"I enjoyed working in a non-linear way. However, not knowing what Eve (Hanninen) was doing with the first draft, and being unable to see and back away from the larger canvas, I began more and more to crave that process. I sometimes felt dissatisfaction there was no way to get artistic distance – necessary for nuanced revisions, which in my experience, always improve a work. I was happy to get a crack at the whole shebang once all the stanzas were collected."                                                 ~ Leland Jamieson

	Where I would rather be, when winter comes, is anywhere I do not twiddle thumbs for lack of better things to do with time than to regret man's failing paradigm. Though I must say, one paradigm folks got just right employs a flow of really hot fresh air right through our Jøtul's top, which burns so clean it has no "cat" to cause concerns.                         Won't you lark along with me? Choose a link!

Icefire - E.A. Hanninen - 2007

	Eve Anthony Hanninen: What was it like to approach writing a poem in a non-linear fashion? Did you feel constricted by the pattern or format of your project requirements, or was it stimulating, provoking? Leland Jamieson: It was great! Not constricting. To the contrary, it liberated feeling and insight. Quite stimulating. I enjoyed the whimsey of spinning verses off of your prompts in musical couplets. I found freedom in the form. EAH: What attracted you to writing poetry, and when or where have you learned the most about writing poetry – through formal education, personal passion, mentor, or equal combinations of resources? LJ: Personal passion and mentors for the most part. I'd written "free verse" since I was a teen (I'm 71 now) to "get deeper into things," always with results that disappointed me, although I published about 40 of them. But I was afraid to try formal poetry for fear forced rhymes and sing-song reading would be the result. However, about four years ago I taught myself how to manipulate meter with enjambed lines, and how to handle rhyme. I did this by immersing myself in Timothy Steele's work especially, and reflecting on all I'd learned over the years from William Shakespeare (the dramas), Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and William Stafford. I found that rhyme and meter liberated my feeling and brought me insight as nothing else ever had. I think this is because all that music-making throws you into your non-linear right hemisphere. I use rhyme words as prompts for almost every line but the first in a new poem or stanza. I've been working in a non-linear manner almost exclusively for the last four years. I say a lot more about this in an extended note addressed to fellow poets at the end of my first book, 21st Century Bread. Leland Jamieson, a performing arts center manager for most of his working life, is retired and lives and writes in East Hampton, Connecticut, USA. His recent and forthcoming work appears in numerous print and Internet poetry magazines. His first book, 21st Century Bread, is available through lulu.com. 21st Century Bread

Contemporary Poetry With An Eye Towards Resistance


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