By Grace Eppinger~
“Sunday” by Dani Fruehan, originally published in Klio 2018
Danielle “Dani” Fruehan, a fifth-year student in Penn State’s creative writing BA/MA program, is a poetry powerhouse. She’s had her work published in multiple issues of Kalliope as well as Klio, and her poems never fail to leave strong images in the reader’s mind. I had the opportunity to sit down with Dani and ask her a few questions about how she became interested in poetry, what her creative process looks like, and what advice she has for younger poets.
Becoming a Poet
Dani recalls that she wasn’t always as into writing poetry as she is today. She’s been writing short stories since around second or third grade, but it wasn’t until her sophomore year of college that she first became interested in becoming a poet. “In high school, I really hated poetry because of the way it was presented to me. I wrote a lot of short stories,” she says. “My sophomore year in college I sat down one day after I was going through stuff and I wrote this poem, and I was like, ‘What, did I just write a poem?’”
It was the start of a newfound path in her creative writing. “I think from there I just kept writing more poetry and writing for myself. Then that same semester I switched into the English major,” Dani says.
Her English 213 professor, the now-retired James Brasfield, was the one who first told her about Kalliope. “I first submitted when I was a sophomore and I submitted this poem about a leaf,” she says. “I look back at it now, and sometimes I’ll publish things and then I’ll revise them and then I have the one that’s not revised published and I get so annoyed [laughs].”
For Dani, this was the first time that she’d had her work published for people to read. “It was the first time I really ever showed anyone anything, and I think the first time I might have read something out loud was at the Kalliope release party.”
At the time, she was very interested in performative poetry and the experience of reading out loud for the first time was a happy occasion for her. Today, though, she says that her “form outweighs the performative part” and that “a lot of [her] poems are more for the page than for the stage.” This is a transition that happened as she became more comfortable letting people workshop her pieces and read them on the page.
Her Creative Process
Dani’s poems feature a lot of unique and striking images. For example, in her poem “Sweetheart” from Kalliope 2018, she writes of a waitress at a country club as “she drives a golf cart/through manicured green,/digs one divot near the tee-off,/and the whole Country Club burns.”
When asked about how she comes up with such different imagery, she says: “Naomi Shihab Nye, who just came recently, was talking about how you think in poetry and when you’re thinking the most and least distracted is when you notice the poetry that’s happening in your head.”
An excerpt from “Siamese Fighting Fish” from Klio 2016 and an example of Dani’s strong imagery
She thinks that the same effect happens to her and that “the images are just things that I’m seeing. But it just so happens that either I’m paying extra attention or I find an image that makes me pay extra attention.”
For questions of laying out poems, Dani says that she will “usually change a couple of times.” One of her techniques for mapping out how poems will look on a page is to start writing horizontally on a long sheet of paper. Then, if the lines don’t look quite right when they’re written out left to right, she starts breaking them up and arranging them vertically.
“It’s really just a lot of trial and error,” she says.
However, all of her choices are purposeful: “I think often my [layout] just kind of relates to my content in subtle ways, but it’s still always a hard choice to make.”
Advice for Young Writers
Dani’s number one piece of advice for writers interested in getting into poetry is to find your inspiration. “Find your poet who’s already in the world and keep reading them. It’s just a matter of finding those people that can inspire you,” she says.
She also advises new writers to avoid looking exclusively at poetry on the internet, such as Instagram and Twitter poets. “Find something with a lot of substance, find something that hits hard. Find people who are saying things that you don’t hear everyday,” she says. “There’s a lot of poets saying the same thing over and over again and that’s what happens when you look at Instagram poetry.”
Reading contemporary poets and published books is also important. “If you’re looking to start to write your own poetry and create imagery and make it a lifestyle for yourself, it’s important to just be engaging a little bit more in what’s actually being published.”
At the end of the day, though, poetry writing is about your experience. “A lot of being a poet is trying to recreate things in a way that is uniquely you,” she says.
For those interested in reading some excellent poetry or perhaps in being inspired for their own poetry, then check out some of Dani’s poetry featured in Klio and Kalliope below:
http://klio.psu.edu/2018/11/11/sweetheart-danielle-fruehan/
http://klio.psu.edu/2018/11/11/if-i-talk-to-you-like-poetry-danielle-fruehan/
http://klio.psu.edu/2017/12/08/on-the-day-my-friend-danielle-fruehan/
http://klio.psu.edu/2017/12/08/sunday-danielle-fruehan/
http://klio.psu.edu/2016/12/04/vincent-november-1888/
http://klio.psu.edu/2017/12/08/ive-been-struggling-too-danielle-fruehan/