CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with Daniel Gleason
Rappahannock Review Poetry Editors: As an audience, we love how “List of Prayers That Count” is engaged in an examination of religion! What inspired you to create an introspective narrative from this viewpoint? In what ways, if any, does this come from personal experience?
Daniel Gleason: The poem originates from my personal experiences with prayer, but since the poem has no first-person speaker, I’m also aiming for something larger and more communal. Many of the “prayers” in the poem require communal activity more than personal expression. As a child, I heard prayers, which I naturally copied, but as my attention to language began to become more focused, I started wondering what my prayers really meant and what effect they had. If you believe that prayer is direct communication with God, paying attention to what you’re saying might be a good idea, I thought. So I began to wonder if something more connected to everyday life and more communal could be a way of communicating with God. In a way, this poem is an attempt to try on a new mode of praying, something like “praying without ceasing,” but with halting, unconventional, and at times broken prayers.
RR: We really enjoy the set of diverse images that characterize this piece, from listening to country songs to filling out absentee ballots. What led you to create these particular moments in the poem?
DG: The diverse set of images in the poem are all drawn from life in the small town in Tennessee where I live. But I hope they also feel like they could be drawn from the lives of ordinary Americans all over the country. Each image centers on a feeling of connection, even if that connection includes tension or imperfection. Hopefully, by connecting these unassuming images to the more elevated vocabulary of traditional prayer (intercession, lamentation, supplication…), the reader gets to reimagine some of the everyday pleasures of life. I also wanted to keep it light and avoid getting too serious. Long, serious prayers stop being prayers at some point.
RR: When writing this poem, did you find it challenging to make connections between the world and religion? Was there trial and error or did you feel they came quite naturally?
DG: All of the images came quite naturally, and I composed most of the first draft aloud while driving around town in my little ’98 Nissan Frontier. Once I developed the structure, the repetition propelled the language. I started to treat the structure as a template, almost like a mad-lib, that I could repeat over and over. I wrote way more than I needed, so the main revision that I needed to do after the first couple of drafts was just to hack it down to size.
RR: We understand that you teach literature and creative writing classes. How does teaching impact your own writing?
DG: Yes, teaching contributes to my writing more than I can express. My students help me keep it real. Observing their relationships to language and to literature helps me recognize what is valuable and what is not in a piece. Young people are good at smoking out fakes, so that gives me extra motivation to write something that feels credible. My students are also very good at finding things I’ve never read and making me read them, so I’m always trying to keep up with them.
RR: Do you have plans for any more upcoming work?
DG: Yes! This poem, “List of Prayers That Count,” is the title poem of a collection that I have started looking to place. Two dozen or so of the poems in the manuscript have been published in literary magazines and journals, and I’m hoping to find the right home for the book. If you or someone you know would be interested in collaborating with me, I’m always happy to meet fellow travelers! You can email me at: daniel.gleason@bryan.edu.
Read “List of Prayers that Count” by Daniel Gleason in Issue 12.1