TCNJ

30 The College of New Jersey Magazine A prolific poet, writer, and teacher, Cavalieri hosts The Poet and the Poem, an interview show presented by the Library of Congress through National Public Radio, where for more than 40 years she has been talking to America's most adored poets about their art. Taking a page from her book, TCNJ Magazine spoke to Cavalieri from her home in Annapolis, Maryland, about her life, her poems, and how her words are about to land on the moon. TCNJ Magazine: Was there a moment in your life when you knew you would be a poet? Grace Cavalieri: I think poets are born. We're wired a certain way. I think writers, before they even go to school, are fascinated with the hieroglyphics on the page. We want to decode it. We see the world through language, then, as we learn more about it; it's the way we clarify the world. I think every poet I've ever inter- viewed has always said she or he wrote as a child. In junior high, I had a teacher who said, "Write a play." And I thought, "Oh, somebody's giving me permission to write a play." TM: You've written dozens of plays and books and thousands of poems since then. What makes poetry special? GC: Poems are about feelings. They can do anything they want. They can tell a story, they can just be language on the page, they can be fireworks, they can be an utterance. It is a wonderful thing for a poem. A FIELD OF FINCHES WITHOUT SIGHT STILL SINGING That song comes from sorrow there is no doubt. Bullfinches in ancient times had eyes put out so they would sing more sweet. Think of those black beads dropped to earth coming to seed flowers turning inward every single one of them without its sight. Stories say that moving in the wind they made up song as if nothing had been lost and this rings long into the night. Every sound we hear turns to a bigger one and each is true. We add our own until it is the first din ever heard, the way poetry begins.

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