Mentor Millicent Borges Accardi and mentee Nina C. Peláez share excerpts from their exchanges throughout Season 20 of the AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program in poetry.
The questions below represent a sample of the biweekly modules provided by AWP to help guide mentor-mentee pairs throughout the program.
Do you find yourself returning to common themes in your work? If so, why do you think that might be?
Accardi: For me I seem to get “stuck” on a theme or an issue that bothers me or brings me joy or is a problem I am sorting out and then the writing seems to (mostly) fit into that stage. Sort of like Picasso’s blue phase or red phase, etc. The theme might be from travels or a new living situation, a book I am reading, an experience I had. Past examples have been a residency in Prague (and studying the wars and occupations in Eastern Europe), jazz, the COVID pandemic, a writing prompt project I worked on for a year, exploring my own heritage, a Portuguese background that culminated in the poetry collection Through a Grainy Landscape.
Peláez: I love hearing about those themes that you’ve engaged with or gotten stuck on! I definitely also find myself returning to common themes. Over the past few years, my experience as an adoptee and the loss of my birth mother cast a shadow over much of what I work on and think about.
Recently, I have been thinking a bit more about climate change and environmental destruction. I haven’t done a ton of writing from that place yet but have been researching the atomic testing that was done in the desert outside of Las Vegas, not far from where I was born, and the phenomenon of “Miss Atomic” pageants. Landscapes (both ones I have lived in and ones I imagine and feel close to) are often very present for me, and I can often find myself returning to a place. I have also been thinking a lot about spectatorship/spectacle and the human impulse to look, even at images and scenes of trauma/disaster/destruction. I have a few poems on this theme I have been working on and think I want to continue in that vein.
What initially attracts you to a piece of writing? Language, voice, dialogue, place—or something else?
Accardi: Voice. It is almost always voice. That is what drags me in and entices me to the poetry.
Peláez: I agree that I am often drawn to voice, though language and also sound are often big draws for me too. I have been rereading Emily Skaja’s book Brute recently, which I find so compelling. I love the rhythms of her poems, especially the series of elegies in her book and the ways she creates rhythm by contrasting long and short lines. Her poems are always so dense with imagery, and the juxtapositions can be so surprising. I admire that so much, and I have been trying to find ways to incorporate more of that contrast, strangeness, and fragmentation in my own work.
Find an opening from a story, novel, poem, or essay that made you want to read on. Share why you felt it was a successful beginning.
Accardi: I had selected Sylvia Plath’s poem “The Munich Mannequins” because it has the sort of opening lines that grab you by the throat and do not let go. And I had recently been reminded of the poem in a Plath workshop that I had taken in the spring, taught by the brilliant and wonderful writers Victoria Chang and Matthew Zapruder. I forgot about many of Plath’s “unfamous” poems and was shocked by the fact that her work was not especially confessional in nature at all and was, in fact, more universal. But that first line, “Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children,” just goes for the jugular vein and won’t let you stop reading until you have finished the poem. That is the kind of example teachers have in mind when they say, “Write an eye-catching opening.”
Peláez: Continuing with my recent obsession with Emily Skaja, I absolutely love her poem “Brute Strength” and the sound and rhythm of the opening lines:
Soldier for a lost cause, brute, mute woman
written out of my own story, I’ve been trying
to cast a searchlight over swamp-woods & parasitic ash
back to my beginning, that girlhood—
I love how this opening thrusts you into this long run-on sentence that is most of the poem itself. I also love the way she creates a sense of place while staying active—she is the one writing, she is the one casting a searchlight, but through the searchlight in her hand, we see the swamp woods. Her line breaks are also really effective at creating this rhythm and flow that makes you want to keep reading. I love that opening in the Plath—an interesting contrast with that short sentence as the opener. A kind of mic drop right from the start, but a mystery that keeps you reeling. So, so good!
A common piece of writing advice is that you must be willing to “kill your darlings.” What makes something “darling” to you as a writer? Are you currently struggling with this concept, and is there anything in your work that could benefit from following this advice?
Accardi: I first heard this term in James Ragan’s master poetry class at USC (MPW program), and I remember he drew on the whiteboard the anatomy of a poem and said that you must be focused on the through line of the poem, the message and not the individual parts, and that for the better of “the whole,” we should be willing to throw away or delete our favorite lines, our dream catchphrases, perhaps the very lines that started the idea of the poem or the original prompt, because . . . ? Nothing should stop the trajectory. The pathway needs to be clear, and whatever line propels the poem, keep it, and whatever line stops the action? Discard it, no matter how fond you are of the cleverness or the intelligence of it. Keep the path clear of debris.
I like to think of it as a race or a walk. Whatever branch falls in your pathway, no matter how pretty or useful, toss it to the side if it is barring your way. Another way to phrase it is to not be blinded by or fixated on the shiny pennies, the diamonds. Focus on the path itself, the journey. Keep your eye on the prize. Discard, for the good of the poem.
Peláez: I just loved what you had to say about the message versus individual parts—the anatomy of the poem. And your way of likening a poem to a walk, with the advice to keep focused on the path! So brilliant.
Something that I have been working on a lot along these lines is feeling more comfortable departing from the truth, especially when writing something based on my own life experience. When I started my MFA, I found myself very tethered to reality—what I remembered (or didn’t). But memory is so malleable, so partial. I have been really working on ways to push myself out of the narrow scope of my own reality. I find that writing in other points of view is helpful, as is introducing outside characters—something could still relate to an experience I have had, but when enacted by another character, I often find myself liberated from myself, in a good way.
