Cate Marvin: I am like a table

It takes a certain kind of mind to narrate, to work through character motivation, to be unforgiving to one's writer-self when it comes down to creating the minutiae of detail. Writing fiction requires stamina, a sense of how people's lives work, how people work toward and against one another and, above all, precision.

Cate Marvin

motivation writing character

Some poems take two to three years to finish. Rarely, a poem will arrive whole. It's nice when that happens. However, process has become so grueling for me over the past few years that when one of my students uses the word "inspiration" I practically shriek with laughter.

Cate Marvin

laughter nice inspiration

The fiction writer has a lot of balls to juggle. Setting, pacing, dialogue, and so on. And let's not forget: plot. That was always a hard one for me. And I always had this spastic tendency to wrap up a story before I'd seen it the whole way through, a sort of writer's pre-ejaculatory tendency: "The End!"

Cate Marvin

balls plot fiction

To think of writing poetry as a "career" is not only ridiculous, it's dangerous. To the imagination. To the way one thinks of art. The reason poetry as a genre is so special is because it cannot be made a commodity.

Cate Marvin

writing art thinking

One cannot have "success" in poetry. If I wanted to be successful, I'd have become a lawyer.

Cate Marvin

lawyer successful wanted

I do believe that one's writing life needs to be kept separate from Po-Biz. Personally, I deal with this by not attending too many poetry readings, primarily reading dead poets or poems in translation, reading Poets & Writers only once for grant/contest information before I quickly dispose of it, and not reading Poetry Daily. Ever.

Cate Marvin

reading writing believe

I have no precise idea of who makes up my readership. I'm surprised when I discover people have read my poems at all.

Cate Marvin

readership people ideas

My day does not truly begin until I've acquired and consumed a 32-ounce Big Gulp of diet coke from 7-Eleven. It's the Big Gulp that's important, not 7-Eleven, where I find the employees rather disagreeable.

Cate Marvin

coke important doe

I consider poetry my vocation, not my "career." My career is as a university professor; that's what pays the bills.

Cate Marvin

university-professors careers pay

When fiction writers like my poems I feel like I've hit the jackpot.

Cate Marvin

jackpot feels fiction

Place is extremely important to my work because I am always pulling landscape imagery into my poems.

Cate Marvin

imagery landscape important

Different drinks have different metaphorical weight. Wine's heady, gin is poisonous, vodka's cold, and beer is plain boring. In real life, I'm a big fan of boxed white wine, much to the dismay of my more refined friends.

Cate Marvin

wine real beer

When asked what I'd be if I weren't a writer, I'm tempted to respond with one of father's favorite phrases, one I despised while growing up: "I hate 'what-ifs.'"

Cate Marvin

growing-up hate father

New York is one of those places people tend to derive a sense of identity from - as if, were to you to remove them from the City, they'd turn limp and colorless.

Cate Marvin

cities new-york people

I admire the poetic relationship to place as enacted in Wallace Stevens' poems; his poetics strikes me as an argument against the restraints of realism.

Cate Marvin

poetic argument strikes

I prefer poems that occupy an imaginative sphere. When I lived in Cincinnati, I was occasionally referred to as an "Ohio Poet;" this made me uneasy, not only because I think of myself as a generally American poet but also because I like to think I write out of the country of my own mind.

Cate Marvin

writing country thinking

I find the elitism and blatant provincialism of many (Manhattan-based) New Yorkers unattractive. Just as place can be an identity crutch that helps a person feel individual, place can be a crutch in poetry.

Cate Marvin

manhattan unattractive identity

I place a lot of emphasis on process and revision because I believe that all of my students can become better writers through hard work.

Cate Marvin

revision hard-work believe

I encourage my students to be honest in their assessment of both the published work we read and the work of their classmates. I think there's always the occasion for discussing elements of craft, whether the student's poem is terrible or quite wonderful.

Cate Marvin

assessment elements thinking

I love teaching poetry writing. Students come into the class thinking poetry has to be one way, then leave having created pieces that are wholly original, that have - quite literally - never been made before.

Cate Marvin

teaching writing thinking