An interview with Monica Youn

An interview with faculty member Monica Youn appears at Prairie Schooner:

1. More than a lot of poets, the form of the poem seems to matter as much of the line itself in your work. I was curious if you feel that about your work, and whether or not that’s a function borne from your prior life as a lawyer?

I think I am, on some level, trying to move from writing poems consisting of exquisite moments stitched together to writing poems with more cumulative and structural force. I’ve been teaching Yeats, and thinking about his movement from a symbolist poetics of sustained intensity to a more drama-inflected poetics of peaks and valleys. This doesn’t mean that each line isn’t important, but just that each line needn’t necessarily call attention to its own importance – a quiet rhythm is still rhythm.

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