CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with Elizabeth Fogle 

Rappahannock Review Poetry Editors: A second person point-of-view is used throughout this piece, which can be seen in images such as “you wait in one room” and “table so narrow you should’ve slipped off.” How do you see the use of second person functioning in this poem?

Elizabeth Fogle: Typically, when I use second person, I’m choosing to include the reader in the experience of whatever it is I’m writing about. However, in this instance, I used the second person to distance myself from the subject matter. Since the poem is cataloging true-to-life experiences (a few years ago I underwent treatment for stage one breast cancer, including a unilateral mastectomy) I needed a way to explore the self-as-subject without the voice being too sentimental. In the end, I think the adoption of the second person ends up leading to more audience inclusion, but that wasn’t why I made the choice. I just needed to get out of my head and see things from an outside perspective.

RR: This piece tends to the emotionality of a clinical procedure. Why focus here?

EF: During my treatments, I really dissociated, focusing on just getting through and not dwelling on what-ifs. I think that for some cancer survivors, when we talk about “fighting,” that’s really what it is, since we don’t have a choice but to get through and “be strong” or whatever slogan you want to lay on that lonely work. After, as I recovered, that’s when I allowed emotions to return. As I was going through it, I did a lot of journaling, but it was all very clinical and procedural. As I looked back from a place of health and normalcy, I made the choice to turn those journal entries into creative output, letting the emotions back in along with thoughts I’d pushed down, not even daring to journal about them at the time. As I think about it, it feels very much like what Wordsworth wrote about in his preface to the Lyrical Ballads, the whole “emotion recollected in tranquility” thing. But when you’re living it and writing it, you’re just doing the best you can.

RR: This piece explores the medical process in nine different stages, with a slightly different poetic voice each section. What made you decide to section each stage of the process and depict the stages so vocally distinctly from each other?

EF: The poem originally started as a short list poem (the vestiges of that are in the stage titles). But after a few drafts, I knew it wasn’t working. I then planned on creating separate poems of all the lines, but they still wanted to live together on the page which was surprising to me as it’s a very rare thing for me to write a single poem as long as this. Some of the language ended up coming straight from my medical records and some of it is more imaginative and surreal, but it still has a list-like progression to it which I think accounts for the variance tone. They’re all still sort of separate concepts speaking under one umbrella. The original list poem was a sonnet of sorts—another thing I sometimes do when I’m composing is start in a form (often sonnets) and then allow it to spill out into free verse once the kernel of the poem arrives—so I’m surprised it ended up at nine sections instead of fourteen. I have another sectioned poem I’m currently working on is settled at nine, so maybe it’s a form that will stick around for a bit.

RR: You teach literature and writing at Penn State Erie; how has being an educator influenced your writing?

EF: I mostly teach Technical Writing to engineering and science students and my approach is grounded in economy and audience, two things I really value and struggle with in my own writing. I also love revising and know that’s where the real and most meaningful work comes, and I like to emphasize revision to my students. So many think they must be smart the first go-round and that’s so much pressure, especially for many science and applied science students who are already uncomfortable with writing. If you give yourself permission to revise and revise and revise, you can relax and not get so worried about the working being “good” and just give in to trusting the process. I guess that’s what I try to do is teach students to trust the process, which in turn helps me trust the process and be patient with my own writing.

RR: You mention finding inspiration in family and your home of West Pennsylvania, are there any specific locations in West Pennsylvania which have given you the most inspiration?

EF: You’d think that living by Lake Erie, the Great Lakes themselves would inspire me, but honestly, they are so big that I haven’t been able to figure a way into writing about them. I love rambling in the woods not far from our house with the dog and my family, especially exploring creeks; Pennsylvania has such an inspiring network of creeks and waterways. Walnut Creek is one of my favorite places and I get a lot of inspiration from the water and the rock formations. There’s a lot of shale there and sometimes we even find marine fossils imprinted in the dinner plate sized rocks. I don’t know how much of it enters my work, but visiting there always helps me find words when I’m struggling and reminds me that time or life or whatever is a moving body we’re lucky enough to stand in. It constantly shows me how beautiful the world can be even when so many horrible things are happening. It makes me look and see.