Interview with Elise Paschen, author of “Blood Wolf Moon” by Rey M. Rodríguez
Elise Paschen, an enrolled member of the Osage Nation, is a poet and anthologist who was born and raised in Chicago. She earned a BA at Harvard University and an M. Phil. in 20th-century British and American Literature at Oxford University, with a D. Phil. dissertation on the manuscripts of poet William Butler Yeats. During her time at Oxford, she co-edited Oxford Poetry.
Paschen has published six collections of poetry, including her latest, Blood Wolf Moon (2025), Tallchief (2023), The Nightlife (2017), Bestiary (2009), Infidelities (1996), winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, and Houses: Coasts (1985). She is the editor of The Eloquent Poem (2019), Poetry Speaks Who I Am (2010) and Poetry Speaks to Children (2005), and the co-editor of Poetry Speaks Expanded (2007), Poetry Speaks (2001), Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast (2002) and Poetry in Motion (1996). Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2018 and 2025, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, and The Poetry Anthology: 1912-2002.
Blood Wolf Moon is a remarkable achievement because it tells an intensely personal story in the context of a much broader and incomplete U.S. history. Paschen's mastery of the art of poetry only elevates a fascinating poetic narrative. A story that needs to be told in English but also in the Osage language. In this case, she opens the door for the Osage language to be used in written form to begin our liberation from an incomplete and painful past. One can only imagine the possibilities of what is to come based on Paschen’s work. Moreover, her book should be required reading for anyone who wants to learn the complicated and violent history of the United States. Paschen's book is both an Indigenous story and an American story that we should all be aware of and study.
Welcome Elise Paschen to the Storyteller’s Corner of Chapter House, the literary journal for the Institute for American Indian Arts. We're so pleased to have you.
Thank you so much. I'm so happy to have this conversation with you.
That's fantastic. So, let's start with your new poetry book, Blood Wolf Moon. Tell me about the title and cover art.
“Blood Wolf Moon” begins with a long poem called “Heritage,” which consists of a bracelet of poems modelled after a crown of sonnets. At one stage, the long poem was titled “Heritage of the Blood Wolf Moon.”
“Heritage III” begins with the line: “I was born in the month of the Blood Wolf Moon,” which refers to the super blood wolf moon, a moon in eclipse, which sometimes transpires in January. It's an actual supernatural phenomenon that doesn't happen often, and I took a bit of poetic license as I don’t know whether this eclipse occurred the month when I was born.
As I was working on the manuscript, I eventually decided to use “Heritage” as the title for the long poem and then adopt “Blood Wolf Moon” for the book’s title.
About the art, from the beginning, I envisioned having the work of an Osage artist on my cover.
I had been collaborating with another Osage artist whose work I adore but, in the end, my publisher didn’t think that a painting would work for a book’s cover. After that disappointment, my publisher sent some in-house designs, which I felt did not represent my book at all. Red Hen Press then found the work of the Osage artist Addie Roanhorse, who is also a friend of mine. On my desk, I have a print of Addie’s of a buffalo with a ledger map of the town of Grayhorse, Oklahoma, and I asked her whether we could use something along these lines for the book’s cover. I also wanted to incorporate the moon. For the book cover, which is so striking and gorgeous, Addie created the beautiful image of the buffalo with the map of Grayhorse, silhouetted by the moon, with ribbon work below. It's significant for me because this cover contains several “Easter eggs” for the reader to discover. Our Tallchief family belongs to the Buffalo clan. The map refers to our district, which is Grayhorse. Osages belong to three different districts. Grayhorse also is where Killers of the Flower Moon took place and, on the map, is the site of Lizzie Q’s land. If you were to go further west on the map, you would see where my Tallchief family lived. That's why this cover is so significant. The covers of my other books incorporated dark blues and greens, and this design also explores a new color palette.
Wonderful. Okay, let’s talk about the structure of your new book.
Let me begin with the genesis of the long poem, “Heritage,” or Part I of “Blood Wolf Moon.”
