A Conversation with Poet Maya Phillips

Contributor to Our Spring Poetry Collection

Photo credit: Molly Walsh

For our Spring Poetry Collection, we tried something new: bringing coffees and poems together in one special release. Because while coffee gets us up in the morning, a poem keeps us company as the day wears on. 

In partnership with the Poetry Society of America, we commissioned a new poem from Maya Phillips, critic-at-large for The New York Times and author of the poetry collection, Erou. Her poem “Equinox” was written in celebration of First Light Single Origin, a honey-sweet coffee from the Lake Atitlán region in Guatemala. 

Eager to hear more about Maya’s process in composing “Equinox,” we reached out to her, gleaning wisdom along the way on how to compose a life centered on close observation. 

About your poem, “Equinox,” the question that comes at the end of it is such a surprising turn. It feels reckless, melancholic, and hopeful all at once. It made us wonder about your own sense of spring. What does it mean to you? Does this spring have special resonance, after this year? 

I think the question at the end came as a surprise to me too! It's strange but before writing this, a poem about spring, I don't think I've ever really interrogated my own sense of spring. I think a lot about the other seasons: I enjoy the novelty of the early days of winter but then hate how those dark, long days weigh me down; I love summer, especially as a July baby; and I adore fall, which I associate with feelings of comfort and fun, with my favorite holiday, Halloween, and warm sweaters and the multicolored hues of the trees in Prospect Park. 

Spring, though? I often think about it in a literary sense, like T.S. Eliot's famous quote about the cruellest month; and in my first book, Erou, I have a sequence about Hades and Persephone, so I think of the mythology of spring. And I think of Mother's Day and my mother's birthday, which often coincide. I have a curious sense of ambivalence about the season. I associate it with the warming weather and brighter days but I also think of its temperamental nature—the sudden shifts from a wintry chill to a summery heat and back—and the rainy days (my choice of footwear always seems to be an issue in spring!). 

I have this distrust of spring: after all of those weeks of winter, how can I let myself fully believe in the sunnier weather? How do I know we won't have another freak snowstorm in early April, or a punishing evening breeze in May? And yet it's still hard not to feel that hope that things are renewing, and we can step out of our homes and back into the world. And that thinking totally translates to this year: the anxiety and fear of the pandemic, the hope of the vaccine. Spring 2021 definitely has a special resonance.

In writing to First Light Single Origin, we presented you with the theme of spring. How does your writing process shift when a poem’s theme, and aspects of its form, are already decided? 

I actually don't think it changes my writing process that dramatically. What it does do is help me focus. I'm always going to be that super A-type student at heart—and I'm a journalist too—so if I get an assignment, I take great pride in getting it done. Boundaries and constraints give us freedom, right? When I get a rubric, I don't just try to go off and pluck a poem from thin air. Usually I start with an idea that's already been stewing in the back of my mind, or some thoughts I had once and jotted down in a free write that didn't really go anywhere. I return to those pieces of lines or stray thoughts or random images and use the rubric as a way to mold the raw material I have. 

In this case, before I'd even gotten this assignment, I had jotted down some bits of lines that hadn't turned into anything, but I knew the underlying tone or theme was of yearning, and I knew I wanted to connect that with weather/seasonal imagery. When I got commissioned to write this poem, that helped me piece these ideas together and create "Equinox."

Writing a poem inspired by a work of art is common. Less common is writing about a food or coffee, as was the case for this poem. How do the senses of smell and taste figure into your own work?  

I love when writing is visceral like that. That's how the experience of a poem—or novel or essay—brings you, the reader, in. Suddenly it's immersive. Because I think many of us automatically think of imagery when we think of writing: what color the car is, what's the shape of her face. But we interact with the world with all of our senses, so when you can smell a flower in a poem, or feel the rough bark of a tree, or hear the voice of a lover, or taste a cup of coffee in a poem, through the writer's language, then you become intimate with the work in a new way; you are fully implicated in the world of the poem, through your senses. Think of William Carlos Williams and his plums in the icebox: In the last lines of the poem, can't you just taste the sweetness of the fruit on your tongue and feel the chill against your lips? 

What are your strategies to make space to write and find quiet amidst the frenetic pace of life? 

I always manage to make space for my writing out of simple necessity. There are times when I have something I need to write, and the piece just nags and nags me until I do. There's a sense of urgency there. So I have to follow that. And sometimes there are periods of weeks or months when it's harder for me to do the writing—and it's less about the actual space in my schedule as it is about me needing to find the mental space. That's the more frustrating problem. In those times, I just try to allow my mind to let go of the other work thoughts and everyday anxieties and just wander: I try to use my commute or a walk through the park to daydream, I read other writers, I look at artwork. And I try to be patient with myself, which is the hardest part. 

We understand that coffee isn’t your thing. Do you have a morning routine or ritual that involves a warm drink? 

I don't! I'm not a morning person at all, so my ritual is usually just rolling out of bed. Poets are supposed to love coffee and liquor, but I'm afraid I'm dull, at least in that respect, ha—my main beverage is water.