Donna J. Gelagotis Lee’s poetry is noted for its image-rich depictions of a life lived in Greece and in the suburban towns of New Jersey and New York. Her poetry is lush with imagery and nods to the past and the present. We were pleased when she recently agreed to a River Heron interview.

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee is the author of two award-winning collections, Intersection on Neptune (The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019), winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry 2018, and On the Altar of Greece (Gival Press, 2006), winner of the 2005 Gival Press Poetry Award and recipient of a 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award: Notable for Art Category. Her poetry has appeared in publications internationally, including The Bitter Oleander, Cimarron Review, Feminist Studies, The Massachusetts Review, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments, and Women’s Studies Quarterly.

RHR: What is the best piece of writing advice you have ever been given?

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee: Follow where the poem leads you. Keep writing, even when you hesitate at where the poem is taking you. Don’t stop midway and edit yourself. You may be avoiding the heart of that poem. You can always revise or even discard what you’ve written. Not everything you write is going to be published or even read by anyone else. Sometimes a poem is just taking you on a journey to another poem. Sometimes it’s getting to hard truths.

RHR: Does an idea for a poem haunt you or do you hunt for an idea?

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee: There is not usually a haunting—more like someone taking me by the hand and saying, Hey, have a look at this—and rarely a search for an idea. I’ve never needed to search for an idea. As for haunting, if I don’t write the poem when the impulse occurs, it usually disappears. If an impulse presents with an image or idea or a thought and I try to write later, I more often than not have a contrived poem. And that’s not what I want. It may be a decent poem, but it’s not the poem that wanted to be written. I’d take Ginsberg’s first thought, best thought a step further. I’d suggest first impulse, best impulse, with writing, that is. That doesn’t mean the impulse is the poem. The poem probably needs to be revised, or edited, but if you don’t edit the essence out of it and if you are practiced enough that writing is as easy as driving likely is for someone who has driven for years, you’ve probably got a poem that wanted to be written. That doesn’t mean you didn’t take a wrong turn. You’ll probably find that out sooner or later. But if you’ve reached a destination, or a discovering, or an opening of some sort, it’s a good feeling. Even if it’s not where you thought you were going to go.

RHR: Do you believe a poem can be overly crafted?

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee: Yes. Definitely. I save my drafts. You can definitely overwork a poem. The poem will tell you when it’s had enough. You have to listen. If you get your head in the way, thinking about what the poem should be, you can ruin it. While revising is a different process, that doesn’t mean you ignore, or override the impulses of the poem unless, of course, you want another poem.

RHR: Tell us about your writing process.

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee: My writing process has changed over the years. In Greece, I had a small hardbound notebook and a spiral notepad to write in. I liked to spend evenings reading, usually Ritsos in English and Greek. Occasionally I’d write afterwards or after walks by the sea. Back in the States, I wrote while in bed, with pen and a piece of paper. I used to read in bed also. And that often led to writing a poem. Most often, an image would come into my mind, and that would lead to the poem.

I thought that handwriting was integral to the poem. Getting an iPhone changed everything about how I wrote. I discovered Notes. Once when I was in bed and without pen and paper close by, I opened Notes and began to write. I’ve rarely used pen and paper since, which surprised me because I’d previously felt an almost symbiotic relationship between how the poem evolved and the use of the pen in relation to the body, as if it were an extension of my fingers—the ink flowing, the blood flowing, the shape of the pen, the shape of the fingers. Every movement of the pen was connected with the hand writing, the finger’s pause, the lines and flows of the body. Using Notes and a keyboard on the device was quite different. Writing on a device feels almost mechanical, the way the typewriter did at one time. But I can input quickly, with one finger! And while an image can sometimes still lead to a poem, it could well be the title itself or a line or a phrase or even a word of the poem. It could be an idea.

I also don’t necessarily read before writing and will write at just about any time, whereas before I usually wrote at night before sleep. I’m not a morning person. And have never been one. Lots of sunsets. Very few sunrises. I like the stillness and quiet at night. And the dark. It’s full of monsters. It’s full of memories surfacing. It’s harder to be distracted by the demands and minutiae of daily life. Revision is different. It is, after all, re-vision. You may see something you didn’t during the writing. You may even see a different form for the poem. I’m sometimes surprised when I see the originals of poems I’ve revised numerous times over many years.

RHR: How do you determine what makes a poem successful?

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee: That’s a challenging question. So many things . . . or so few. I may not know at first. On the other hand, I may have a clear notion that the poem is as good as it’s going to be. It’s usually more evident in the revision stage, with the perspective of time and distance. By then I’m approaching the poem more as a reader and an editor. Successful is a loaded word. Successful by what standards and to whom? A poem may fall short on some level and to someone. I’m satisfied with the poem if I feel it has lived up to its potential. And that may be different for every poem. I’m more concerned with discovery and the journey, the artistic progression over time. Is the work reaching, as in reaching out, not as in reaching a conclusion? I may have a good poem as in lines that work, sentences that cohere, form that works, some sort of resonance, emotional or intellectual, etc., but what’s it doing, if anything? Is it pushing any boundaries; has it made any new ones? Or is it happy within them? Has it dispensed with or re-turned any poetic ideas as we know them?

RHR: How do you know when a poem has reached an end?

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee: I usually sense when a poem is coming to a close, but sometimes I’m surprised. Sometimes I am writing and will suddenly stop. Sometimes I’ll stop writing, but on revisiting the poem, I’ll discover the poem’s needs. Sometimes the process of proofing and editing can reveal. This is where I save my drafts. There’s a wonderful poem, by Dean Kostos, “The Sentence That Ends with a Comma,” which reminds me that an ending can even be a pause.

RHR: Should writers keep or discard their old notebooks over the years?

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee: If you can, why not keep them (if you have them)? I’ve found poems in notebooks from decades ago. But more importantly, I’ve seen my poems change over time. That’s useful, I think. It can also point to recurring thoughts or motifs and how preoccupations may have changed over the years. Sometimes early drafts become a revised poem much later. It’s interesting to look back and see how that occurs. Sometimes themes are abandoned, or they develop. Notebooks are historical (on a personal level and to a broader degree). They can always be mined, or minded. They can rekindle thoughts. Or they may signal what is no longer visited, or need be.

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Read Donna J. Gelagotis Lee’s poem, "On the Edge of a City”:

On the Edge of a City

As Sheepshead Bay curves into
Brooklyn, the coastal street
shimmies into town,
its flashes of light like
the glitter of a Coney Island
Ferris wheel, or the Parachute
Jump pumping its way into
the sun-cut history. I am
drenched with a Brooklyn
afternoon, like the wet-bottomed
boats floating on a slice of muted
bay. Only one sailboat
drifts to shore, seemingly
haphazard
but on course. Today, we
are just as randomly choosing
our direction, fastened
to a quick-moving city
in a lull. It is Sun-
day. It is brilliance
at work. It is a white
building shooting like a
flower to life, although the maple
and oak are leaning
towards fall,
their half-baked color
on the verge of a fantastic
catastrophe. There are many
windows casually playing
tick-tac-toe. And
even at 22 stories, a black-
winged butterfly does not
hesitate to comb the sheltered
air outside
our multilayered lives. We have
sprawled out. We are going on an
intentional trip, flashes of
light from bedecked and bejeweled lives
on a sensible outline of streets.

From Intersection on Neptune (The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019), winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry.

First published in You Are Here: New York City Streets in Poetry (Peggy Garrison, Victoria Hallerman, and David Quintavalle, eds., P & Q Press, 2006).

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