Spending time on the Osage reservation has inspired my work from a young age. When I was a sophomore in college, enrolled in Seamus Heaney’s poetry workshop, I wrote “Oklahoma Home” which was later published in my chapbook, Houses: Coasts, and then in my first full-length collection, Infidelities.
I also have edited or co-edited seven poetry anthologies. My last one, The Eloquent Poem, came out in 2019, and my editor, Gabriel Fried, invited me to read for Native American Heritage Month at the University of Missouri as well as plan an event for the anthology at a bookstore. When Gabe invited me to the university, he said, “I'd love you to read poems about your mother and about your Osage background.” It was one of those requests that lit a fire. I started researching the history of the Osages in Missouri and then began to write this long poem, “Heritage,” which opens the book.
I love the first line, “Once I had a name/for everything I possessed, but now am silent, afraid. . . .”
Thank you so much. All of my poems, until now, have been lyric poems, perhaps, a page long. This is the first time I composed a long poem, and it flowed out of me. In the process, I believe I invented my own stanza, which arrived organically on the page.
I have a formal poetry background and, if you were to read my past books, you could scan almost every poem and see that there's some metrical system behind each one. In this case, I employed these five-line hanging indent stanzas or staggered stanzas. I had never really used these indentations before, but these lines offered me breath and space. I started writing in lines of five across the page. It wasn't conscious. The last line of the first poem repeats as the first line of the next poem, so it creates a bracelet of poems. I originally drafted twenty-four sections of the long poem, but then realized I could round off “Heritage” in fourteen sections.
Wow!
After “Heritage XIV,” I felt I had to contain it. I haven't had a chance to say this to anybody, but what I love is that I was able to circle back -- so “Heritage I” begins with the line: “Once I had a name/for everything I possessed. . . .” and then I was able to conclude “Heritage XIV” with the line, “Now/ I have a name”/ 𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 𐓘𐓜𐓣́͘𐓟 which is how you say “I have a name” in Osage. So, if I introduce myself in Osage, I would say, “Elise Paschen, 𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 𐓘𐓜𐓣́͘𐓟”
I love that the poem naturally circled back.
So that's Part I.
I was very conscious about the architecture of this book as I wanted it to be read from beginning to end. I hoped that the reader would enter the momentum of the narrative. I also endeavored to create a contrapuntal rhythm, counterpoint and tension, and a cessation of tension. So, I consciously planned the journey of the book. In Part II, there are nature poems (during the pandemic, I wrote many poems inspired by birds and plants), but then we also see this intimation that something dark starts entering the poems.
They're very personal.
And there’s my anti-Trump poem, which I wrote when he was first in office, which concludes with something very personal that happened to me when I was much younger. Part II then concludes with a poem I wrote in 2018 called “Kitihawa Speaks.” Kitihawa was a Potawatomi woman who, with her husband, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, is considered one of the original founders of Chicago.
I wrote Part III last, and I’d like to come back to that section.
I conceived the book’s structure in five parts, intimating the five acts of the play. (I just now realize that I was again working in “fives.”)
Part IV is very personal as well. Part IV comes from another prose book that I had intended to write as a memoir. The idea was to intersperse chapters of a summer from childhood when my mother left my father and took me with her to France, where she met and fell in love with the ballet dancer, Rudolf Nureyev.
Wow! Who wouldn’t fall in love with him?
Exactly.
Wonderful.
It was going to be a prose memoir, which I put aside. “Blood Wolf Moon” has, in the making, many years behind it. In 2013, after my mother died, I decided I was not going to write that memoir. We can let our readers see what happens to the speaker in these poems in Part IV.
I want to know more about the poison tree. But yes, and then Part V?
And then, Part V ends by returning to the Osage. “Wahzhazhe” originally was a section of that long poem, “Heritage,” but then I separated it from the rest and placed that poem at the beginning of Part V.
Hmm.
I wrote “Sumac in Pawhuska,” “Trot Song,” and “Peyote Button Necklace” when I was back in Fairfax at our Sesquicentennial celebration. As I mentioned, I am always inspired when I return to the Osage Nation.
