Jim Moore
Jim Moore is the author of six collections of poetry, including Writing With Tagore Above the Flamina (The Press at Colorado College, 2003), The Long Experience of Love (Milkweed Editions, 1995) and The Freedom of History (Milkweed, 1988), both of which won Minnesota Book Awards; What the Bird Sees (Momentum Press, 1978), and The New Body (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975). His newest collection, Lightning at Dinner (Graywolf Press, 2005), also a Minnesota Book Award winner, is now in its second printing. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Threepenny Review, and The Nation, among others, as well as in several anthologies, including the 2001 Pushcart Prize, Lost Classics (Knopf Canada, 2000), and Carrying the Darkness: The Poetry of the Vietnam War (Avon, 1985). He has also collaborated with choreographer Rannee Ranaswamy on two commissioned works. He was a winner of the 2002 Loft-McKnight Award in poetry, and has twice served as the Edelstein-Keller Distinguished Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He teaches regularly at Colorado College and in the MFA in Writing program at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and this year, he is serving as a mentor in the Loft Literary Center's mentor program.

How and why did you become a writer?
When my grandmother was 60 and I was a boy of 10 she decided to write a novel. For several months I barely saw her. At the end of this mysterious process of "writing a novel," she produced a book called THE LEMON JELLY CAKE which made it to the New York Times best seller list. The whole business seemed miraculous and very exciting to me. But I didn't actually start writing myself until fairly late. I was a junior in college when I stumbled across a book of poems by Kenneth Rexroth and was amazed to find someone writing about the very things that mattered to me most. Poetry grabbed me the way nothing else ever had. I was hooked.

In which literary forms do you most often work?
I usually write poetry, though I have also published essays, book reviews, and short pieces of memoir.

Who are some of your favorite writers?
Whitman and Dickinson always stay near the top of my list. I love the Polish poets Adam Zagajewski, Czeslaw Milosz, and Wyslawa Symborska. Recently I've been looking at poets like Arthur Sze, Jane Hirshfield, and Sam Hamill as I'm preparing to teach a course on the influence of Buddhism on contemporary American poetry. William Stafford has always been a touchstone for me, and continues to be so even now after his death. In very different ways, the late Jane Kenyon and Sharon Olds inspire me.

How would you define a successful work of literature?
An impossible question to answer, of course; but I suppose it has something to do with the ability of a work to pull the reader very deeply into its own orbit. There are many strategies for doing this but almost always, behind the strategies, there is a feeling of urgency laced through with a palpable delight: as if the writer has been captivated by the way language can startle the imagination into deeper truths than he or she knew it possessed.

What are the most rewarding parts of the writing process for you? What are the most difficult?
There is that point in writing a poem when you feel as if the poem is guiding you, rather than you guiding or forcing it: I love that moment. I also love that split second before the poem begins, when I've reached for the pen and know that something is coming, though I don't really know what.  I suppose revision is the hardest part of the process; but even revision brings with it its own grudging pleasures. There is a state of consciousness—very calm and at the same time very intense--that I sometimes enter when I am writing. It is pure bliss.

In which parts of the world have you lived?
I have mostly lived in the Midwest, though for the last several years I've spent a couple of months a year in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where the mountains have been creeping into my poems. I also have lived a good deal in Italy and own a place in Spoleto where over the last years I've done a lot of writing.

Which literary forms do you prefer to work on with clients?
Poetry is my primary literary form and the one I feel most at home with in terms of teaching. I've been teaching poetry for more than 30 years now. I have also worked with students who are writing prose, mostly memoir, which feels quite close to poetry.

How much and what kinds of background or experience would you expect your clients to have?
I have worked with students who are beginners and with students who are quite far along in the process and are working towards book publication. I've worked with students who simply wanted to give poetry a try and I've worked with those who have gone on to publish books and win awards. Background and experience don't matter to me. What matters is that the student feels ready to move to the next level, whatever that might mean for them.

Do you have some ground rules that you would expect clients to follow?
I expect to follow the ground rules set out in the contract between mentor and student and would expect students to do the same. I am always happy to address any questions or difficulties students might have.

What advice would you offer prospective clients as they consider choosing a mentor?
I would look at the mentor's own work, of course, to see if engages you. I would try to find out how other students have felt about working with that mentor. I would pay attention to the teacher's ability both to challenge and inspire you. I think that that mix of inspiration and challenge is what a good teacher brings to the table. There is an almost palpable excitement that a good teacher has about the work of teaching. You sense that it really matters to him or her, and furthermore, that it's a pleasure.