An Interview with Jennifer Sperry Steinorth (Poetry ’15)

2015 poetry graduate Jennifer Sperry Steinorth was recently interviewed for the Massachusetts Review. Read an excerpt below:

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Hmmm. One piece, back in undergrad, I remember clearly. I was studying with Diane Wakoski; her workshop method was unusual. Each week we passed around copies of our new poems and read them aloud without comment, while she took notes. After, we watched as she arranged the poems from “best” to “worst”; then we workshopped in that order—“best” to “worst”. You never knew who was next, and if your poem was towards the bottom, you didn’t get workshopped. As a teacher, it is not a practice I would deploy, but as a student, I learned a lot!—though it was weeks before a poem of mine was workshopped— perhaps because of it.

So, this particular poem I submitted in my second semester studying with Diane. It was fall, our first assignment, and I’d written the poem over the summer. I fell in love that summer and wrote a heap. And so many drafts of this one poem! There was false translation—bits in French—an attempt to get at the madness of losing and finding oneself in another. I brought the poem in—nervy, but you know, trying to be detached— and lo! After the reading and the shuffling, mine was the first poem. And Diane said—I’ll never forget—“This is a perfect poem.” I was floored. In hind sight, I’m not sure exactly what she meant by “perfect poem”; I think she meant—it was a poem.

I’d like to say I learned what it took to write something worthwhile—the slow work of revision, the discomfort of revealing something terribly at stake—but really, it was just the first time I learned a lesson I keep needing to learn.

You can read the interview in its entirety here: https://massreview.org/node/9183?fbclid=IwAR2rMyxxkJDARaCy6VviI11rbGku2dKA_JxVJ-tYl17L2DCY0lGLxt-h2IM