Rose DeMaris: A New Vocabulary
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Rose DeMaris writes poetry, novels, and essays. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Asymptote, Image Journal, Roanoke Review, Cold Mountain Review, Pine Row Press, Big Sky Journal, and elsewhere. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published by Random House and The Millions. A Southern California native, she spent nearly twenty years in Montana. These days she lives in New York City, where she’s completing an MFA at Columbia. rosedemaris.com
Rachel Yinger speaks with Rose about her poem, “A New Vocabulary,” below.
In your author’s note, you state that you were thinking of everything from “George Floyd, the pandemic, [and] the detention of immigrants” to “certain bicycle-related mishaps of my youth” when composing “A New Vocabulary.” What do you think is the role of the political and the personal in poetry?
I think the political and the personal have inevitable roles in poetry. In this particular poem they intersected in a way that felt almost unwitting. Part of the magic of poetry is its ability to illuminate connections between seemingly unrelated things, so in writing this poem during the fall of 2020, my emotions and thoughts about larger issues dovetailed in unexpected ways with personal memories and feelings.
I also think the political is embedded and alive in language itself. We don’t just write and speak with words; we transmit all the invisible qualities, residues, nuances, implications, and associations that accompany and haunt words. This is partly, I hope, what “A New Vocabulary” points to. We literally make and remake our world with language.
You create exceptionally vivid imagery throughout this poem. Where did the images for this poem originate?
Thank you! Some images have real-world origins: I was living in California when I wrote this poem, and every night I would hear kids in a distant backyard. They were playing in a way that sounded death defying, and then falling and screaming “Daddy!” It both delighted me and pierced me, listening to them. I thought, What is it like to feel that free to play that wildly, and to know someone is right there to come scoop you up if you get hurt? And what is the large-scale version or collective fantasy of that feeling? So that turned into the poem’s opening images. But other images, like the orchids, are imagined: I do remember the bathroom of the neighborhood lady who picked me up when I fell off my bike circa 1984, but there were no orchids there.
The phrases “1 in 4 birds have vacated the sky” and “carry poison worms to nestlings” are especially intriguing. Can you speak more about the meaning behind them?
The US and Canada alone have lost more than one in four birds in the last 50 years—nearly 3 billion birds. These losses have occurred in every biome, and they aren’t natural or normal; the causes are multiple, but each cause is a consequence of human activity. Since bird populations reflect of the health of ecosystems, increasingly silent skies are a huge and heartbreaking sign that we are off track in a big way. The “poison worm” is my nod to how our backyard use of pesticides, weed killers, rodent poisons, fertilizers, and other common household chemicals is harmful to birds and to ecosystems. There are so many ways in which we can modify our behavior in order to better care for this planet, but I feel they all come down to this: humans must stop imagining themselves at the top rung of a ladder when it comes to how we relate to Earth, and to all of Earth’s features and lifeforms. I hope we can collectively come to see ourselves as part of a circle in which all living things are deeply interconnected. This isn’t a hierarchy; it’s a wonderfully intricate web. With regard to birds, most of us can help them out from our own yards, porches, and/or fire escapes. Local Audubon chapters or allaboutbirds.org are good resources for learning more.
Can you talk about your drafting process? What (if anything) did you cut from or add to this poem from its first draft to the one published?
This was one of those poems that seemed to write itself and came out almost fully formed. It was catalyzed by a prompt from my teacher, poet Timothy Donnelly. I think the prompt was: Write a poem of 16 lines that deals in some way with time. I wrote some extra lines but still found the sense of constraint generative. My revision process consisted of refining word choices and playing with line breaks. But I think the current content was all there in the first draft, except for “We admit he was never willing to run down the stairs for all of us.” Poet Emily Skillings, another teacher of mine, understood what I was trying to say in this poem and brilliantly suggested I include that.
I understand you have taught writing to students of all ages. In what ways does teaching influence your own writing?
Mostly I taught academic writing, helping college students to think critically and write argumentative essays. I wanted my students to write clear, arguable, bold thesis statements; to make every sentence in an essay work in service of that thesis; to look for holes, for sentences that don’t serve the thesis, and to repair them; to think about architecture and organization—what comes next, and why? Also, intros and conclusions: How do you find your way in, and how do you find your way out? Which rhetorical strategies will you employ—logos, pathos, or ethos—and how? This is all surprisingly relevant to creative writing. Poems, novels, and all works of art can have theses, too—they’re just expressed much differently.
