Jenny Molberg on The Social Distance Reading Series
Jenny Molberg is the author of Marvels of the Invisible (Tupelo Press) and Refusal (LSU Press). She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sewanee Writers Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and the Longleaf Writers Conference. She teaches at the University of Central Missouri, where she directs Pleiades Press and edits Pleiades magazine.
Brought to you by The Vermont School and Green Mountains Review
In the wake of book event cancellations due to COVID-19, this pop-up series is designed to offer poets a platform for launching new collections of poems. Stay tuned for a new reading each Wednesday and Sunday.
Here’s Jenny reading from her new book REFUSAL out now from LSU Press.
“The brilliant index around which these poems spin is the image of the hospital for our previously undiagnosed wounds of the mind and spirit…Refusal establishes her as one of the leading poets of her generation.”
—David Keplinger, author of Another City, winner of the 2019 Rilke Prize
“Jenny Molberg has reinvented the confessional poem as a heroine’s journey. A poet in the Orphic tradition, she journeys into the Underworld to rescue her speakers, her Penelope, her Ophelia, her battered and accused and underestimated and gaslighted Eurydices. She brings them line by exquisite line back to the world of the living. She’s nobody’s fool and she knows what’s at stake…In Refusal she writes a world where her speakers become free to look back or forward or cast their gaze in any dark corner that could use a little light.”
—Kathryn Nuernberger, author of Rue
How do you begin a new piece of writing? What conditions help your writing process?
I am not a writer with a set schedule, though I do tend to write later in the day or at night, surrounded by books I’m reading for inspiration. Research inspires me; other poets inspire me. I typically flourish in solitude, in quiet, and in the outdoors if possible.
What was an early experience that taught you language has power?
I spent a lot of my childhood in speech therapy and moving to a few different schools. I was a painfully shy kid at school—I think that language has always been complicated and powerful for me. When I felt lonely or isolated, my grandmother would bring me stacks of books, and many of the early classics I read empowered me with knowledge through language.
What poets or writers do you continually go back to?
Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Federico García Lorca, Marilyn Nelson, Sylvia Plath, Muriel Rukeyser, Li Young Lee, Anne Carson…
What is your favorite childhood or adolescent book?
The Frog and the Toad by Arnold Lobel and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
What are your thoughts/experiences on social distancing?
I’m writing with a cough and headache, recovering also from knee surgery, so thoughts at the front of my mind are anxious—I’m also concerned about family members who are far away. But I also write with a recognition of my fortunate position: a stable job and the ability to self-isolate. This time has opened up space for me to catch up with good friends, and to lean on them during times of frustration. Though my book tour with Kathryn Nuernberger was mostly canceled, I was still able to do a book launch in Kansas City in early February, and I am grateful for platforms like these, that have allowed me to listen to poets I admire read their work online.
Where can we find you?
The Social Distance Reading Series
Brought to you by The Vermont School and Green Mountains Review
We’re thrilled to host The Social Distance Reading Series, a collaboration between Green Mountains Review and The Vermont School poets. In the wake of book event cancellations due to COVID-19, this pop-up series is designed to offer poets a platform for launching new collections of poems. At this point, we are focusing on collections by poets whose book events have been cancelled between January through May 2020.
Stay tuned for a new reading each Wednesday and Sunday.
Thanks,
–Didi Jackson, Major Jackson, Kerrin McCadden, and Elizabeth Powell, series curators.
–Kylie Gellatly, editorial assistant, interviewer.