Sarah Rose Nordgren’s poems “Blue Whale” and “Temporary River” appear in the July issue of The Collagist. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Quarterly West, Hayden’s Ferry, Cincinnati Review, American Literary Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. She was a 2008-2009 Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She currently lives and writes in Chapel Hill, NC.

1. Can you talk about the inspirations for “Blue Whale” and “Temporary River”? What was on your mind while you were writing these poems?

I wrote “Temporary River” as a sort of reformulated memory from my childhood when my family would take regular trips to my mother’s hometown of Beaumont, Texas. Southeast Texas calls up very strong sense memories—the damp heat, the flat land that stretches on for miles with bobbing oil drills and refineries that light up at night like tiny cities. One summer the streets completely flooded. It was scary to wade through the water because of the bits of debris, and the fact that the water was so warm, which was unsettling. I remember wading through where I knew my grandmother’s garden was below the water, but I couldn’t see it.

“Blue Whale” is a more recent poem, and I wrote it when I was at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass, last year. I fell in love with whales while I was on the Cape, and learned a lot more about the history of whaling than I had ever known. Going out on a whale watching boat and seeing those massive animals up close was probably one of the top five experiences I’ve had in my life. The single, separated lines in this poem are a result of my awe. You have to slow down a bit and breathe between each one.

2. Each line in “Blue Whale” takes the reader deeper into the weight of the poem, from classical references to the image of the man with rocks in his pockets to metaphors about the body. How did the shift at  ”Our crime toward you was jealousy/O to be a mansion steering itself” seem like the right place to stop, to turn away from these and conclude the poem?

In this poem I was trying, in my way, to show not only the inconceivable physical enormity of this animal, but a spiritual enormity as well. The whale is a house that things enter and exit of their own accord. The whale does have agency and a survival instinct, but it is of a piece with its world. I wanted to address the blue whale as if in a prayer—what would I pray to a whale if it were God? Certainly I would apologize for taking its fat, teeth and baleen to fuel lamps, make corsets, etc. Those last lines turn away from the invocation of the whale and address our troubled relationship with it through history, which is full of desire.

3. The images in “Temporary River” are remarkable to me how they seem to come together rather than pile on top of one another, even as they continue to grow in number in the poem. Images like only having “one cracked paddle from the shed,/spider-webbed” or the beautiful simile “our bodies transformed/like a cloud the wind tears in two directions” both make the reader care about the poem and also add weight to the situation. The ending line, becoming reflective and introspective, seemed brilliant as a move to wrap up the poem. How did this end line formulate? Furthermore, what seemed right about connecting it with all of these beautiful images and uses of figurative language?

I wanted the images in the poem to convey a feeling of the inevitable. At the time I wrote it I was in a relationship that seemed fated and outside of time. The flood in the poem became the setting through which I could imagine the possibility of something that powerful changing.

4. You are currently a resident of North Carolina, a state where much of my own family lives. Being familiar with the culture and natural environment of North Carolina myself, I am curious how living there has affected your writing. Could you speak about how your residency in North Carolina has influenced your writing?

I grew up in North Carolina, in the Durham-Chapel Hill area, and I recently moved back here after several years away. My recent move back here hasn’t noticeably changed my writing—though of course my writing is always changing. However, North Carolina—in the way that I’ve experienced it—is in my writing no matter where I am. It doesn’t appear directly as subject matter, but it feels its way in. In terms of the physical environment, it’s the thickness of the air, trees everywhere, the mosquitoes and the smell of decaying wood. (When I was in college at Sarah Lawrence, I remember flying out of LaGuardia airport to visit my family for the holidays. When the plain would come down through the clouds near Raleigh, I would be absolutely shocked by the incredible greenness.) In terms of culture, it was my family, the Waldorf school I attended for 11 years (where we painted, memorized great poems, and built forts in the woods), going to church, and so forth. One of my dear friends and favorite poets, Linda Gregg, likes to talk about poetic “sources.” You could say that North Carolina is one of mine.

5. What other writing projects are you currently working on?

I’m currently in the final stages (fingers crossed) of assembling my first book manuscript. I’ve been playing around with the order a lot the past couple of months, but I’ve still got some reordering to do. It’s my first time putting together a book, and it’s really hard! The different rearrangements make completely different books, so I’ve really got to decide what book I want to make. It will probably keep changing in little ways for awhile, but once I feel like I have it where I want it for now, I can begin to look forward to the next project, and I have no idea what that will be! It’s scary and exhilarating.

6. What great books have you read recently? Are there any upcoming releases you’re excited about?

I find things to read through one avenue or the other, and if I really like a book I’ll find something else by that author, but I don’t follow “poetry news” per se. I am always reading good books though. “The Most of It” by Mary Ruefle (her first book of stories) is incredible. I got to the end of it and then started it again—it was that good.  Though it’s not new, I also recently read “A Humament” by the British painter Tom Phillips. It’s a “treated Victorian novel,” meaning he’s painted over most of the words so each page of the book is a painting. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out. Very cool. A few months ago I read “The Family that Couldn’t Sleep” by D.T. Max. It’s a nonfiction book about an Italian family that has a mysterious and fatal disease that keeps them from being able to sleep. It’s wonderful—I walked around for weeks after I finished it, begging people to read it. I learned so much about prion diseases—a topic I never new I’d be so interested in: Mad Cow disease, Scrapy (in sheep), kuru (apparently caused by cannibalism)…so disturbing. D.T. Max takes all of these separate illnesses throughout history, links them, and asks some wonderful questions about humankind’s hand in all of it.