Q&A with Lance Larsen: poetry, painting reflect soul-making qualities
BYU professor of English Lance Larsen has been writing poetry for four decades. His poems are regularly published in leading literary journals, and he has received prestigious awards, including the Pushcart Prize and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. From 2012-17 he served as Utah Poet Laureate, advocating for the arts throughout the state. He recently published his sixth book of poetry — "Making a Kingdom of It."
In the following Q&A, University Communications writer Sharman Gill asks Larsen about his accomplishments, poetry, service, and sacred themes.
Q: You are an accomplished poet, and we are honored to have you at Brigham Young University. How would you measure yourself as a poet?
A: There are certain professional rites of passage, to be sure: landing a poem in a coveted journal, first poetry collection, winning a competition. These provide encouragement along the way and perhaps suggest you have a place at the table, but in the larger trajectory of a career, writers write because they like writing, myself included. A reporter once asked Robert Frost if poetry was an escape from life. He answered, “Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” What boldness! At the same time, writing allows you to erase the self to some degree and merge with something quieter and deeper.
Q: From 2012-2017 you served as Utah Poet Laureate. How were you best able to serve and what did you learn from this experience?
A: I visited K-12 schools and college campuses, attended poetry conferences, and led workshops for under-served communities, including youth in a secure care facility in Slate Canyon. John Ashbery once said that poetry is always going on — a subterranean river. The poet simply drops down a bucket and brings that lovely teeming chaos to the surface. My job, I quickly learned, was helping writers to pull up their buckets and recognize the great riches of their lives. I especially admire K-12 teachers. When they have a robust commitment to poetry, what a transformative work they do. If only we could replicate their best practices in every classroom in Utah and the United States.
Q: I recognize themes in your poetry that reflect theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. How do you feel that Latter-day Saint theology has inspired and emerged in your poetry?
A: In one of his letters, the poet John Keats calls this life a valley of tears. If we do nothing, it remains such. But we have the ability, he says, to transform this valley of tears into a valley of “soul-making.” He’s not entirely clear what this means but implies it involves the intelligence, the heart, and elemental space. In a nutshell that’s my project, and agency is at the heart of it. Where can we find light? How do we channel Christian virtues? How do we show mercy to the other — the outsider? How do we take care of the planet? How do we foster a sense of awe and celebrate the beauty and magic tied up in God’s creations? These are some of the questions that drive my poetry.
Q: I enjoy the intertwining of sacred and quotidian themes in your collection of poems. Would you please share some examples of how your poetry evokes the sacred nature of everyday life?
A: We too often forget God’s reminder in Doctrine and Covenants 29 “that all things unto me are spiritual.” This includes the natural world of course, discovering a stray quail egg or noticing an elk eating wildflowers for breakfast. The divine is everywhere, in a girl selling puppies a few blocks from the Sistine Chapel or in a Dutch woman riding a tandem bike by herself. Sometimes the presence of the divine is even more overt. I have a couple of sacrament poems in the collection, for instance. In one, a teenage son and his father are reconciled. In another, an impromptu sacrament meeting in a garage during Covid allows the narrator to see evidence of Christ everywhere. The challenge is to open our eyes enough to see what is always available.
Q: Your new book "Making a Kingdom of It" opens with the poem “Having My Back Erased," which starts with a child being comforted by his mother drawing imaginary pictures on his back. The narrative evolves into themes of healing, agency, and creativity. Why did you choose this as your opening poem?
A: Initially this was going to be the second poem, but I bumped it up for its concision and metaphoric possibilities. I like that the boy is traveling in a car but has his head down. I like that he’s hurting but playing a guessing game to distract himself and that he often guesses wrong: “not a comb but a rake, not a swing set but an octopus.” I consider this a seed poem of sorts, one that introduces subterranean themes that surface periodically: notions of hurt and healing and emotional energy, the primacy of touch, the power of imagination. Especially imagination: how we use it both consciously and accidentally to navigate whatever life throws at us.
Q: "Making a Kingdom of It" has fascinating cover art by your wife, Jacqui Larsen, who has an MFA from BYU. Please share some thoughts about the painting and the collaborative nature of your work.
A: Jacqui and I have collaborated on five books now, as well as a couple of art shows. I’ve paired poems with her paintings, and she’s used my words as text in her pieces. Her cover painting, “Under a Field of Stars,” dovetails nicely with the project of my collection, which is to make a kingdom out of our quotidian experience, with all its rich contradictions. I love the spiraling staircase in her painting, which invites us to climb and look around. In fact, there’s a fragment from an earlier poem right in the painting: “When my eyes open.”
Q: What advice do you have for those new to the pleasure of reading poetry? And for aspiring poets?
A: Slow down as you read, and don’t worry about finding the RHM, or Right Hidden Meaning, of the poem. There’s no such thing. Enjoy the chattery birds, the way a certain phrase cracks like ice, how the word “blood” hangs at the end of a line, the way a metaphor makes a small world large, and vice versa. Elizabeth Bishop said that a good poem should change the way your world looks for 24 hours. Read and take notice. Notice, notice, notice. If you write poems, read widely, take in the tiniest details around you, and see how your poem might join conversations that have been going on for thousands of years.
