Dan Alter is the author of two collections of poetry: My Little Book of Exiles (Eyewear, 2002) winner of the Cowan Poetry Prize, and Hills Full of Holes (Fernwood, 2025). He is also the translator of Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited (Ben Yehuda, 2024), from the Hebrew of Yakir Ben-Moshe. His poems, reviews and translations have been published widely. He works at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley.
You can read For Peter running out of time in the July 2025 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 came as a fairly direct response to a sudden loss of a dear friend in more or less the way the poem describes. It happened that I was teaching a class “Diaspora and Homecoming in Jewish Poetry,” and I gave the class a prompt based on the poem “To My Sister” by Yiddish poet Celia Dropkin, to write using the phrase from that poem “my thoughts look for you.” I did the prompt myself and this came out.
Is there a collection of poetry that never leaves your (perhaps metaphorical) nightstand?
I return again and again to my selected Paul Celan, translated by John Felstiner; to the collected Jack Gilbert; to Diane Suess’ frank: sonnets; The Winged Energy of Delight, the translations of Seamus Heaney, among many others.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
Oh, that’s a hard one. I suppose I would write songs.
How do you revise your work?
I write first drafts by hand in smallish notebooks that make me feel like the stakes are low. When I have enough raw material, I try to compose it into a full poem in a larger notebook. I then redraft multiple times in that notebook, by hand, until I feel I’ve gotten as far as I can. At that point I’ll type it into a document, print it out, and usually put it away for a while. Then usually I look at the print-out, mark it up, and go back and write a revised version by hand in the notebook. If I have a chance to show it to trusted readers, I’ll get feedback. Eventually I will get it as far as I can, and maybe it’s done.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
When someone tells me that my work spoke to them. Especially poets I admire.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
I try and do at least some work, barring crises, every day first thing in the morning, 5-6 days a week. When conditions are ideal that means about two hours, composing and/or revising. On more stressful days it might mean just attending to some poetry business, e.g. submitting or responding to interviews like this. Also, I’ve noticed that right before bed I sometimes sense an opening and I’ll compose into one of the little notebooks for a bit. Those inspirations are often enough to go back to during the routine and start poems.
Without routine I’ll never write.