Leo Connellan
An interview with Leo Connellan by Rebecca Berardy
Provincetown And Other Poems encompasses an extensive collection of themes that are rooted in exposing cultural and economic injustice. Do you believe that your poetry has a commitment to social change?
I think the important thing to write about is the human condition. I think most major writers have thought that the conflict of the human heart is far more important than writing about pretty ephemeral things like snow flakes and tinsel. I hope that my poetry might change some things. I am very socially committed to human beings and to helping poor people and to helping people who have bad luck. Writers write what moves them. Some writers like W. H. Auden or Hart Crane can write out of an intellectual genius. Other writers write out of what disturbs them or what concerns them or what they notice. Most of my work is written out of what disturbed me, and what I noticed, or what I thought I might clarify.
Would you identify yourself with any literary or political movement?
I am neither a politician or a rabble-rouser. I've never been a joiner. On my tombstone, if anybody ever bothers to write such a thing, I'd like to be called an every-man--he was every-man, he was a little piece of you, he was a little piece of him, a little piece of a starving person somewhere, as well as the person who succeeds. I have nothing, absolutely nothing, against success. I think that the writer in America who wants to go it alone could be doomed. Ernest Hemingway wrote "that a man by himself don't have a chance." We have a history in America of having clubs. Robert Penn Warren created something called the Fugitive Group at Vanderbilt University. I don't know what they were fugitives from. They were all wealthy and academic scholars and some of them like Randall Jarell, Robert Penn Warren and Allen Tate could write great poetry, but in order to get it noticed they felt they had to call themselves something so everyone would notice them. There are poets like Jack Hirschman, Tom McGrath, Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Leo Connellan who just wrote their work. They tried to write the best poetry of which they were capable without being identified with some group.
An eminent symbol in the poem "Provincetown" is the dying sea gull. What inspired this symbol, and what does it personally represent to you?
The sea gull belongs to Anton Chekhov. His plays were produced in the Moscow art theater by Constantin Stanislavski who wrote An Actor Prepares and who was concerned with the sea gull as symbol. In my poem, "Provincetown," the sea gull represents a creature that is left to die without any help. The underlying controlling idea of "Provincetown" is the common Portuguese people who go out fishing. These people fish for their living and pay heavily for it. For example, the fisherman in the poem whose father got killed, and who brought in his own father's leg bone. You, the tourist, go to paint or enjoy the pleasure of the changing sky, but underneath it all are the people who have always lived thereÑthe Portuguese people. The sea gull is not my image. There was a sea gull at the motel where I stayed. I thought that it would work in the poem as the central controlling balance. I certainly did not mean to take anybody else's idea or use Chekhov. I tried to make that sea gull my sea gull.
"Home Again," "Hot Day in New York," and "Shooter" touch upon the problems of inner city life. How has your experience in New York influenced this poetry?
A poem hopefully disturbs or draws attention. The poems that you have mentioned are about a condition that exists. Just the other day in Norwich, Connecticut, where I live, three teenagers participated in a drive-by shooting. They put a bullet in the front door of city hall. At one time in the history of writing it might have appeared that I was being titillating or erotic or trying to create a disturbing condition that would be interesting to me, but I'm drawing attention to something that very few of us have found a way to deal with. The people we are talking about have no hope. They grow up at thirteen years of age. Sex is certainly not new to them. Drugs are something that they barter and exchange. The excitement today is to blow somebody's head off. When a college student graduates with a degree and can't get a job, she first shrugs her shoulders. She'll then work as a waitress or taxi-driver, or will have a trust-fund and will live on that, but eventually she'll get disgusted. "Why did I get a degree? Why did I become good at something that I can't use?" At this point you can understand these people. They can't give you an explanation as to why they would do something that might put some of them in prison for the rest of their lives.
"Lobster Fisherman" and "Fish" show the economic problems facing the fishing industry caused by laws restricting the small fisherman and technology. What personal experiences did you have that influenced your concern for the struggling fishing industry?
I grew up in the state of Maine. I grew up among people who fish. I went to school with people who left high school in their sophomore year because their family needed them out on the boats. For a long time they just threw their traps over the side, and took their chances. If the lobsters were too small, the law said, "you must throw them back in order to breed more lobsters." During this time, the lobster fisherman could fish all he wanted and there was always a surplus. Then they came in with computers and with big white vacuum cleaner type things that sucked the bottom of the ocean and just drew all the fish into a vacuum cleaner. Now, if you go to the lobster festival in Rockland Maine in 1995, your lobsters are coming from Nova Scotia. They are not coming from Rockland anymore. The poem was written because I came from these people and noticed what might be killing a way of life. The way of life of a fisherman could be totally destroyed in the near future.
As a Connecticut State University poet-in-residence, what are your personal and job related responsibilities?
I have a job that takes me into classrooms. In the university classroom, I'm a living, breathing flesh-and-blood poet who tries to convey to students how I think I write my poems. I try to show the creative process and try to show the difference between poetry and prose. Recently, I have been going into the elementary schools and middle schools. I travel around the state visiting these young students, and I go into high schools. We are living in a technological age in which computers are getting to the point where they can do our thinking for us. In an age where we are benefiting from science, industry, and from manufacturers, we have a tendency as human beings to become lazy. If you said to me you were a writer, I would be very surprised if you picked up a pen and piece of paper to work something out. Instead you could go to a computer. We could lose the ability to think for ourselves. I think my function is that I try to make young people want to read and use themselves in the language that they speak.
