately and smoothly written, in a style so closely resembling Emily’s own, that one could well believe it contains the private musings of the enigmatic poet. In it, Emily Dickinson comes alive.

Levitation for Agnostics by Arne Weingart for review from Book Savvy Public Relations.

Arne Weingart’s debut poetry collection. Winner of the 2014 New American Poetry prize.

Arne Weingart is the 2015 laureate of the New American Press Poetry Prize, awarded for his debut poetry collection, Levitation for Agnostics (New American Press, January 2016). A Pushcart Prize nominee, Arne also won the 2013 Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Poetry Contest and has had poems featured by such esteemed publications as RHINO, The Georgetown Review, Oberon, Arts & Letters and The Spoon River Poetry Review.  He has been granted a writing residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and is alumnus of Columbia University’s MFA program in writing. Arne and his family live in Chicago, where he is the principal of a graphic design firm specializing in identity and wayfinding.

Fall of Poppies by Heather Webb, Hazel Gaynor, Beatriz Williams, Jennifer Robson, Jessica Brockmole, Kate Kerrigan, Evangeline Holland, Lauren Willig, and Marci Jefferson for review from Harper Collins and TLC Book Tours.

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month…

November 11, 1918. After four long, dark years of fighting, the Great War ends at last, and the world is forever changed. For soldiers, loved ones, and survivors the years ahead stretch with new promise, even as their hearts are marked by all those who have been lost.

As families come back together, lovers reunite, and strangers take solace in each other, everyone has a story to tell.

In this moving anthology, nine authors share stories of love, strength, and renewal as hope takes root in a fall of poppies.

What did you receive?