“I Never Figured How to Get Free”: Eight Questions for Donika Kelly
Sometimes I find it intriguing how the media portrays wars. No matter how it’s supposed to be seen by the average viewer, when watching war on the news I’m horrified. I’m horrified that humans are capable of that level of violence. I bring this up because Donika Kelly’s poem “I Never Figured How to Get Free” perfectly captures just that feeling that so many of us can relate to.
Donika Kelly grew up in Los Angeles, California. She has received her BA in English from Southern Arkansas University, MFA from University of Texas, and both her MA and Ph.D. in English Literature from Vanderbilt University. She is currently a professor at University of Iowa, one of the top MFA Creative Writing programs in the nation. Kelly’s works are well-renowned, receiving numerous awards, including the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for poetry, and 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She has written multiple collections of her poetry, such as The Renunciations, and Bestiary, and her newest collection, The Natural Order of Things, which is available at bookstores everywhere.
Her poem “I Never Figured How to Get Free” was featured in the 2020 edition of Best American Poetry. This poem expresses how helpless and guilty one can feel while their own nation contributes to the horrors of war. These ideas were very relatable when the poem was first written, and they are relatable now nearly six years later. I was fascinated by Kelly’s ability to portray the weight and vulnerability that war brings to a nation and its citizens, and I wanted to understand these ideas even further by interviewing the poet herself.
I see that you grew up in Los Angeles. Are there experiences from that time that still surface in your poetry?
There are many poems in my first and second book that are set in and around Los Angeles. I was kid there in the 80s and 90s and witnessed a lot of things: earthquakes, gang activity, the uprisings in 1992. It was also a place where my dad abused me, and I associated the place with those experiences for a long time. Writing the poems helped me realized that LA was more than those experiences and have made it possible to go back more easily.
I noticed that throughout your poem “I Never Figured How to Get Free”, each stanza begins and ends mid-sentence in a very intentional manner. Could you talk about the intention behind these line breaks? How do they contribute to the meaning of the poem?
Thank you for this observation! I can’t say that I did it on purpose, but the open stanzas refuse a tidy story about the time we are in and have been it. There’s no way to put global imperialism in a box or make it neat, and even if we are not looking at the wars we started, those we fund, we remain affected by them.
In that same poem, you write that the sky was “clear or it was cloudy / or it rained or it snowed, and I was rarely / afraid of what would fall from it.” I noticed more imagery relating to the sky and weather when reading other poems of yours, which I found very fascinating. What draws you to those natural images, and how do they shape the meaning of “I Never Figured How to Get Free”?
For this poem, I was thinking of stories I’d read about how people in the middle east, especially kids, learned not to look up when they heard a drone so that they could not be identified and bombed. I can’t imagine what it means to live with that kind of danger, and I understood that being able to look up was a kind of privilege, which it shouldn’t be! The sky is ours and fascinating and something we share with all humans across all time.
Throughout “I Never Figured How to Get Free”, there are many mentions of more mundane acts that contrast the overriding theme of war. How did you arrive at the idea of formatting the poem where the horrors of war and everyday tasks are intertwined in such a striking way?
In many ways, you’ve hit on the crux of the poem. There was, is, seems always to be a war that my tax dollars fund, that I don’t support. I’m just trying to have a sweet life! A boring one, even. But it is vital we remember that the comforts we have in this country are built on other people’s backs and their suffering. That’s a part of living in an empire.
I’ve noticed that you use a lot of symbolism relating to mythology or folklore in your works; what inspired that? Is there a poet or writer whose work has most influenced your style of writing?
I loved Greek mythology when I was a kid, and I found it really helpful in understanding my family’s organizing dynamics. There were gods and there were humans, and the gods could do anything to the humans with no recourse. I’m happy these days to be mostly free of that framework, though I’m grateful it was there.
There are several writers who have been really important to me: Natasha Trethewey, Lucille Clifton, Carl Phillips, and Marie Howe, to name a very few.
As a professor at University of Iowa, one of the leading creative writing programs in the country, what do you think is needed from the next generation of poets to help the current state of American Poetry?
American poetry is tremendous right now, as it has been for ages. We need more poets! More poets from more backgrounds who can show us the world we know from many vantages.
Many of your poems seem to reflect a theme of longing for control over one’s life. Are there moments in your life that have shaped this theme for you, and are there ways you have learned to feel more in control of your life both personally and as a writer?
You’re absolutely right about that desire for control, even though I know it’s a futile one. Still! Poetry has been the main way that I have shaped my life. Through poetry, I met my wife, most of my friends, found my job, and got to travel. Poetry allows me to move away from stories about my life and toward how I want it to feel.
If there’s one thing you would want your readers to take away from your poems, what would it be?
I would want readers to experience what I have found in poetry, which is company. We are not alone; there is no feeling any one of us has had that is truly ours alone. I like knowing that, and I try to show it in my work.