Jodie Marion: What do you hope to accomplish this May as Master Artist in Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts?

David Lehman: Well, that would be an easier question to answer once I've seen the place, set foot in it - met the people. So right now I can only answer with partial knowledge and in the abstract. But in the abstract, when I teach a workshop and meet people who are aspiring poets, I hope to help them realize something of their potential; I hope to help inspire them; and to encourage them. I think there are different models of writing leaders or workshops leaders . . . and there are different ways of doing it. Some people are like, you know, good at discipline . . .

JM: And what do you think your forte is in that capacity as teacher?

DL: Inspiration. Inspiration, and encouragement, and imagination.

JM: Since the discussion you're leading at CB&S Bookstore on May 28 is entitled "The Craft of Poetry: Daily Poems," I thought you might be experimenting a little with that at your workshop. What exactly is a "daily poem"?

DL: Well, daily poems are something that I've been writing for about a year and a half. The idea of the daily poem is to write a poem everyday or nearly every day . . .

JM: Whether it's there or not?

DL: Yeah, rain or shine. I give the poem a date as a title. They have the advantages of journal writings, but they're different because the end product is an aesthetic product, a work of art. So it's not just a diary, but it has got something of the life of a diary, the quality of a diary, but it has also got to be a poem. And there are precedents for this: Emily Dickinson's poems in a way are like daily poems, Frank O'Hara, James Skyler, other so-called New York School Poets. In my own case, I had been writing poems in the third person - well, I had been writing Valentine Place, which is a book of poems that's sort of like a novel in verse with characters and long lines - and I started writing daily poems that have shorter lines, skinnier lines: they're first person, they're present tense. Or they're very immediate, very up-to-date; they can mention friends, or they're about New York City . I just felt like I could get a lot of my life into them, and I could write about things I hadn't written about before, like jazz . . .

Jodie Marion I teach Composition at UCF while also studying for my Master's degree, which should be completed--hopefully--before the turn of the century. In the meantime I write for the Central Florida Hispanic (Education section) and especially dig reading Lawrence Durrell. Other Articles I've Written