The final poems that I wrote in the section were inspired by the Osage Dictionary. I've drawn from the Osage Dictionaries over many years, and entries from Francis La Flesche's “Osage Dictionary” helped in the composition of my poem, “Wi’-gi-e” (“Bestiary, 2009).”Wi’-gi-e” means “prayer” in Osage. It’s the poem that employs the line: “During Xtha-cka Zhi-ga Tse-the, the Killer of the Flowers Moon” which helped to inspire the title of David Grann’s book and then Martin Scorsese’s film.
The poems that conclude “Blood Wolf Moon” arose from Carolyn Quintero's “Osage Dictionary.” I created a system going backward in the Osage alphabet, allowing the poems to emerge from the language. They, originally, were written in two columns, which included the phonetic spelling of the Osage words and the English translations. Very recently, our Osage Nation created its own orthography, and I was then able to add a third column in orthography. Christopher Côté from the Osage Nation Language Department helped to translate the orthography for me.
With regard to the poem “Wahzhazhe,” while proofing the manuscript of “Blood Wolf Moon,” I was able to translate the Osage words into orthography by using the Osage Nation’s new online Orthography dictionary. So I took the phonetic words from Quintero’s dictionary and found the translations in orthography.
Out of my own curiosity, I went to the Osage dictionary website. It's amazing.
Isn't it incredible?
One doesn’t appreciate how important a dictionary is until you don’t have one. It was wonderful.
Yes, it's amazing.
Exciting that you are using it to make poetry.
I asked Christopher Côté to double-check my orthography, so I know that those Osage words in the poem, “Wahzhazhe,” are correct! I have been taking Osage Nation Language classes over these past two years, and it’s still a learning experience.
So-- going back to describe Part III, specifically, “After ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’” and “The Terrors.” The first poem in Part III, “The Terrors,” originally was an essay I had written when I was a Frances Allen Fellow at the Newberry Library (in 2001). At that time, I had hoped to write a prose book about the Reign of Terror (1921-1926), a horrific period of American history. When I was working on this manuscript, I decided to turn the longer essay into a prose poem. The prose poem braids together the speaker’s night terrors as well as generational trauma.
The poem, “After ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’” is one of the last poems I wrote for “Blood Wolf Moon.” By the time this interview comes out, we can say it will be included in “Best American Poetry 2025.” The editor, Terence Winch, chose the poem after originally reading it in Poetry Magazine. I wrote the poem after seeing the film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a second time, and it's one of my favorite poems in the book.
The third poem in Part III is called “In Memoriam.” When I was growing up, my mother would talk about her cousin Pearl Bigheart, who, my mother would say, was one of the richest Osages because she had inherited several oil headrights.
Hmm.
Pearl inherited these headrights because, tragically, her family was killed during the Reign of Terror. My mother told me this many years ago, and I often wondered about Pearl. At the time, I never asked my mother whether Pearl was alive. My mother died in 2013, and over these past years, I had been on a quest to find out more about Pearl Bigheart. I asked several of my relatives, but no one seemed to know about Pearl. As it turns out, I discovered more about her through Facebook.
Cindy Gross, Pearl Bigheart’s granddaughter, mentioned something about Pearl on my cousin Russ Tallchief’'s Facebook page. I reached out to Cindy and then interviewed her. Thanks to that talk and some research, I figured out that my great-grandmother, Eliza Bigheart's brother, was George Bigheart. George Bigheart tragically was murdered during the Reign of Terror. I discovered this as I was about to hand in my book. “In Memoriam” is based on a newspaper article, and it’s a found poem about my great-uncle, George Bigheart, Pearl’s father.
That's incredible. What's so challenging about interviewing you is that there are so many different layers to this book. It is important to have an appreciation of how much craft is put into a book of poetry. Your book has everything from the historical to the lyrical, to the craft of constructing such a book. It's somewhat overwhelming. So, it's extraordinary.
So let's go back to “Heritage I” and tell me a little bit about the first line.
I want to talk about names and why names are important. I was struck by the first line because it seems so devastating: “Once I had a name for everything I possess. But now I'm silent, afraid to trespass.”
