Steve Orlen: In His Own Words

On Language:

I grew up in Holyoke, Massachusetts. In the 1950’s, it was a working-class factory town Most of the grown-ups knew each other because they were born and raised there, and it didn’t seem to matter much whether you were Irish or French-Canadian, Polish, Jewish, Italian, or what class you came from. It was a tough place to grow up, where you learned how to throw the first punch before you learned how to read a book. You learned how to say what was on your mind, not what was in your mind. I learned there were at least three languages: the good English I was taught to speak at school and the bad grammar everyone spoke in the streets, and it became very important not to mix them up. The third language came from inside, the way I talked to myself, the hyper self-awareness of a kid who thinks too much. It was usually in the form of questions. Who am I? What’s the difference between that person and me? What am I supposed to do now? This gave me a sensitivity to language and experience that would later serve me as a poet.

On the Narrative Poem:

I learned how to tell stories at the feet of my father and my uncles. They always smoked cigars and made fun of each other. The stories they told went every which way. It took a long time before they’d get to the point, so I learned to be a patient listener. Most of my poems come from experience, and every experience has a narrative. When I sit down to write, I tell my stories the way my uncles did, not chronologically, but following whatever paths occur to me at the time. In fact, this is the way the mind moves. So, my job as a poet is to find something else besides chronological time to organize the material. And if I’m lucky, while I’m organizing I’ll find out what the poem wants to be “about” - what the theme might be. I think this quirk of mine has helped me to sort of re-invent the narrative poem.

On Childhood:

I was what they called “a bad boy.” I acted first, then thought about it afterwards. I skated on the thin ice at the reservoir, I ran away from home, I stole cars with my friends, I sassed my teachers and got thrown out of school, I smoked and drank, I had sex before I even knew what sex was. I was an impulsive kid; but also that’s the way it was where I came from. I spent my time in tenement courtyards and on the streets of the Veterans housing project up the hill. In summer, I worked in factories and on tobacco farms. I hung out in the diners and the poolrooms, listening to the old guys. I sat in my neighbors’ kitchens and watched the family dramas. Everyone - every family in the neighborhood, the Polish kid at the next desk in school, the French-Canadian woman who worked at the next machine in the factory, the Jewish man who raised pigs, the priest who played ball with us - seemed unique to me. Who is this person? What made him who he is?

On His Childhood Prospects:

My father once called the principal of the junior high. He asked: If my son wants to go to college, should he take Latin or French? The principal said, “You don’t have to worry about your son going to college. He’s going to jail.” Then he hung up.