Never Blame the Umpire
Page 11
9. What’s the best thing about being a writer?
Hearing someone who’s read something I’ve written say, “Hey, I like it! It’s not bad!” Getting published is a great feeling, of course, but that comes later, and that’s just a bonus. There’s great satisfaction in writing something, and great pride in knowing you’ve made it as good as you think you possibly can, even if it never gets published.
10. Do you have another job, or is writing the only work you do?
I taught school (English and creative writing) for twenty-eight years (one year of eighth grade—the rest in high school and college). Now I go around to schools and conduct some one-week poetry-writing residencies and do poetry writings and talk to students about writing and publishing. That’s not work, though. That’s fun.
11. How long does a poem have to be?
As long as you need it to be. Some say “As long as you want it to be,” but I’ve found out that you might want a poem to be a certain length, but when you start to write it you find that it needs to be longer or shorter. My longest poem is 510 lines long. My shortest one is one line long. Its title is longer than the poem itself. Here it is:
The day I drew a girl as my opponent in my first and only school wrestling match
She pinned me flat against the mat. And that was that.
I won’t print my longest poem here. You’ll need to find it someplace else.
12. Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Three sisters. No brothers. Janice was one year older than me. Because she was a year ahead of me in school, I always counted on her to “show me the ropes” and make things easier for me, and she always did. She died in December, 2004. Rita is 10 years younger than me and lives in Havana, Illinois. Rhonda, 12 years younger, lives in St. Charles, Missouri.
13. Sometimes I get frustrated because I don’t understand a poem. It makes me not want to read poetry. What should I do?
Try not to think of a poem as a puzzle that has only one solution or one answer. Different readers will see something different in the same poem depending on their own experiences in life and their own experience reading poetry. Rather than ask, “What does the poem mean?” I think a much better question is, “What does this poem mean to you?” Or even, “What do you like most about the poem?” All you really need to do is try to enjoy something in the poem—the sounds or the story or the picture it paints or a surprising idea or surprising use of language. The meaning of a poem isn’t as important as what it makes you think or how it makes you feel. You can enjoy it without “understanding” it in exactly the same way someone else might.
14. Do you draw the illustrations for any of your books?
Never. I’d love to be able to draw, but I’m as bad an artist as I am a singer. Luckily, when my books or poems require illustrations, the publisher finds someone else to illustrate them.
15. Which do you like writing best, rhymed or unrhymed poetry?
I love writing both. I think that anyone who wants to write poetry should practice writing both kinds. Some poems will work better if they rhyme, some if they don’t. It often depends on the subject and the mood you want to create. It’s important to give yourself the freedom to choose which approach works better. You can only do that if you practice writing in both rhyme and free verse.
16. What do you like writing most, poems or stories?
I like writing both stories and poems. One reason I started writing a lot more poetry when I was in my 30s and 40s was because I was busy preparing classes and grading papers as a teacher, and it didn’t take me nearly as much time to write a poem’s first draft as it did a story’s. Most writing, of course, must be rewritten and revised many times. The best writers are those who discover that rewriting can be a fun experience and not something to be dreaded.
In recent years I’ve turned my attention more and more to the writing of full-length books.
17. Why do you write about baseball so much?
I’ve always loved baseball, ever since I was seven or eight years old and played by myself, throwing a ball against a wire fence in my back yard or tossing a ball in the air and then bunting it down a narrow sidewalk, trying to bunt it straight so it would roll a long way before going off into the grass. After playing on my first baseball team when I was thirteen, I’ve played on teams most of my life.
I’ve always been a big fan. When I was in school, I read all I could about the big leaguers and memorized all their batting averages. One of my favorite writing projects was to interview more than a hundred former major league baseball players for my books Tales from Baseball’s Golden Age and More Tales from Baseball’s Golden Age. These were players who were my idols when I was a kid. I never thought I’d actually have a chance to talk to them someday and listen to all their stories about their years in the big leagues.
18. What’s your favorite baseball team?
In the American League, the New York Yankees.
In the National League, the Chicago Cubs.
It balances out because during much of my lifetime the Yankees almost always seemed to win their division and the Cubs almost always lost theirs.
19. Where do you live?
My wife and I both grew up in Illinois, but we’ve lived in Seneca, South Carolina, since 1991. We love living where it’s warm most of the year.
20. What do you look like?
Some people think I’m a cross between Robert Redford and Tom Cruise. (Okay, so maybe I don’t exactly LOOK like them.) But I’m old, like Redford, and I’m short, like Cruise.
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