Brett Warren (she/her) is a long-time editor and the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Canary, Halfway Down the Stairs, Harbor Review, Hole in the Head Review, ONE ART, Rise Up Review, SWWIM Every Day, and other literary publications. A triple nominee for Best of the Net (Poetry, 2023), she lives in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. www.brettwarrenpoetry.com
You can read House of Pizza in the July 2024 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
This poem began with a sudden wish to go back in time, but not to an idyllic or hugely significant place—to a small-town pizza shop I hadn’t thought about in years. What was that about? If I could time-travel back there, how would I see it after all these years, as a changed person living in a changed world? Poetry opened a portal, and I went through it.
Why was the poetic form the best fit for this particular piece of work?
“House of Pizza” has short lines and short stanzas, which provide breathing room for the poem’s emotional and sensory details. Many poems seem to want a certain form, and this one wanted three-line stanzas (also called tercets),a form sometimes referred to as a “three-legged table.” Tercets can be just the thing for poems that feel a little off-kilter or deal with altered realities. I wanted to write into that sense of time-warp, that feeling of inhabiting the past and the present at the same time.
How do you revise your work?
I’ve been an editor my entire adult life, so revision is in my blood, and I do a lot of it. But I have to be careful not to overdo it. As Lucille Clifton said, “You can murder poems, I mean, I’ve done it….” I’ve done it too! So I try to find that balance between emotional impact and objective distance, between the literal and the metaphorical.
I usually revise a little after a first draft, then let the poem rest for whatever length of time feels right. It could be a days, months, or years. A few of the poems in my book needed decades of gestation and revision to become what they were meant to be.
At later stages, I pressure-test word by word and line by line. I move things around, try different forms and tenses, let the poem relineate itself as I make changes. I enjoy this stage of revision, but if I go too far, I have poets in my life who will swoop in to rescue poems I’ve put at risk.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
If I could have one wish for my poetry, it would be for it to help people see the poetry of their own lives. It’s everywhere—even (especially) in unexpected and ordinary places. Poetry is expansive. It can make us more compassionate and more curious, nudging us away from the human default of “either/or” thinking, closer to a “both/and” sense of what is true in the world.
What are you working on now?
This summer I’m working on a second full-length collection. It’s hard to find unstructured, undistracted time, but I’m lucky to have been given a residency at the new John Hay Writing Studio on Cape Cod, and I plan to put that time to good use!
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
For me, a poem begins with noticing, paying attention to the world, to what’s around me, to my dreams and ideas and memories. The really cool thing about noticing is that it takes me out of myself and brings me back to myself at the same time. As a practice, it’s grounding, even restorative.
Have you ever received advice (or has there been something you’ve learned on your own) about writing or revising poems that has made you a better poet? What was it?
“Deliver the experience.” Look for ways (through image, language, metaphor, voice, and other poetic devices) to engage and connect with readers. I want readers to feel like they’re right there with me, immersed in the experience that made me write the poem in the first place.
Do you belong to a writer’s group? If not, where do you find poetry community and feedback?
I belong to three critique groups. I try to run every poem through all three groups before I send it out for submission. That’s a dozen poets who are also skilled readers of poetry. They challenge my poetic choices, identify what is and isn’t working, and help me brainstorm ways to make my poems clearer, sharper, more alive.
In return, when I offer feedback on their work, it inspires me and informs my writing and my process. So critique groups are truly a win–win for everyone. For sure, support and friendship happen, but the main reason we are there is to make every poem the best it can be. We commit to this standard, this rigor, as our top priority.
How did you begin writing poetry? Was there a specific inspiration or reason?
I see the inclination toward poetry as part of my core identity—how I take in and process information, how I experience and navigate the world, how I find what I need to survive in it.
I’ve always been drawn to the borderlands, the “in-betweens.” During my growing-up years, I escaped into microhabitats like backyards, small woodlands, creeks, and fields. Even drainage ditches, vacant lots, and half-built houses were other worlds to explore. Now I immerse myself in “edge habitats”: forests, marshes, beaches, and cemeteries.
But there are many kinds of liminal spaces. I have a deep, lifelong affinity for other animals, both domestic and wild. Being in their presence dissolves that false sense of separateness and lets me briefly transcend the limitations of “human” and “individual.” At certain times of day—early morning, dusk, nighttime—the world almost seems to be shape-shifting. Transitioning between deep sleep and waking consciousness is a universal daily experience. When I’m reading a book, I’m here, but I’m not here. Visiting unfamiliar places—where I don’t know anyone, and no one knows me—allows a kind of invisibility that might be a little anxiety-producing, but is also exhilarating and liberating.
All these “in-betweens” feel spacious to me, full of possibility. Which is not to say they don’t have a dark side or come with difficulties. But I try to embrace (or at least accept) “not knowing.” For me, this is where poetry originates, and where it lives.