Interview with Michael Kimball

Abstract

Interview with Michael Kimball Jill Kolongowski and Lindsey Kate Sloan Lindsey Kate Sloan: What was your first major project as a writer? Michael Kimball: I started off writing poetry. I studied with Diane [Wakoski] for a time—does she still teach? Sloan: Yes. Kimball: I was writing confessional-type poems and little tiny poems and things like that, but I don't really think of that as a major project. It was probably not until my mid-twenties that I actually started a major project, which was my first novel. I had written a lot of poems; I had written a lot of bad stories, and then I finally wrote something where I felt I had something good. That took years. I published little pieces of my novel as self-contained bits. I had published a lot in poetry journals up to then, but I hadn't published any fiction until I started writing my novel. Early on I had a lot of trouble getting published—nobody would touch the stuff. Jill Kolongowski: You said you published your first piece in Red Cedar Review—was it fiction? Or poetry? Kimball:Red Cedar Review was actually poetry, so, any of my publications probably up till I was 30, maybe, would've been poetry. Kolongowski: We like to think that literary magazines like Red Cedar play an important role in—especially in a young writer's life—getting new writers started. Would you agree with that? Kimball: Absolutely. I think there's a certain kind of validation that goes along with getting published and there are so many journals, print venues, things that aren't open to young writers, and so it's great to have the [End Page 129] good ones that are open and are actually reading whatever comes in versus inviting their friends or this A-list group of people or that sort of thing. I still remember the Red Cedar publication and a few others very early on. I mean, they meant everything at the time because you just thought, "I can actually do this and somebody understands what I'm doing," and all of that and it just gives you that little bit of something to keep you going. Sloan: Did you have any professional training as a writer? I know you mentioned taking Diane's classes. There wasn't a creative writing program here [at Michigan State University], was there? Kimball: There were certain stipulations to get into writing classes and I was an English education major so I couldn't take those classes. But I had a friend who had taken Diane's classes, and I actually just went and talked to her. I basically begged to sit in on her class and she let me. So, that was one of the two most important events in my development as a writer, sitting in her classes, because . . . I don't know if she still has this reputation, but she had a reputation of being very tough, with really high standards . . . if it was bad, she said it was bad. But there was also a very clear aesthetic coming from that, and she would talk about her approach to the poems and what her aesthetic was, and how she had crafted her own language, and all of these sorts of things. She would say "Well, I've done this and you can't do this because I've done this and you have to figure out your own thing." And so just those two little things right there meant a huge amount to me as a writer. I mean, that was the only real training I had at that point. And then I had another teacher in New York City who is also very significant, but creative writing wasn't as formalized as it is now with the MFA and all that stuff. Sloan: What is your opinion of MFA programs? And would you recommend one to young writers? Do you have much experience with them? Kimball: You know, I never went through an MFA program, and I've never taught in one. I have taught at summer institutes and stuff like that. I think MFA...