The majority of my students were young—18 years old—and they didn’t see themselves as experts. I think there is so much value in having a beginner’s mind. I’m still a student myself. I hope to always be open to learning and growing. To come to a poem’s first draft with a youthful, even childlike perspective, to be open to play—that is such a gift, and it’s fragile. You have to protect that innocent approach from the imagined responses of your imagined audience.
I was always trying to give my students confidence, but the truth is I still have confidence issues of my own. But that may be a gift, too, because the day I think I’ve got this all figured out I guess I’ll have to move on to something else, and I don’t want to do that.
In addition to writing poetry, you write fiction and nonfiction. How does your creative process differ depending on the type of piece you’re writing?
Honestly, there’s so much overlap. I tend to think like a poet while writing fiction or nonfiction, and I tend to think about narrative while writing poetry. And in all three genres, there’s a sense of writing toward what I don’t yet know I already know. The process of writing is, for me, a process of discovery, of getting to the treasures in my subconscious, where the last line, the ending of the book, or the real heart of the essay already exist, fully formed. I think morning is the best time for writing because I feel my subconscious is most accessible then.
I will say, poetry feels the most physical. Sound, rhythm, and sensuous imagery matter to me in everything I write, but in poetry they are so condensed. In writing a poem, I feel like I’m crafting a tonic, a possible inebriant—that’s what I hope to do—and there’s something very embodied about the process, even though I’m sitting still at my desk. A phrase that transmits an image starts repeating in my mind. It’s the grain of sand in the oyster; it creates an exciting sense of unrest and arousal. A novel may begin as a grain of sand, but it becomes a sea, and I have to write out some of the ocean every day before it floods me. It’s a sustained emotional, imaginative, and intellectual commitment that can go on for years. With nonfiction, I like to write essays, and I like to get a whole first draft out in one uninterrupted all-day-long journey. But I haven’t really published my most personal and creative nonfiction, only articles that have been assigned to me, which have been largely shaped by interviews. The nonfiction that’s closest to my heart is still hiding in a box. No matter what genre I’m working in, I always find my way into a piece through an image. William Faulkner began The Sound and the Fury because of his mental image of a little girl with muddy drawers up in a pear tree—this was the character he called his “heart’s darling,” Caddy Compson. I relate to that.
You are currently in the process of earning an MFA in Poetry at Columbia University. What draws you to poetry?
I’m drawn to forms, constraints, patterning, and rules—including the secret, strange rules I make up, like a pattern of assonance nobody may see but me. I love the way these constraints elicit the most unexpected language and content. I’m also drawn to sound, to music. I’ve always had an affinity for small details, so thinking about minutiae, about language on the micro level, just satisfies me. As I mentioned, imagery is huge for me. I’m driven to create pleasurable aesthetic experiences for others. Most of all, I’m drawn to the possibility of writing poetry that inspires people to feel more love for this world, this creation we are lucky enough to be a part of, and for the profound love and intelligence that I feel are behind this creation.
What are your plans after completing your degree?
I’ll continue writing, and I want put many books out into the world. My dream has always been to make a living as a creative writer, and that’s what I’m working toward. I’ve been writing creatively in earnest since I was ten, and I just really want the second half of my life to revolve easily around my lifelong passion. In the first half I struggled emotionally, physically, and financially while also always writing, and it wasn’t easy.
What advice can you give aspiring young writers?
Read, read, read. Reading voraciously can make you more of a writer than any MFA program, and it can cost almost nothing. And write, write, write. If you truly feel called to write, you will write every day—even journaling counts, and it strengthens your voice. And keep this in mind: writing can be lonely work, it can be hard, there’s usually rejection involved, and some might say it’s a total gamble; you may invest your whole life and never be rewarded with money or fame. So you have to be in love with the act itself, and that love alone must make it all worthwhile for you.
Are there any current projects you are working on that you would like to share?
I have two new novels, both works of literary fiction that I wrote prior to my MFA program, which are finished, and a third novel, also literary fiction, is almost done. My MFA thesis, which I’m currently finishing, will be a book of poems. I’m also working on a book of translations of poems by a Lebanese-Palestinian author, as well as a book on birds that synthesizes memoir, science, and poetry. It sounds like I have a crazy number of logs on the fire, but I’m passionate about all of them.
Thank you for taking the time to speak with me! Is there anything else you would like to add?
I’m grateful for your thoughtful questions. Thank you for the interview.
Read A New Vocabulary here.
