Janet I. Buck is the author of three collections of poetry: Calamity's Quilt, Reefs We Live, and Bookmarks in a Hurricane. Last summer, Word Wrangler Publishing released her first book of humor entitled Desideratum's Doggie Dish, and the year 2001 has already delivered her first audio CD of poetry and music. Before the Rose is available from Art Villa Records and her other work can be accessed through links at http://www.janetbuck.com. Janet has only been writing poetry, fiction, and humor for a little over three years, but she has published over 2000 poems and essays in print and Internet journals world-wide. Buck has won a number of literary awards including the H.G. Wells Award for Literary Excellence. In addition, her work appeared last April at the United Nations Exhibit Hall in New York City, before going on tour to France, Brazil, Japan, Vietnam, and Australia. In a recent interview with the The Paumanok Review, Ms. Buck shared some insights regarding her sudden leaps up the always wobbly and tenuous ladder of literary success.
TPR: What was the thing which pushed you into submitting your work for the first time?
Janet: I'd like to say that it was a miraculous moment when
I knew I had written something of great interest to the universe, but that
is hardly the case. I started writing as a response to grief: mine and that
of a very close friend. For fifteen years I had been teaching freshman composition
and literature and telling my students that writing was a healthy and productive
channel of catharsis. It struck me, I suppose, that I was setting a fairly
pathetic example.
Jeannette was suffering two hideous operations almost back-to-back, and
I came home from her hospital room and sat down with a pen. Since we had
both suffered complications of an orthopedic nature, I thought writing something
about my disability (which I had lived with but never spoken of for forty
years) might help her feel a little less alone in her plight. When "Phantom
Pain" and "The Legless Dance" were completed, I read them to Jeannette over
the phone. Before I read them to her, I told her that no one on earth would
ever read these pieces‹they were too painful, too whiny,
and too honest. When I finished reading them, she was in tears and very
adamant that I change my attitude: "You owe it to others who have suffered
to share your strength and your story and your clarity."
As a thank you note, she sent me a subscription
to Poets & Writers. I made up my mind to send them off right
away, just so I wouldn't change my mind. I was one of those writers who
was lucky enough to receive a stroke or two of encouragement right away
in terms of publication, so my fever for sharing began climbing. And the
circle of a writer's world began its long, slow, unstoppable pulse: write,
rewrite, send, say "oh well" to the "no ways!"...and jump up and down the
best you can with only one leg when you get something accepted. My success,
if you call it that, is grounded, I believe, in two things: the hoarding
of observation and sheer stubbornness. I don't think most poets are intellectuals.
I think they are "feelers," and they must proceed with their writing lives
as if their emotions have merit. I spent forty years denying the fabric
and seams of my disability because I thought it was of no interest to universal
eyes, and feared (I think) that a dissertation on missing limbs and a plethora
of anatomical disasters would amount to nothing more than a pool side chat
at a pity party for one. In retrospect, I find it interesting that "pride"
kept secrets of my demons from coming to the surface; yet, I had to tread
the water of layered ghosts for a good length of time before I ever discovered
that there was anything there beyond the confines of meretricious shame
and self-absorption.
TPR: Since you often write about such personal grief, it must be difficult to accept rejection; how do you handle it?
Janet: First off, I don't save my rejection slips or hang
them on the bathroom mirror. I record them and get on with life. When I
began writing and submitting, I told myself out loud: "If you're going to
let rejection ruin the joy of a day, you have no business doing this." I
also tend to take disappointment lightly. When you've had four hip replacements,
a leg amputated, a shoulder revised, and a few other modest disasters in
the health department, the font on one scrap of paper isn't much of a deterrent
when you're going after a dream.
I try to use rejection as an opportunity to re-group, revise, and seek out
more suitable channels of exposure. I listen carefully to those who comment
on my work in a constructive manner, but try not to consider rejection as
a dismissal of the fabric of my life or a kick in emotion's groin. It is
very difficult to separate the Siamese Twins of rejection and disappointment,
but it must be done. When someone offers suggestions, I always pay attention,
because their complaints are usually a reflection of my own problems in
terms of making a piece "accessible." They may not offer a viable solution
or one I concur with, but they will get me to consider other avenues and
strategies. There is really no room for egotism and heavy doses of self-defense
in a writer's career. We are responsible for reaching our readers; I feel
most editors are also aspiring to that end.
TPR: Do you write full-time, and what are are your strategies for
over-coming the albatross of writer's block?
Janet: Yes. I write every day, usually completing two or more poems.
I submit every day as well. I stopped teaching three years ago under the
auspices of "taking a break" and have had the luxury of not having to return
to the classroom. I miss my involvement with students, seeing them grow
as writers and thinkers, but I don't miss the faculty meetings and the assorted
headaches of academic life. I work harder at writing than I have worked
at anything in my life. However, most of my frustrations have been with
the promotion and distribution of material rather than its creation. Like
most writers, I have to remind myself daily that art is not about dollar
signs; it is about wrestling with the grit of honesty and coming home to
comprehension.
A lot of editors and poets have asked me
about writer's block and the gears of my creative process. Susan Ellis,
editor of Moondance, posed roughly the same question to me
about a month ago. As I told her, "The biggest hurdle most writers have
is self-doubt. We worry that the little engine of 'could' is actually a
'can't' dressed up in need and determination. You have to begin every writing
adventure with a sense of your own innate ability to transfer emotion and
image to a context of embodiment and purpose. My writing process is usually
a four-step limp: grab, gather, think, and revise until it's musical enough
to be put away for the evening. After a piece sits 
overnight,
I can usually spot its flaws. The writing process is not all that different
from cleaning the kitchen floor: you pick up the salient chunks of a messy
life, sweep its attending dust into a pan, soap down the floor, rinse it,
let it dry, then buff it 'til it shines. However corny it sounds, the key
here is getting down on your knees. And the more you do it, the easier it
is. Many people ask me if I have a 'special formula' or a place I withdraw
to. While I do the actual assembling of stanzas in my study, on a keyboard,
I am 'writing' in my head just about every waking hour of my day. I'm always
jotting things down in the middle of doing something else, and I always
bow to the luxury of recording an observation or an image or an idea. Writing,
to me, is not a habit that is reserved for a time of day, or a certain room
in the house. I've been known to compose four or five lines of a poem on
the back of a bank deposit slip, while I'm sitting at a stop light or even
driving through town. I collect words all day long and then force myself
to sit down and create a context. The practice of doing this day after day
has taught me that the well of inspiration is not a dry entity."
TPR: What has been your proudest moment in publishing?
Janet: It's a three-way tie between standing in the lobby of The United Nations Exhibit Hall in New York City reading my poem "Acrylic Thighs" into a television camera, having my work annointed as a subject of study in a high school English class, and receiving a short letter from another amputee who had read one of my disability poems. She wrote, "Janet, you have taken five years of my buried life and put it into one stanza. If you can walk through your grief, I suppose I should stop running from mine. Thank you seems a weak retort." From that moment on, my pen had a reason to move.
Five Poems from Janet
Buck
Audio Poem (MP3): "Umbrellas"
from the new CD Before the Rose
