My life has had a lot of fits and starts: before I studied literature at all I was a musician, and began undergrad as a conservatory student. I started studying literature in my third year of college, when I took a poetry course with James Longenbach that was pretty extraordinary. It changed my life.
Garth GreenwellWhen I took my first poetry class, I felt that I could understand the relationships between words and the formal qualities of language in a way I would never understand music.
Garth GreenwellI'm not sure I can articulate any principles behind the decisions about what to cut and what to keep.
Garth GreenwellEven though I don't sing any more, singing was my first education in the arts, and it's clear to me that my training as a musician also shaped me as a writer.
Garth GreenwellHistory is never invisible, finally, though some people seem to work very hard to be willfully blind.
Garth GreenwellThe fact remains that books that really put gay people in the center, and especially books that do so in a way that is sexually explicit, tend not to get a great deal of mainstream attention: they don't tend to sell well, and they don't tend to win major awards. This makes the occasional exception, like Alan Hollinghurst, all the more remarkable.
Garth Greenwell