Wow! It was just such a powerful line.
I never thought about this. As this book has not yet been out in the world, thank you for drawing my attention to that observation. I'm pretty sure that I wrote that line in my first draft, so it just poured out onto the page.
Wow!
When I wrote this first poem, I had been reading the work of a dear friend of mine who's no longer with us, Lucie Brock Broido. Her ghost haunts “Heritage I.” I had been re-reading her work and also had been reading Barry Lopez's book about wolves. Those wolves arrive in the poem as well as intimations of the Icelandic landscape. (Our family had visited Iceland the summer before, and the topography and history continue to inspire me.) As you can see, there are several Iceland-inspired poems in Part Two, including “Lupine Nocturne.”
Yes. And I love the lupines. I mean, the lupines are just extraordinary flowers, and it's so powerful that the word “lupine” means “wolf.” “Lupine” comes from “lupus,” which means “wolf” in Latin. All of these ideas are wonderfully interconnected. But this idea that “once I had a name for everything I possessed” echoes to me that you used English language to name things because that was all that you had.
Hmm.
And now, as you're reflecting on who you are, your past, and all of these memories, you are at a loss for words, and you are in a process of finding them in poetry and the Osage language.
Hmm.
Is that fair to say?
Yes, I love that. What an insightful reading of that line.
I'm a Spanish speaker. So it's the same thing for Latinos in terms of thinking about reclaiming your language and reclaiming your stories and history. You are always trying to protect your name. So I'm very respectful of names. You mention in your work that “Tall Chief” is sometimes two words and sometimes it's one word. It is even pronounced differently. You had to protect yourself from the racism of what it meant to be Indigenous in a white world.
I'm imputing these ideas onto your poetry, but I'm curious about what your experience was?
Thank you so much. I deeply appreciate the way you are reading my work.
Yes, all those ideas are absolutely true. As I mentioned, I am trying to learn the Osage language. I've been taking Osage language classes, and it’s challenging to learn the orthography. It would be wonderful one day to speak Osage, but, in the meantime, I would like to reclaim our language in written form to bring it to life on the page in a poem. This is very important to me.
With regard to Tall Chief. Yes. What happened with the evolution of our name is that, originally, our family's name was two words, Tall Chief. My poem, “Heritage V,” refers to this and how my mother and aunt, attending school in Beverly Hills, were teased about their name. As you say, naming and names figure prominently in this long poem. As you point out, the girls are teased in “Heritage V,” and then in “Heritage VI “ -- “TALL CHIEF” is written in two words on the marquee. I continue exploring this idea of naming throughout the poems, culminating in the name changes in “Heritage XIV,” a poem which begins, “Always a name change:/ People of the Middle Waters,/ the tribe known as Ni-u-kon-ska,/was called Osage/by French fur trappers. . . .”
To me, it seems so tragic.
With regard to my mother’s stage name – my mother was born Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief. Because of the Russian influence on classical ballet, early in her career, they wanted her to change her name to Maria Tallchiev. She decided to change her first name to Maria but said she would keep her last name. I’m not sure whether she then wrote her last name as one word, Tallchief. It’s confusing, right? I recently texted my cousin Russ Tallchief, asking about this, because I had been looking again at a photo of my great-grandparents’ gravestone, which says Tallchief, in one word.
Russ said that members of our family spell our name in different ways – some use two words and others, one word, but they might capitalize “Chief.”
Hmm.
Yes.
And I apologize for not knowing. But was Osage always an oral language?
Yes, it was always oral.
I see. And so the power of your book, in a sense, is that now it's getting written.
Yes, thank you for saying that.
Yes, that's incredible.
These dictionaries were all transcriptions. So they transcribed the Osage elders speaking, and that's how they created the dictionary.
But that's true. I hadn't thought about it that way. Thank you.
Yes.
I’m learning a lot from you during our interview.
Well, I'm so grateful to have read “Heritage.” It feels like it could be a screenplay as well.
We could work with Disney on the screenplay!
There you go. It seems like such an incredible story that your mom becomes this prima ballerina, and all the intrigue that follows her.
