Monday, September 28, 1998
Poet drawn to lure of language
PROFILE: Laureate
discusses awkward teen years, religious struggles
By Cyrus Zargar
Daily Bruin Staff
Rhoda Janzen was the California Poet Laureate in 1994 and in
1997. In order to win such an award, she was chosen by a panel of
judges as the finest student poet at UCLA, and then she was chosen
as the finest student poet in the entire University of California
system. She has had over 150 poems published and has won the
Battrick Poetry Fellowship for her manuscript, "World’s Tallest
Thermometer and Other Poems."
Janzen speaks German, French, Italian and English. She has
studied all over the world and holds degrees from Fresno Pacific
University, the University of Strasbourg, a master of fine arts
from the University of Florida and a master of the arts from UCLA.
Janzen is currently working on her doctorate here at UCLA. She has
also been a teaching assistant and a lecturer in the English
department.
You wrote your first poem when you were 4 years old. What made
you want to create then, and what makes you want to create now?
I have always simply been attracted to language and the
representation of language. I know that, as far as my memory
reaches, I’ve always been interested in stories and poetry. My
parents really encouraged me in that direction.
How would you describe your most recent poems?
Generally, I’m very attracted to the formalities of
representation, so I like meter, I like rhyme, I like a real
concise and sculpted line length. But thematically, I would say
that the things I’m working on now have less to do with my personal
experience than with my personal interest in the direction of urban
representation right now.
I’m concerned with this feeling that people are unhappy with the
blight in civilization that they have created and that there is a
narrowness and a stricture there that is not conducive to peace or
tranquility or to happiness.
As a poet, where do you get your ideas?
I get my ideas partly from personal experience – I do a lot of
teaching abroad. And I also get my ideas from my own academic work.
I’m doing my dissertation on Henry James and the philosopher
(Friedrick) Nietzsche, and I’m doing work there with
representation, artifice and truth. My dissertation is about liars,
and I’m really interested in ethics and morality.
Tell me about your dissertation.
Specifically, I’m looking at Henry James’ novels and short
stories that are very much focused on liars, who are women. It’s a
heavily gendered dissertation. I’m looking at the ways people
object to the definition of morality given by the society around
them. I’m looking at the ways in which people challenge convention
and rewrite it, and come up with something more true for
themselves.
What have you seen that has brought you to this? Is it Los
Angeles?
I think it may be an easy answer to say that it’s Los Angeles,
although I have to admit that I have had a difficult time adjusting
to living here. Even now that I have lived here a couple of years,
I still think longingly of other cities and other countries. But
the body of poems that I’m working on now are not just set in Los
Angeles. I think it’s more my feeling of people failing to take
responsibility for the decisions that they make culturally and
societaly. Civic responsibility, as an issue and as a theme, is
really engaging me these days.
Are you involved in the community?
The only group that I think I can formally associate myself to
is my Mennonite tradition and recently the Anglican community. I go
to a church in Pasadena that does a lot of civic responsibility
stuff. But, in fact, I think my involvement with this is in a much
more personal and private way. Generally speaking, I’m kind of
scared of group-think.
What were you like in high school?
I didn’t have a pleasant high school experience. I was 6 feet
tall at 13. I was way too geeky even to leave the house. Because I
had so recently emerged from that traditional Mennonite milieu, I
didn’t do things like radio, or fashion, or movies, and so I felt
very limited socially. Then, I graduated when I was 15, so I had
that extra geekiness of being age inappropriate. And then my
parents sent me to Bible college, and that was so not what I was
ready to do at that time that I ran away and started a fashion job
in Europe with an agency in Brussels. I stayed and modeled for a
while.
So then, what were you like as an undergraduate student?
Busy! I modeled all the way through school. It was really hard
and very demanding. And as an undergraduate I was a combination of
goofy and judgmental, and obsessed with fashion. Actually, I’m
still that way (laughs).
How did you feel about your Mennonite heritage as an
undergraduate student?
I felt that it was a real millstone. It was encumbering and
shaming. In the ’80s, I felt that there was an academic climate of
hostility toward people who believed in God. I don’t know if that’s
still here or not. I don’t feel it now. Perhaps I just don’t care.
But it was a real embarrassment to me to be a secret believer back
then. Now, I’m openly "out" as a Mennonite in my department, and I
think most people know that I believe in God. They don’t even
question me about religious issues. I have no sense of apology
anymore.
If anything, what would you change about UCLA?
Since we’re speaking hypothetically, it wouldn’t be so much
about UCLA as an institution, but about the educational climate of
America, that says that humanities degrees are so much less
valuable than science and business degrees. I feel that the
humanities degrees are deeply valuable. You can learn how to think
in virtually any discipline, but the things that you learn to think
about in the humanities, the way you’re directed, the way you
mature, academically, critically, intellectually, those things are
so valuable.
So how would you answer people who say that an English degree or
a humanities degree just isn’t useful?
I think it comes down to how you define "useful." If you’re
talking about economically useful, then I would agree. It is a less
useful degree than a business degree. But economic use is hardly
how I find meaning in my life.
What are your plans for the future?
I’ll be looking for a tenure track position at a university. I’m
torn between doing the scholarly work that is implicit at a major
research institution and taking a job at a four-year liberal arts
school, where there is much less pressure to publish academically,
and I would be free to publish creatively. And so, I’m torn. I have
this great education from UCLA. I feel that with that exposure, I
should be trying to get into the great schools as a professor, but
I don’t know what, if anything, will come my way.
Rhoda Janzen
Read "Senior Citizens Witness Portent"
By Rhoda Janzen
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