A Creative Writing Commentary

Author: ABIGAIL MITCHELL

Some of you might know Gary Margolis as the director of counseling over in Centeno House. Others of you might know Margolis as the part-time Associate Professor of English. Still others of you might know him as the published poet. A jack of many trades, Gary Margolis simultaneously plays the role of counselor, professor and professional poet.

Impressed with what I heard at his poetry reading a few weeks ago, I decided to interview Margolis about his experience writing poetry. Just to give you a background, he has published three collections of poetry to date: Fire in the Orchard, Falling Awake and The Day We Still Stand Here. He has been a Robert Frost Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and a recipient of a Vermont Council on the Arts Award.

Margolis first tackled creative writing back in high school with a one-act play about a man on death row. His interest in writing was further fostered by a relationship he formed with a professor as an undergraduate here at Middlebury. Serving as a mentor-figure, this professor taught Margolis about issues of poetic craft, specifically, the ability of an author to inhabit different voices and simultaneous realities.

I asked Margolis what elements of craft he takes into consideration when writing a poem. First off, he told me, it is important to establish a voice. Margolis mostly uses the first person "I," but the narrator is not always himself. Sometimes he inhabits an imagined "other" voice that can take either human or inhuman form. The second issue to consider is the continuity of images and word choice. Once a poem presents an initial image, it is important that the image be sustained and built upon. Additional elements that Margolis considers are line breaks, line length, rhythm and "sense of sound".

One important concept which underlies Margolis' poetry is "simultaneity." He explained this concept as the coexistence of disparate elements that don't necessarily relate on a rational level. In his own words, "Simultaneous realities that cross time and place but somehow reverberate with each other." Furthermore, Margolis explained, "A good poem does not have to resolve anything. It can take you to the edge, open up questions, curiosities and feelings." While this view runs contrary to the literary criticism we are taught in school-that poems should open questions and resolve them-I happen to agree with Margolis. Prescribing resolution for poetry sets limitations on what it can do. Furthermore, it is just as worthwhile, and much more true to real life, to pose and examine questions without offering an answer. Most of the time, there can never be a definitive answer to the (mostly existential) questions poetry posits.