What you said about letting the characters guide you feels really spot-on here—I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I think that’s exactly what I have seen happening in my own writing.
Have you ever started a new piece with a section you removed from another? If not, can you think of any sections or lines you’ve removed that you might use in a different context?
Accardi: Not so much anymore. My writing process has changed from when I first began studying literature and writing. Perhaps I got spoiled or felt more sure of myself as a writer, or perhaps I got lazy? Hard to say. But when I was at CSULB and poetry was a brand-new adventure? I used to combine poems all the time, taking a line from one poem and using it in another. I had a drawer filled with discarded lines that I could not bear to part with.
I liked to belong to paper and pen in those days, so I was attached to the hand-pen-paper process itself. I would print out my poetry and edit by tearing lines and rearranging them like a puzzle. I had heard Marianne Moore had done this. Like a collage. Other writers also. So the paper scraps I used to save like treasure. These days, I am more apt to have word lists on my laptop, words I like or words I think will be good for poems. I save prompts and random cool words. F. Scott Fitzgerald kept a notebook, separated into sections: overheard, vocabulary, dialogue, ideas for stories, clippings, drafts, jokes, proper names, etc. . . . I read that book like a bible.
Lately, though, even when people say, “This is two poems!” I tend to keep it together and try to see where the poem will take me. I have been listening to MasterClass sessions for David Mamet and Harlan Coben—and I think it was Stephen King who said there are two ways to write a novel (or a poem). One way is to make up characters and then tell them what to do. The other (better way) is to listen to characters (in your head or characters you have met in real life) and then let them tell or show you their story. Let them lead you where the narrative is going. I’m a big proponent of automatic writing—which is a way to let the writing guide you, rather than the reverse.
Peláez: So interesting to hear you reflect on how this has changed for you. I definitely still find myself in the combining and pulling phase, but I am excited to imagine that might fall away and open up into other possibilities. I think this does hearken back to the darlings piece, though, because I definitely do have lines I have held on to (like your drawer, I keep a Google doc with discarded lines) but am not sure I will ever have a place for. I recently read a poem by a wonderful emerging poet named Susan Nguyen called “Litany of Failed Lines from Previous Poems,” and I liked what she did with that! Sometimes what I do find useful is pulling out a single word or image into another poem. Or swapping words or lines when I find something feels off. Sometimes it leads me to another third thing, and I think that can be really exciting.
Oftentimes as writers, we feel that a piece is never “finished.” How do you know when it’s time to stop revising?
Accardi: For me it is when it lands in a finished book. Not a journal. Not online. Not me reading it at a reading. Until I get a last chance to correct anything and everything, a poem is not finished. I figure if I haven’t finalized it by the last galley proof, then it is my own damn fault. I have never had any interest in repeating the Leaves of Grass syndrome, of reediting and redoing work after it has been sent out into the world. However, with one small exception: when there are glaring publishing errors or surface errors. Then I would consider a brief foray back into a poem to make things right. To make them whole.
I tend to waver between “first word, best word” advice from Ginsberg, to revision is my best feature—that revision can make a so-so poem into a great poem. However, it can also destroy a poem that has been taking chances and is bold.
Revision can be a crutch and can tear into uniqueness, it can tear into things that don’t fit, and revision has been blamed on these “workshop”-type poems that have been produced since the 1990s—these general poems that are capable, intelligent, even, but that end up sounding as if anyone, a generic, bright “anyone,” rather than a vibrant voice of someone doing something very interesting that is only hers . . . unique to the poet.
Part of growing as a writer is becoming confident in your own work, in your own voice. In knowing what line is clunky, in knowing which lines are brilliant (hopefully) and being able to tell which lines are bad and should be deleted. To be able to rely on yourself as an editor and trusting that you are bringing the vision to life.
Peláez: Although I have yet to have published a book, I would agree with what you are saying. I edit all the time, even work that has found homes. And I love what you said about the opportunities and dangers of revision. I have a tendency to often completely overhaul poems, and often that serves me well, but sometimes I lose something meaningful from the original. On the other hand, I have some poems that I have written and barely revised. One poem I recently had accepted was one that I wrote in one go. I changed almost nothing but some slight word omissions and line breaks from the original very first draft. I wrote the poem from a place of very real, raw emotion, and I think that carried forward. I am glad I didn’t lose that along the way. I think building that confidence you talk about—to be able to “judge” one’s own work, is definitely a journey, but one I am on! Reading my work over and over lately, as I work on my manuscript and send work out to journals, can sometimes make it all blend together, to lose sight of what is “good.”
On the other hand, I have also been finding myself feeling more confident as an editor of my own work, and even as a writer, which is pretty exciting!
Nina C. Peláez is a poet, educator, and cultural producer based in Maui, Hawaii. She recently received her MFA in poetry from Bennington College and is the associate director of The Merwin Conservancy, the former home and garden of poet W. S. Merwin. She is an emerging writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative, Electric Literature, Rattle, Pleiades, swamp pink, RHINO, Radar, The Baltimore Review, Cider Press Review, Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere. Peláez was a 2024 AWP Writer to Writer mentee and was recently named the winner of The Coniston Prize in poetry and a semifinalist for the Scotti Merrill Award for emerging writers. The recipient of a Key West Literary Seminar Workshop Fellowship, she is working on the manuscript for her first poetry collection.
Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese American writer, is the author of four poetry books, including Through a Grainy Landscape and Quarantine Highway. Her awards include poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright, CantoMundo, the California Arts Council, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (COVID grant), Fundação Luso-Americana (Portugal), and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund’s Money for Women. She lives in Topanga, California, and was a 2024 AWP Writer to Writer mentor.