“330 College Avenue”: Seven Questions for Joanna Fuhrman
I have always been interested in poetry that expresses deep emotions and invokes thoughtful interpretations. Even more so, I have always had a passion for teaching and I am interested in the techniques and thoughtful lesson plans that are required to effectively pass down knowledge and inspire students. When I first saw “330 College Avenue” in the 2023 edition of Best American Poetry, I was immediately intrigued by this poem’s name and was eager to find out what it could be about. The first few lines instantly hit me with a wave of nostalgia towards my own childhood home. This poem continues to do an excellent job at blending surreal memories and emotional truths, truly hooking the reader and allowing our minds to wander beyond the words on the page.
After researching Joanne Fuhrman and discovering her impressive number of awards and a fascinating teaching career at Rutgers University, I knew I wanted to interview her. Along with being the author of 7 poetry collections, her poems have appeared in a number of literary magazines and journals. Her most recent poetry book titled Data Minds covers the uncanny reality of the digital age, reflecting her ability to explore personal and social experiences in the imaginative style she is known for.
I read about the poetry workshops you do in schools, libraries, and community centers, as well as your impressive and passionate teaching career. Have the people you’ve taught ever provided you with new perspectives or ideas that made their way into a poem?
Yes, all the time. I currently run a generative poetry club at Rutgers where we do a lot of exercises where students come up with lists of words and pass them around the table. The idea of this exercise is that using words other people come up with can help one break habits of thinking. I was working on a poem this morning where I was trying to incorporate the word “molar” and the phrase “my headphones keep disconnecting,” which were passed around by my students last night at Poetry Club. We will see if the phrases make it into the final draft. I remember years ago I was doing a sestina exercise with my Intro to Creative Writing class where we used other people’s ideas for end words or phrases. A student gave me a piece of paper that said ‘Jamie Lynn Spears’ had to be one of the words in the poem, and I thought there is no way I could ever write a poem with Jamie Lynn Spears in it, but then months later I wrote a prose poem with her in it. The first line of the poem just came to me— almost as if I was taking diction.
In the third to last line of your poem “330 College Avenue”, you use the made-up word, “motherness.” You continue to talk about its significance in the final two sentences. This is a really strong moment that sticks out to me, especially as the last idea you leave us with. What were you trying to convey in this poem about “motherness”?
That part of the poem is autobiographical. I really did write a kind of poem in kindergarten where I talked about the “motherness of mothers.” I just liked the way it sounded. It was one of my first memories of being excited about the way words sound, as opposed to what they mean. I think this impulse to play with language and to enjoy the texture of words is at the heart of what makes one a poet. Anyway, at the end of the poem I say, “At six years old, you didn’t care that ‘motherness’/ was not a real word.//Or a real world. Neither did your mother.” I think this part of the poem is about my gratitude that my mother allowed me to live in the world of my imagination. No one tried to correct me and tell me that the word I made up wasn’t real, that I had to be limited by other people’s conceptions of what was possible. I feel incredible gratitude to my parents that they let me be the odd child I was, instead of trying to make me conform.
I am really intrigued by the lines “Your glasses reflect clouds in the shape of a word. / It’s a language neither of you understand.” What is this word supposed to be? Could it be suggesting that the people in the poem dream of the “motherness” you mention later in the story that neither of them understand, or is it something else?
As I was saying in the previous question, it suggests something about the limits of understanding, how the power of some language is about its cloudlike ability to morph, rather than its “meaning.”
I’d really like to hear your intention for the symbolism of the subject’s childhood house, whether it be a reflection of neglect, grief, nostalgia, or something else.
I don’t think contemporary poets think about symbolism so much. As Robert Hass said in his famous essay on “Images,” “Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that with less implication outside themselves.” The childhood house is both a memory and a dream.
Were there any poets, teachers, or other artists that were big influences on you and your poetry?
So many!! I was a big fan of David Shapiro’s work before I met him in 2002. Over the years we became good friends, and for years (before his Parkinson’s became debilitating) I would send him all of my poems. I learned so much about poetry and art from him. I love that your class website is named after John Ashbery because Ashbery’s work was super important to me. David actually wrote the first monograph on Ashbery. All of the New York School poets are essential to me. I am also always reading poetry in translation. In terms of art, Hito Steyer was a huge influence on my last book of poems, Data Mind, which is a serial prose poem about digital life as a non-digital native.
In class, we have read and analyzed some articles on the state of poetry in our society today. What are your opinions on the way poetry is taught in classes and its role in modern society?
I’m not a fan of the way poetry is usually taught. Too often, teachers approach a poem like a riddle instead of an experience. I wish it had more of a role in modern society, but there are advantages to existing on the margins.
Sometimes I am interested in writing poetry, but I never know where to start. Have you always gone into writing a poem knowing you were going to share it to the public, or have you found that your best poems were created unexpectedly? Feel free to expand more on your process and background. I’m curious about what inspires you, the purpose of your poems, and how you started writing poetry.
Poems come from different places. Occasionally, I’ll have an idea, but the process of creating a poem is always about playing with language, listening to the music of the language and not worrying too early in the process about what you are trying to say. Sometimes I am inspired by things in the world I observe or language I overhear.