I had this conversation with Kaveh Akbar. He mentions Michelangelo, who was a sculptor who knew that the David or the Pieta were already in the marble.
Yes.
He just needed to release it.
Yes.
It is such an interesting form that you're almost dancing with it. It's interesting that you're also describing your mom as a ballerina because it feels like the poetry is dancing in a sense.
Hmm.
But these are my ideas that I have, because I also interviewed Layli Long Soldier, and she talks about the importance of the form of poetry. Poetry is more than words. In fact, words are weak vessels in a sense, to express what you need to say. The form helps you in that.
So it's exciting that text is all over the page. The lines are limited in terms of six words or five words, and then you use Italics and the Osage language. It’s an incredible piece of work. It's really incredible.
Thank you.
It's an also an important book. Give me a sense of what you're feeling now that you've created this book of poetry.
Well, I'm excited about this book, and I’m excited for it to be in the world. I love hearing your response, so it makes me happy that you could see and understand what I was doing.
I was thinking that, when I ran the Poetry Society of America, I was able to promote poets and poetry because that was my job. With my work as an author, I've written or edited these books that I love, and I’ve let each one take its course. I always experience joy and pride when every book comes out. This book, though, is different for me, and I was trying to figure out why. It’s because I’d like to share this work about the Osages and about our Osage history, and about my own family's history. It’s a cause I feel I need to champion. I experienced this same kind of excitement when I was running the Poetry Society of America and putting poetry at the crossroads of American life. I would like this book, “Blood Wolf Moon,” to be out in the world and for as many people as possible to read it.
Yes, that's how I feel about this. I was just interviewing Kimberly Blaeser, and she has a very personal poem in her book, “Ancient Light.” Its themes echo in your poem “No” and others. Men and society in general must understand the impact they have on women. There is a lot of rage that's not being acknowledged or expressed.
I appreciated your book in terms of how you handle these things that are very personal and I'm sure, difficult to write about. All of them are difficult to tell, but who else will do it?
Yes, I agree. We share all this rage that we, especially now, are feeling during this time in our country, and I'm grateful that I can channel this emotion by focusing on my book and on the story it tells. It was a catharsis for me to write the poem, “No,” which, so to speak, is the tip of the iceberg.
These emotions are further explored in the poems of Part IV -- what might have occurred when I was a child, which I haven't been able yet to figure out. But it’s there, and I write about it, and over many years, I’ve experienced night terrors about it. I had explored these dreams in my first book, “Infidelities.” It's something that has haunted me and, I believe, is tied to generational trauma.
No doubt.
So, yes, a lot of things are happening there.
Well, congratulations on a beautiful book. Any advice you have for emerging writers and poets?
My advice to young or emerging poets is to read as much as possible and to immerse yourselves in poetry. I also encourage you to probe your curiosity. When you write a poem, you can delve deeply into your subject matter. Plunge into the topic that you're thinking about and take advantage of the diction that you might find and the vocabulary that might be different. When I was younger and working on a poem, I'd go to the library to find my books. Now, research is at our fingertips.
I do want to ask you what intrigued you about “Poison Tree”? Because that was a poem that I struggled with.
Well, I didn't know anything about the most poisonous tree on the planet. I had to look it up. I didn't even know that the tree existed. I was just curious how you were tying that danger. And then you say, “and only child, I disappeared behind the page.” It harkens back to your first sentence in Heritage. And “my mother mastered shadows to conceal the ache.” There's this danger of the tree that could almost kill you. It also talks about open wounds. “My mother dabbed iodine salt air, she said, will heal the ache.” And this whole concept of how do we get through grief? And how do we get through pain?
Even when it's in the present and still, you still resist by living.
It was just a very beautiful poem, right?
Thank you. So, quickly, “Poison Tree” is a ghazal (pronounced ghuzzle). Did you recognize the form?
No, I did not.
The ghazal is one of the oldest poetic forms still being practiced, which has its roots in Urdu, Persian, Turkish, and Arabic poetry.
Oh!
