Interview of Mary Barnet in Still Crazy

The interview below appears in the July 2015 issue of STILL CRAZY.

INTERVIEW OF MARY BARNET

Carol Smallwood

Mary Barnet was nominated a second time for a Pushcart Prize for her recently published
86 Sonnets for the 21^st Century (Casa de Snapdragon, 2015). Her books are accompanied by the artwork of Richard E. Schiff, a Life Member of the Art Students League of New York.

Mary is Senior Editor of PoetryMagazine.com, http://www.poetrymagazine.com/index_real.html the longest continuously publishing poetry journal on the internet, founded in 1996.

1. Please describe your website and your duties as editor/writer:

I founded PoetryMagazine.com back in the web primitive days of the 20th Century, 1996, to be precise. That was when few webzines existed, and our advertising was primarily guerilla style; bumper stickers on walls all over New York City, ads in small periodicals as well as Poets & Writers. Early on, we introduced streaming video, and in 1997, we won a Webby Award for our streaming video. That got us a write up in USA Today by Sam Meddis, and we have grown steadily by the year. Our difference has always been the strict criteria we use to publish poets. We are not snobs, but we want to bring the best to our readership who have now come to expect that from us.

Over the years I have added to the mix of unsolicited submissions from which I choose, and then present. There are also Features by invitation by Andrena Zawinski; live poet interviews by Grace Cavalieri; reviews by Grace, Joan Gelfand, and others; and PoetryFilms by our own Richard E. Schiff.

2. Tell us about your career:

I began writing poetry as a small child, seriously at 16 years of age. I had reason, early on, to travel into South America at a time in the volatile days of the mid ‘60s. By 1968, I was living on my own in London, and there I put together the earlier writings and moved my work on. Nineteen sixty-eight was a pretty hip time to be in Britain, and I was in the middle of all that Piccadilly circus stuff in my man’s stovepipe hat and high boots and a wild Victorian embroidered cape I had picked up for a song. 

I returned to New York City in the early ‘70s and have written and published, since then, in many publications, including Crossroads, Gusto, New Worlds Unlimited, The New Jersey Poetry Society Anthology, Funky Dog Publishing, Recursive Angel, The Greenwich Village Gazette, The Poem Factory, Numbat, The Pittsburgh Review, and elsewhere .

Also, I was the Featured Writer in a special edition of Poet magazine. This was followed by my own chapbooks including Orchidia, Proud to be a New American, Landscape and Dad’s Shoes.  These lead to my books, The New American/Selected Poems (Gilford Press, 2006), Arrival (Casa de Snapdragon, 2010) and now, 86 Sonnets for the 21st Century (Casa de Snapdragon, 2015). Both of the latter were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

3. Which recognitions/achievements have encouraged you the most?

My public readings that began when I was sixteen. I read at The Grace Church, Cage Figaro, and The Baggot Inn, all in Greenwich Village. Later, in 1970, I read at one of my now husband’s openings at the Avanti Galleries on east 72nd street.  I have also read recently at Princeton for the New Jersey Poetry Association.

In 86 Sonnets for the 21^st Century (Casa de Snapdragon, 2015) www.marybarnet.com, my sonnets are written for the modern English language. Sonnets are poems, used by, among others, Plutarch, Michael Angelo and William Shakespeare with a specified rhyme scheme and meter. Grace Cavalieri (host of “The Poet and The Poem,” interviews presented by The Library of Congress) and Joan Gelfand (National Book Critics Circle) both admired their originality and readers found their modern presentation of an iconoclastic poetry form refreshing as well.

For a sample, here is one of my recent sonnets:

My Sum

When I find myself in some reality of pain
I know old age can cripple us;
still  there is no need to make a fuss.
I won’t be able to travel to Spain;
many are the places I’ll never visit by boat or plane.
I can’t climb the steps of a bus;
I go so slow some folk just cuss.
Oh ! How I wish I could dance in the rain!

But nothing is lost in my craft;
I write with more facility than in times past.
I’m so happy with this some might think me daft.
All are friends to whom I serve up my words’ repast;
glad will I be if my life is no more than my writing’s sum!

                        March 2015

4. What writers have influenced you the most?

I have never allowed myself to be overly influenced, as I began writing before my mind was full of poets and poems. Chinese and Japanese poetry had an effect on me; brevity is the hallmark of the Haiku, after all. Economy of words goes along with our ideals of wisdom. Doesn’t everyone want to be the person of the “least words”?

5. How has the Internet benefited you?

Well, it gave me the idea that with a www you can reach all the way around the world with your circulation, automatically! And not a single tree paid for the thousands of pages of poetry we have generated in the past 19 years!

6. What classes have helped you the most?

The writing workshops I took part in at what was then The New School, I think it was in the ‘80s, or early ‘90s when Robert Pinsky was there, were invaluable to me.

The Master Class I took with Gerald Stern when I attended a Writers’ Conference at Williams College was also very enlightening to me.

7. What advice would you give others?

Be your own muse and inspiration and remember poetry is an art and a serious craft, requiring you read poetry and write poetry, every day if possible. I say possible, and really as a poet I can barely keep myself from poetry. I am very lucky my husband fancies himself a chef. That gives me a little time to work, and I eat well every night.

8. What is your favorite quotation?

This says everything:

“Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.” – John Donne∎