TC: You’ve named Mississippi as your physical home and New England as your spiritual home. How does home and place play into the work of poetry and to the work of a life for you?

CW: My time in Mississippi has certainly been filled with indelible experiences, some of which I chronicle in an essay titled “All That ‘Southern’ Jazz” that I contributed to the book Southern Writers on Writing. Being identified as a Southerner has its attendant clichéd reactions. And like the universal phantom accent non-Southerners try to impose on all those below the Mason-Dixon Line, some seem to misread my poems as being predicated on my having been reared in Mississippi. Actually, only in the new collection that I’m completing now is Mississippi itself central in a couple of poems. I don’t dislike my Mississippi heritage, but I do resent attempts to pigeonhole my work as reductively regionalist. New England is the area to which I’ve felt most attached for quite a few years. And whereas the geography of my Mississippi landscapes is remarkably different to that of my New England paintings, neither my force nor my technique changes. Because the themes I explore are timeless and universal, my poems are unlikely ever to be significantly different owing to mere locale either.  

TC: How do you approach the writing of a poem, and the making of a new painting?

CW: I believe it was André Gide who said, “Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.” Since this is also my belief regarding genuine art, I tend to think of creation as a sacred process and begin each time of writing and painting with a brief prayer. My manner of painting requires me to wash my hands often. However, I had thought my practice of handwashing before writing to be unique until I heard that the playwright August Wilson always did likewise. Though Wilson was a great playwright, he and his work were anything but Christian, yet he viewed his task as spiritual enough to merit homage.

After my ceremonial practices, I generally begin a new poem by reviewing previous notes I’ve made regarding the piece’s subject and intent. My notes for poems may include facts, images, linguistics, quotations, and references. If I’ve determined that certain poems should be formal, the notes likely include accompanying potential rhyme and rhythmic patterns. Since I keep several journals with ideas for hundreds of poems, I merely devote my effort to whichever I’m compelled.

I begin new paintings in a similar manner by delving into hundreds of photographs I’ve taken locally and around the world over the years. But because painting is a less methodical art form for me, my inspiration is usually ordained by mood. During my selection of a subject, I also consider dimensions and medium. Though I must say, beginning a painting is usually an anxious undertaking for me, whereas beginning a poem usually seems effortless.

TC: How does your poetry and painting inform your teaching and critical work?

CW: In a nutshell, as a teacher of writing, I always search for errors, possible improvements, and things done particularly well. As a critic, my considerations are the same, but include my examination and assessment of a work’s intent. In this paradigm, my teaching and criticism tend to inform my poetry and painting rather than the converse. Adhering to these concerns makes it unlikely that I’ll judge others by hypocritical standards.

TC: In his introduction to The Anathemata, David Jones wrote of the difficulties of the modern poet in discovering “a valid sign,” since by the time he was writing so much of what one could assume was part of a shared cultural deposit was being forgotten. He asks, “When is a sign not a sign? When is what was valid no longer valid?” What are your thoughts on this problem?

CW: The signs in Jones’s Anathemata have always been, and will always be, valid because they pursue the enigma of purpose, albeit according to his ideology. Poetry can’t tackle any grander or more relevant question. Psalms will always be valid. The Holy Sonnets will always be valid. Paradise Lost will always be valid. However, validity and popularity are often at odds, especially nowadays, regarding Christian principles and symbols. I see the problem of a disinterested audience for such themes as being reflective of a degenerative society rather than the matter having become antiquated. The dilemma for so many writers is whether to be exclusively current or cogent.

TC: Could you talk a bit more about poetry’s pursuit of “the enigma of purpose”?

CW: If we examine “purpose” from a creationist perspective, why anything exists becomes the ultimate question. For three decades, I listened to the teaching of the late Bahamian minister Myles Munroe—a preacher among preachers, whose message was essentially about purpose. And his ultimate answer regarding our existence seemed to be that it’s what God wanted, which is an inarguable conclusion, but which also raises an infinite chorus of whys. Obviously, many writers aren’t concerned, or are incapable of, engaging with such issues. And maybe none of us who do grapple for satisfying answers to our raison d’être will ever be more successful than Milton was with Paradise Lost, but striving itself seems to be at least tangential to one’s purpose, and for me, poetry is a path toward something—maybe revelation, maybe not—but at least toward something. 

TC: Wendell Berry has written about how his ear was shaped by the rhythms of old folks’ talk and stories. Could you talk a bit about how music affects your work?

CW: I love listening to many genres of music. Whether my ear was trained by the rhythms of music or I enjoy music because of my ear’s sensitivity, I can’t say. But just as a painting won’t be good without strong composition, no matter how fine the draftsmanship, a poem without pleasing rhythm is intolerable to me. I listen to music or recorded nature sounds when I’m in the studio because for me, painting is intuitive, and I like to be somewhat pleasantly distracted. Though I prefer quiet while writing, I continually listen to the cadence of my language, whether poetry or prose.

TC: Could you talk a bit about poetry and painting as ways of seeing? How does a painting’s way of seeing compare with that of a poem?

CW: Learning to see was the most difficult lesson for me as a painter because it involves so many intangible principles such as understanding that in order to create proper contrast a landscape painting needs darks that may not be so obvious en plein air. In my poems, I also often contrast darkness with light. Of course, it’s a biblical concept, but with artistic applications as well. Though when painting I’m simply looking to capture the mood of my inspiration, whereas when working on a poem I’m looking for something useful to be revealed through the inspiration.

TC: What are some particular poems or paintings to which you find yourself often returning?

CW: Generally, I return to collections rather than to a poet’s single poem. However, a few poems that I do often return to are “anyone lived in a pretty how town” by E.E. Cummings, James Dickey’s “Cherrylog Road,” John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 14,” Etheridge Knight’s “Prison Graveyard,” Philip Larkin’s “The Explosion,” May Swenson’s “Waterbird,” and “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas.

Many of my favorite painters, and thus my favorite paintings, are from the nineteenth-century academic tradition, so I love paintings such as Landscape with Woman Walking on Path by Edward Mitchell Bannister, Morning, Catskill Valley by George Inness, and A Lovely Thought by Daniel Ridgway Knight. I also return to impressionist paintings such as Claude Monet’s The Magpie, but I’m perhaps most enthralled by the works of Edward Hopper. His ability to plumb the depths of solitude on canvas is beyond uncanny—it’s inexplicable and downright painful in paintings such as Gas, Office at Night, and Rooms for Tourists. The connection I feel with Hopper’s work is so strong that it’s sometimes disconcerting.