It is quite complex because, if you notice, the ghazal is composed of couplets, and you repeat the refrain or radif at the end of every second line. The refrain recurs twice in the opening stanza. Preceding the refrain, you employ a rhyme word or qafia. I don't know if you noticed the rhymes.
Yes!
The refrain in “Poison Tree” is “of ache,” and the rhyme words include: “manchineel,” “meals,” “conceal,” “surreal,” “heal,” and “steal.” At the end of the poem, you have a mahkta in which you refer to yourself, the speaker, or the writer of the poem, with your own name, and that's where “Strange passion, steal the ache” arrives. The original version of “Poison Tree” focused primarily on the machineel tree as well as on the natural world surrounding that tree. I was preoccupied with the idea expressed in the third stanza: “dangerous beauty a surreal ache.”
I initially had envisioned “Poison Tree” to be included in a botanic series of poems. As I’d mentioned, I had been writing different plant poems and then I was trying to figure out how do I fit those poems into the trajectory of the book. As I revised “Poison Tree,” I decided to weave it into the book’s narrative. The stanza: “An only child, I disappeared behind the page./My mother mastered shadows to conceal the ache. . . . “ was in the poem’s original version. As I revised the poem, I emphasized the mother’s presence more emphatically in the poem so that it would add another dimension to the book’s propulsion.
Oh, you were very successful with that. I have to admit that. I'm very new to poetry so I was feeling very grateful and humbled that I would be reading an advanced copy of your book. I knew what a gifted and knowledgeable poet you are, so I wouldn't have known a lot of these craft elements of it. I'm not very sophisticated in that, but the technique almost disappears when I read the poetry because you are so gifted with your craft. Indeed, it only adds to the artistry of your thoughts and ideas. It gives it more weight. It's almost like listening to classical music. You know when you can listen to music, and it's powerful. But if you learn more about music, then you understand how difficult it is to make that sound in that way. Thank you so much for explaining that poem.
Thank you for asking about the poem!
It was such a pleasure meeting and discussing your work. Tell us a bit about your writer's journey. How did you become a poet?
I was a backstage baby, and I lived in the world of my imagination. My mother was the prima ballerina, Maria Tallchief, and, as a child, I traveled many places with her. Once I learned how to read, my nose was buried in books. When I was in second grade, my parents gave me the Oxford Book of Poetry. I became fascinated with poems and memorized them, especially Shakespeare excerpts from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” My favorite poem was ”The Tyger” by William Blake. I wrote my first poem in second grade, which was published in our school literary magazine. I was fortunate to discover what I loved to do when I was very young.
Since that time, I have been writing. I produced and starred in plays I wrote in fourth grade and continued writing through high school, where I studied with an amazing English teacher named Bill Duffy, who taught modern British literature. That’s when I discovered the poets, T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats. I continued to write poems throughout high school and then attended Harvard University. It was very competitive to be a writer at Harvard, but I was admitted into a freshman poetry workshop with Alan Williamson. I continued to study poetry throughout college, and I also joined the “Harvard Advocate,” where I eventually served as the poetry editor.
Sophomore year, I took a poetry workshop with the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney and, among many matters related to poetry, Seamus taught me the importance of revision. When I attended a one-on-one meeting with him, he said, “Elise, you must go to Houghton Library and look up Yeats's manuscripts,” which I did, and, as a result, I began to understand the necessity of revision of my own work. I also eventually wrote my doctoral dissertation on William Butler Yeats's revisions of his female persona poems at Oxford University.
Another turning point in my poetry education that sophomore year was studying versification or prosody with Robert Fitzgerald, who translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. I started understanding that, as in learning the scales of the piano, a writer also needed to understand prosody and metrical systems of sound. In Fitzgerald’s class, I would write a poem from the outside in, as we would have exercises in writing sapphics or Anglo-Saxon strong stress meter or blank verse. Eventually, I would write a poem from the inside out, composing a first draft rather quickly, after which I could discern what configuration or form that poem would take. This process recalls what you brought up about Michelangelo – “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set [her] free.”
