A Review of Poet Jeanne Larsen’s Visit to Class

Laura Persun

On Wednesday, March 16th, poet Jeanne Larsen, author of Why We Make Gardens, visited class to discuss the art of writing poetry. Larsen explained that obsessions are often valuable sources of inspiration (her obsessions are gardens and ancient Chinese culture), and when one writes about that which he or she is passionate, the quality of work frequently rises. She discussed the compromises that occur between a writer and a publisher, and read some of her poems aloud, subsequently annotating them for our benefit.
I was especially interested in the difference between prose and poetry. Larsen, though she is a well-known poet, has also published Silk Road: A Novel of Eighth-Century China. She explained that there exists a delicate equilibrium between heavy descriptions and flow; while often inclined to weigh down sentences with poetic prose and intense detail, she is forced to delete certain beautiful terms so that the reader will not lose interest. I am in the process of completing my English honors thesis, a creative novel based on Washington and Lee University, and frequently encounter the same complications as Larsen. Listening to her proposed solution for the problem of poetic prose gave me comfort and guidance as to how best approach the process of revision.
Why We Make Gardens has a distinct, tightly-woven theme: gardens. However, the gardens which Larsen cites are not those which routinely appear in fairy tales. Rather, Larsen discusses the “garden without chlorophyll”, the “garden of anger”, and the “garden of wood”. I chose to annotate several of her poems for my annotation project, and close analysis revealed the ways in which a loose interpretation of gardens is representative of the larger themes of life. For example, “A Garden without Chlorophyll”, which discusses the fungi and parasites which subsist off the resources of photosynthesizing plants, is arguably analogous to the division between those who conform and those who rebel in modern-day society. Larsen’s motives, as she pointed out, do not truly matter once the book is in the hands of the reader—we to free to interpret her work as we wish.