{"id":5034,"date":"2012-01-25T08:00:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=5034"},"modified":"2012-01-23T19:16:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T00:16:55","slug":"a-conversation-with-janine-oshiro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/a-conversation-with-janine-oshiro\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with Janine Oshiro"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Janine Oshiro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Janine Oshiro<\/strong> holds degrees from Whitworth College (now Whitworth University<\/a>), Portland State University<\/a>, and the University of Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop<\/a>. She is a Kundiman fellow and the recipient of a poetry fellowship from Oregon\u2019s Literary Arts<\/a>. Her first book Pier<\/em><\/a> was the winner of the 2010 Kundiman Poetry Prize<\/a> and was recently published by Alice James Books<\/a>. She lives in Hawaii and teaches at Windward Community College<\/a>.<\/p>\n

LR:<\/strong> In Pier<\/em>, which is so richly evocative of the complex emotions surrounding the illness and loss of a loved one, you strike a fine balance between confession and creative license, authentic experience and fantasy. How did you find this balance? And how did you avoid sentimentality?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
PIER<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

JO:<\/strong> I\u2019ll first respond to the \u201cS-word.\u201d I didn\u2019t think consciously about avoiding sentimentality; while I don\u2019t want to be sentimental, I do think that sometimes the fear of sentimentality can inhibit the exploration of emotions. Sometimes the truth of a person\u2019s experience can come off as sentimental in a poem. There is no way around that. I would much rather read a poem that strikes me as authentic and a little sentimental than a poem that is just hip and ironic or detached and intellectual. I think about a poet like James Galvin<\/a>, who in his latest book has a poem called \u201cTwo Angels,\u201d featuring a boy with a mental disability and a dog. It walks the fine line. I truly admire that he doesn\u2019t shy away from what might be construed as sentimental. In a way I think the fearlessness to even approach the sentimental is what makes some of his poems so powerful for me. I know that I have written some sentimental poems and poems I would never want anyone to read, and those poems have been important in my development as a writer and as a person.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really know that I can answer the question about balance. Did I have a strategy for finding a balance? No. I had all these questions about losing my mom, seeing my dad\u2019s health decline, experiencing invisible presences, having a distinctly marked body, and feeling an \u201cother\u201d to myself. Writing the poems was my way of trying to answer these questions\u2014even though I wasn\u2019t really aware of that as my \u201cproject\u201d at the beginning. Of course, I could have chosen to answer these questions through journaling and therapy, which I did to a certain extent. But then there is this\u2014making a word-object with sound constellations, reimagining experience, creating a new and authentic experience in the word-world. What really happened? I didn\u2019t really see a school of spoons swimming in the ocean though I write about it in the poem \u201cSetting,\u201d but I really did experience something crawling out of a zippered compartment in the wall and running down my body as I describe in \u201cNext, Dust.\u201d In the world of the poem what really happened doesn\u2019t matter. It is all really happening in the world of the poem.<\/p>\n

LR:<\/strong> How did you discover the language of this book, which, as in poems like “Three Capes”, “Eleven Dancers”, and “Next, Dust”, makes ready use of off-rhyme, sentence fragments, interjections, disruptions, and onomatopoeia?<\/p>\n

JO:<\/strong> I love fooling around with words. I love just writing words on the page and giving those words sound siblings to see what happens. I love found language and jotting down words and phrases that are striking. I remember reading something once in a National Geographic<\/a> about bodies oxidizing, and that ended up as \u201cour bodies rust\u201d in the poem \u201cRelic.\u201d I have found language from medical texts, of course, and books about grammar, book arts, gardening, critical theory, psychology, etc. I even find the explanatory language of the dictionary compelling. It is often the case for me that found language triggers an idea or emotion that starts a poem. Sometimes the found language finds its way out of the poem at the end, and sometimes it stays.<\/p>\n

LR:<\/strong> Your voice is restrained, ethereal, sometimes clinical, and other times, it captures the whimsy of childhood. Did you have particular strategies of craft in mind while you were shaping this voice?<\/p>\n

JO:<\/strong> The word \u201cstrategy\u201d has been tainted for me by my college\u2019s accreditation activities, which results in so much chatter about \u201cstrategic plans\u201d and \u201cstrategic outcomes,\u201d so I\u2019m having a bit of trouble connecting strategy with poetry. Right now I want them as far away from each other as possible. I guess I think there is a danger in too closely identifying a strategy. Okay, so something happened, and I like it, but it isn\u2019t the case that I necessarily want the same thing to happen again. I don\u2019t want an \u201cexportable strategy\u201d in poetry. In the writing process I stumble upon a voice, and I want to see how far that voice will go. Maybe it keeps going, or maybe it dissolves. Maybe I stumble upon another voice, and I want to see how the two voices will work together. The poet Mary Szybist<\/a> visited a class I took at Portland State University, and I\u2019ll paraphrase here something she said: I\u2019m not interested in finding my voice, but in making many voices. This was liberating for me to hear at the time, and I still think about it today. How many voices can I make?<\/p>\n

LR:<\/strong> How did you come upon the tripartite structure of the book?<\/p>\n

JO:<\/strong> Going from a manuscript to the published book was a fascinating experience. Sarah Gambito<\/a> actually helped me to find the structure. It was originally just ordered without sections, and then I put it into five sections. I remember she asked, \u201cWhy five sections?\u201d I really had no answer. I started thinking more about what I wanted the reader to experience as a whole. It took time for me to be able to see the poems without attachment to the order in which I wrote them and surface content, but eventually I eliminated some poems and came to this sequence. The simplest way for me to explain it is that in section one, there is a problem. In section two, I\u2019m trying to act out various solutions to the problem. Section three attempts to resolve the problem. It creates an arc, though hardly original, that makes sense for the individual poems. It seems simplistic as I\u2019ve explained it, but it took quite a process to figure it out.<\/p>\n