I continued pursuing my poetry education at Magdalen College, Oxford, where I received an M. Phil. in 20th Century Literature and, as I just mentioned, a D. Phil. on William Butler Yeats’s revisions. I was fortunate to have applied to Magdalen College, where my mentor was the poet and W.H. Auden expert, John Fuller. Because of John, many poets attended Magdalen College, so we had a strong community there. John was the publisher of the Sycamore Press, and he published my first chapbook, Houses: Coasts. I believe I was the first American woman he published. Thanks to John, several of us revived and co-edited Oxford Poetry, a journal that W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice had edited.
So yes, that gives you a sense of my poetry journey.
How did you decide to apply to Oxford?
I always had dreamed of attending Oxford University. Perhaps it was inspired by all the British novelists I read, particularly Thomas Hardy. I was fortunate because I only applied to one program after college, and it was the M. Phil. program in 20th-century literature, which focused on modernist novelists and poets. My M. Phil. thesis was on “Yeats’s Revisions of his Female Persona Poems in ‘The Winding Stair’.” I then was invited to turn this thesis into my doctoral dissertation. I hadn’t initially planned to pursue a doctorate. John Kelly supervised my thesis, and I was able to study James Joyce with Richard Ellmann and W.H. Auden with John Fuller. I loved spending long hours in the Bodleian Library studying and writing. I was surrounded by this community of poets. It was a dream, and I treasured that time at Oxford.
It also turns out I was the longest-standing editor of Oxford Poetry because I co-edited the journal for five years!
Oh!
Others were coming and going, and I was there doing my master's degree and then my doctorate. Some time ago, we celebrated the 100th birthday of Oxford Poetry, and the current editors said, “You're the longest-standing editor.” I don't know if I still am, but that is what they told me.
That is so wonderful. How did you find out about the program?
I researched and discovered that Oxford offered a program in 20th-century literature. I never considered enrolling in an MFA program. I thought that to write poetry, I needed to study other writers. I was fortunate to have ended up with so many poets at Magdalen College.
John orchestrated the Florio Society, so we would get together and exchange poems on a regular basis.
My time at Oxford was, yes, an important period in my life as a writer.
Was it a difficult decision to decide to go for the PhD? The reason I ask is that writers should pursue as much education as they can. So, I'm curious about your journey in terms of making that decision.
It was easy for me because I did the M. Phil. After all, this is what I wanted to study.
I fell in love with Oxford and also fell in love with a poet.
And what happened was that the committee gave me a high mark on my M. Phil. thesis, and they said to me, “Would you consider turning it into a doctoral dissertation?”
Wonderful.
The M. Phil. degree was a two-year program, so I took classes and sat for exams. During the term, you would meet one-on-one with your tutors and discuss your papers with them. And then, once you were approved for the doctorate, you wrote your doctoral dissertation.
Since you have dedicated your life to poetry, what is poetry to you?
I have been fortunate to have been able to devote my life to poetry, as a scholar, a student poet, a poetry editor, a published poet, an anthologist, an arts administrator (running the Poetry Society of America), a professor, and also as a Board member of organizations such as the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation and Indigenous Nations Poets, among others.
The definition of poetry, for me, constantly changes. After writing “Blood Wolf Moon,” I would say that poetry allows me to translate complex and historic subject matter into compressed language, imagery, and sound. Pages of prose can be condensed into lines or stanzas of a poem. Poetry offers a way to catch your breath and play with space across the expanse of a page. In “Blood Wolf Moon,” poetry shows me how to channel the language of my ancestors.
Thank you so much for your time and patience with my questions. I have truly enjoyed it.
Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City and a poetry book inspired by a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers' Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He participated in Story Studio's Novel in a Year Program. He is a first-year fiction creative writing student at the Institute of American Indian Arts' MFA Program. His poetry is published in Huizache. His other interviews and book reviews can be found at La Bloga, the world's longest-established Chicana-Chicano, Latina-Latino literary blog, Chapter House's Storyteller’s Corner, Full Stop, Pleiades Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review. He is a graduate of Cornell, Princeton, and UC Berkeley.
Photo credit: Beowolf Sheehan
