Will Alexander and Sylvia Legris in Conversation

Will Alexander conducted a conversation with Canadian poet Sylvia Legris for Music & Literature as part of an extensive portfolio on Legris for issue no. 9. "What persists as your principle pattern of poetic ignition?" asks Alexander. From her response:

An audience member at a reading I gave a couple of years ago asked me which is more important in my poetry, meaning or sound. I answered that I don’t favor one over the other, meaning (or logic) and sound (or music) constantly play off each other. However, when I think now about what persists as my primary poetic ignition, I’d have to come down on the side of music. Or not…

I frequently write out of scientific language or, more quaintly, the language of natural history, and often, initially, the language holds more mystery to me than it does meaning. I have no background in science; I come to it as an amateur, as an explorer, on first blush swept away by the language as a beautiful and chewy tangle of syntax, sound, and evocation. The poems in my current manuscript, Garden Physic, are either informed directly by botany or by other writings or artworks that engage in some way with plants and gardens. When I’m reading through one of the books that serve as sources, often just flipping through pages, a word or phrase will catch my attention, for its oddness, for the beauty of how it looks and (how I think it) sounds, or perhaps because it reminds me of something else. What is its poetic possibility? If I look into its fuller context and etymology, where will that lead me? Sometimes I’ll know that such a phrase will be the title of a poem I have yet to write—is this instinct, some sort of intrinsic musicality, a function of thought or of ear?

Continue at Music & Literature.