LR:<\/strong> Can you describe the journey that this book took in its writing and path to publication?<\/p>\n

JO:<\/strong> I certainly couldn\u2019t conceive of a book when I first started writing poems. These poems were written and revised during my three years in graduate school at Portland State University and my two years at the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop. I am so grateful for the poets I worked with in Portland and Iowa, both fellow workshoppers and teachers. Many of these poems are in conversation with poems I read in my workshops. I continued to make minor revisions for a couple of years after graduate school, but the poems were mainly formed during those five years. After I won the Kundiman Prize, I did more revising and the final shaping of the manuscript. Sarah Gambito was my \u201cediting buddy\u201d during that time, and it was such a pleasure to work with her. Everyone from Alice James Books was incredible; I couldn\u2019t have asked for anything more.<\/p>\n

Of course the manuscript was rejected countless times before this. When Sarah Gambito called to tell me, I cried. It was happiness, but something else, too. It was maybe fear, maybe a sense of emptiness. This one thing that I wanted more than anything had happened. Now what?<\/p>\n

LR:<\/strong> Do you have any advice for poets who are putting together their first books now?<\/p>\n

JO:<\/strong> I loved my time in workshop, but I think the time when I most needed feedback was when I was looking at the manuscript as a whole. Getting feedback on the whole manuscript or even a small collection seems more useful to me now than feedback on individual poems. Mark Levine<\/a> was my thesis advisor at Iowa, and he suggested an ordering for the manuscript that was radical for me because I was attached to the order in which I wrote the poems; he suggested ending the manuscript with the poem \u201cFebruary,\u201d which I never would have considered on my own. The idea of ending the manuscript with the line \u201cIt was not spring\u201d was so devastating to me that it actually made me write the poem \u201cChorus,\u201d which now ends the book. I didn\u2019t know that thinking about the poems as one manuscript could generate new poems.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s important for poets to feel good about their own process\u2014no matter what anyone else is doing. When I was in graduate school, I was shocked by how prolific some poets were\u2014and they were writing amazing poems, so it wasn\u2019t just quantity! I work slowly, and now that I teach, it\u2019s going even more slowly. It used to make me a little anxious, but now it\u2019s okay. I\u2019m writing my poems in my own way and in my own time.<\/p>\n

LR:<\/strong> What is your writing process like? What do you draw on for inspiration? Do you have favorite exercises or rituals that you like to use? If so, can you share a few of them?<\/p>\n

JO:<\/strong> I accumulate notes and journal entries and scraps of language, and then I play around with them to make something meaningful for myself. I think play\u2014exploring and enjoying language\u2014 is essential, no matter what the content. I like to write, go for a walk, and then write a little more. I usually have some formal concern that I am also working through\u2014maybe couplets, or the relationship of prose chunks to lines, or iambic pentameter, or just writing a nine-line poem. What can happen in nine lines?<\/p>\n

LR:<\/strong> How do you keep yourself accountable? Do you have writing partners, people to whom you send your work, or a writing group to which you belong?<\/p>\n

JO:<\/strong> Sometimes writing is a priority. Sometimes teaching is a priority. Waking up and meditating is always a priority. Moving toward spiritual growth is always a priority, and writing is definitely part of that growth. I haven\u2019t been writing very much lately, and that is fine. I\u2019m not a fanatic about writing every day. I don\u2019t have a writing group right now, and I\u2019m much more interested in starting a reading group at the moment.<\/p>\n

LR:<\/strong> Pier<\/em> won the first Kundiman Book Prize. How has your involvement with Kundiman influenced you as a writer?<\/p>\n

JO:<\/strong> Because I grew up in Hawaii, I really didn\u2019t identify with the term Asian American. It wasn\u2019t until I moved to the mainland that it even made sense to me. I really didn\u2019t know that I was missing anything until I went to the Kundiman Retreat in 2006. I had been in many amazing and supportive workshops prior to that, but there was something present at the retreat that I had not ever experienced. I was so much more conscious of belonging and being an integral part of a group. With that sense of belonging came a different kind of confidence in myself. It was a confidence that was also a call to action because I learned that belonging was not automatic; it required that leap to be part of and to embrace community. I\u2019ve had a few experiences that have given me more confidence in myself as a writer\u2014and being part of Kundiman is one of them.<\/p>\n

LR: Aside from Kundiman, what other resources would you recommend to emerging Asian American poets who might be either outside of, or freshly graduated from, the M.F.A.?<\/p>\n

JO:<\/strong> Definitely look to Kundiman, but I would also say that everyone is a potential resource and friend, and don\u2019t underestimate your own ability to create community wherever you are and with whoever happens to be around you.<\/p>\n

LR:<\/strong> Do you have any new projects in the pipeline? If so, can you talk a little about them?<\/p>\n

JO:<\/strong> I\u2019m working on individual poems that aren\u2019t intentionally part of a project. I remember a friend once telling me that my poems were noticeably absent of people. These newer poems have more people, more men in particular. I don\u2019t quite know what to make of them yet, but I\u2019ll find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janine Oshiro holds degrees from Whitworth College (now Whitworth University), Portland State University, and the University of Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop. She is a Kundiman fellow and the recipient of a poetry fellowship from Oregon\u2019s Literary Arts. Her first book Pier was the winner of the 2010 Kundiman Poetry Prize and was recently published by Alice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[161,792,794,793,698],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5034"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5051,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5034\/revisions\/5051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}