One Writer's Process: J. Patrick Lewis

By the time J. Patrick Lewis reached his fortieth birthday, Lady Poetry had "seized him by the nape of the neck and wouldn't let go."

Since then Lewis (or Pat, as he prefers to be called by friends) has written more than sixty books, including The Tsar and the Amazing Cow, Heroes and She-roes: Poems of Amazing and Everyday Heroes, Once Upon A Tomb: Gravely Humorous Verses, The Underwear Salesman and Other Odd-Job Verses, Blackbeard the Pirate King, and two new titles due out this fall, The Brothers' War: Civil War Voices in Verse and Michelangelo's World.

Whether writing poetry or prose, the breadth and diversity of Lewis' work is astonishing. He can switch from spooky rhymes to nonsensical ones in seconds, and transport a reader from sober images to hysterical laughter in the time it takes to turn a page. His clever and playful verses have helped readers fall in love with poetry, just as Lewis fell in love with words "all over again" when he switched from writing about economics to writing poems.

When Lewis isn't visiting classrooms around the country, he spends his days writing 8-9 hours. But ninety-eight percent of what he produces, Lewis claims (quoting John Ciardi), isn't worth publishing.

"You wake up every day thinking 'Today I am going to write great poetry,'" writes Lewis. "Do you succeed? No. But that's not the point. Trying is the point. Nothing succeeds like failure."

For Lewis, poetry is "a blind date with enchantment," and his enchantment with the process of writing is evident in his thoughts about writing which he was kind enough to share with Wordswimmer.

Wordswimmer: If writing is like swimming...how do you get into the water each day?

Lewis: Feet first, swan dive, belly-flop, any way at all to get into the pool. Swimming is actually an apt metaphor for writing, especially for me because I struggle at swimming and I struggle at writing. But it’s a lovely struggle, satisfying in every way. People ask me (and all writers), "Where do you get your ideas for a poem?" The idea for a poem never begins, for me, with an idea. A poem begins with a word or three. To extend the metaphor, I am trying to make words do every stroke imaginable. Sometimes the strokes fail--most of the time, in fact--but that’s never a reason to sit and watch the other swimmers.

Wordswimmer: What keeps you afloat...for short work? For longer work?

Lewis: I’m most often interested in doing a collection of poems on a certain subject: extinct animals, black Americans, outstanding women, Christmas, libraries, twins, the Civil War, blues legend Robert Johnson, et al. If an anthologist or educator asks me for a poem on a specific subject, I’ll put the collection aside and get to work on the poem. But the brass ring for me is an entire book of poems on subjects as widely and wildly different from each other as they can be.

Wordswimmer: How do you keep swimming through dry spells?

Lewis: I rarely get caught in the deep end when writing. Occasionally, after I’ve finished a manuscript, I begin to think, The well has finally run dry. But my experience has been that that lasts for two, maybe three weeks, and then I’m off and running on another fool’s errand to another eccentric subject.

Wordswimmer: What's the hardest part of swimming?

Lewis: Keeping it new, as Pound said.

Wordswimmer: How do you overcome obstacles, problems, when swimming alone?

Lewis: Many writers benefit from writers’ groups and creative writing courses. I’ve never done either of those, perhaps because I’m naturally a loner when it comes to writing. But I must tell you that an amazing thing happened to me when I was born: I brought a dear friend along with me. My polymath twin brother is my first reader, my only editor, at least until I am brave enough to send the manuscript on its way. I trust his judgment implicitly and have benefited from it enormously.

Wordswimmer: What's the part of swimming that you love the most?

Lewis: Without seeming overly earnest or melodramatic, I would say that it’s the simple pleasure of spending your day playing with words. The Irish poet Michael Longley said, “If I knew where poems came from, I’d go there.” Since we don’t know where they come from, there is an undeniable excitement about the possibility of finding the source. But it’s not the destination that’s the milk and silk and sun, it’s the journey.

For more interviews with J. Patrick Lewis, visit these sites:
http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2006/05/author-interview-j-patrick-lewis-on.html
http://www.jpatricklewis.com/teachers_interview1.shtml
http://www.nohscbwi.org/featured/featured_jplewis.php
http://school.uaschools.org/greensview/ohioauthors/lewis,jpatrick.htm

For more information about Lewis and his work, visit his website:
http://www.jpatricklewis.com/

And for further details on Lewis' life, visit:
http://www.teachingk-8.com/archives/a_poetry_workshop_in_print/j_patrick_lewis_by_lee_bennett_hopkins.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/j-patrick-lewis

Sirens of the Sea

Born in 1680
(No one can say for sure),
Possibly in Bristol, England,
Early life, obscure,
Teach heard them calling longingly--
The sirens of the sea.
Obsessed, he navigated west,
His landfall? Destiny.
--from J. Patrick Lewis' Blackbeard The Pirate King

Who knows? Maybe there's a bit of the pirate in every writer, each of us drawn by the sirens of our imagination, obsessed with the music that we hear as we seek our stories in the same way that Edward Teach, sailing beneath the pirate's black flag, sought his destiny as Blackbeard the Pirate King.

Even if you already know the story of Blackbeard, who returns to life in all his trembling and fearsome glory in Blackbeard The Pirate King, J. Patrick Lewis' remarkable account of his life, you'll relish the chance to sail with Lewis as he captains this sturdy ship of verse through the stormy seas of Blackbeard's many voyages.

In poems that ripple with strength and grace, carrying readers forward into unknown and sometimes dangerous waters in much the same way a ship might carry its wary passengers to a distant destination, Lewis holds readers fast on deck in these twelve poems that rock with the rhythm of the sea, plunging and rising with the force of a gifted poet.

From the opening lines of this book (which was nominated for a 2006 Cybils Award), readers will sense that they're in the hands of a master craftsman:

Down Caribbean shipping lanes,
Where buccaneers held court,
The pistol blade,
And cannon made
Their treachery blood sport.

Lewis ends the first poem with a forceful gusto that makes a reader feel as if he's standing on deck along with the rest of the pirate crew, salt spray stinging his eyes, cheering on the infamous captain:

But of all the thieves of the Seven Seas,
No one would ever reach
The height and might
Of the roguish Knight
Of the Black Flag, Edward Teach.

Along with each of the dozen poems that comprise this book are equally dramatic paintings--The Duel on the Beach by N.C. Wyeth, for instance--which draw the reader into the story, heightening the reader's sense of adventure and, at times, danger.

Lewis also includes notes with the poems that offer brief historical perspectives, aiding readers unfamiliar with the history of piracy in the 1700's or who might be interested in learning more details about Blackbeard's life than the poems themselves can provide.

And at the end of the book Lewis provides a helpful time-line extending from Teach's birth in 1680 to his death in 1718, as well as a note about the sources that he relied on to develop and flesh out the poems.

"If oceans could speak," writes Lewis, "what deep secrets the Atlantic would tell of grand voyages of discovery, famous naval battles, the last desperate hours of sea-tossed sailors, and not least, the age of piracy, cutlass, and cannon, when villainy ruled the waves."

With Lewis as our guide across the vast sea of history, we can imagine a little more clearly the mystery of Blackbeard and his life.

Perhaps that's because, as Lewis suggests, "...the mystery of Blackbeard lies not at the bottom of a shallow bay but deep in the mind of anyone who muses on the Pirate King."

Lewis talks about the genesis of Blackbeard the Pirate King with Cynthia Leitich Smith in this interview: http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2006/05/author-interview-j-patrick-lewis-on.html

For more information about J. Patrick Lewis, visit his website at:
http://www.jpatricklewis.com/