A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Duane L. Herrmann

Bio: Duane L. Herrmann, internationally published (since 1969), award-winning poet and historian, has work in print and on-line publications as Midwest Quarterly, Little Balkans Review, Flint Hills Review, Manifest West, Inscape, Gonzo Press, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, over one hundred other publications, over fifty anthologies, plus a sci fi novel. A fifth generation Kansan, with branches of his family here before the revolution, and a Native branch even longer, he writes from, these perspectives. His full-length collections of poetry include: Prairies of Possibilities, Ichnographical, Praise the King of Glory, No Known Address, Remnants of a Life, Family Plowing, and Zephyrs of the Heart. His poetry has received the Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship, inclusion in American Poets of the 1990s, Map of Kansas Literature, Kansas Poets Trail, and others. This, despite an abusive childhood embellished by dyslexia, ADHD, cyclothymia, an anxiety disorder, a form of mutism, and now, PTSD. The father of four and grandfather of seven, he was surprised to find himself on a farm in Kansas in 1951 and is still trying to make sense of that, but has grown fond of grass waving under wind, trees, and the enchantment of moonlight.

Q1:  When did you start writing and who has influenced you the most?

Duane: I started making stories long before I could write, before I even know the alphabet.  I was about three  years old.  I had looked at a comic book in my grandparents basement after a family dinner.  I was the first child in the family and there was no one else to play with, so I looked at the comic books she had from helping someone empty their house.  The one I liked most had human-like bugs who lived in broken human things.  They were little, I was little, I could relate.  One time, after looking at this comic book, I fell asleep.  I dreamed of the comic.  When I woke up, I didn’t want the dream story to end, so I continued it in my mind.  I’ve never stopped.

Q2:  Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?

Duane: It was some time before I made up my first story from that dream.  I don’t think I was yet two because my sister was born then, and she’s not in the memory.  My mother refused to play with me, wanting to read the newspaper instead.  I knew the newspaper had words and words made stories.  Because she preferred to read the stories instead of spend time with me, I concluded that the newspaper was more important to her and I was.  I wanted to be important to her so I concluded that making stories would result in me being important to her too. That didn’t work. Despite eventually winning awards for my writing and being published globally, I never felt important to her until the last time I saw her a couple days before she died.  Then she struggled to reach out and hold my hand.  I knew that took effort and she cared enough to make that effort.  It was life-changing!

Q3:  Who has helped you the most with writing and career?

Duane: Kim Douglas who shared her tactic for writing about painful events: write in third person.  When I began to do that, the floodgates opened!  First, poems, then the memoir which I hope to finish in the next year or so.  “Make Sure He’s Safe” is the working title.

Q4:  Where did you grow up and how did that influence you?  Have any travels influenced your work?

Duane: I grew up socially isolated on a farm in eastern Kansas.  The open spaces, the vast sky, the loneliness and the abuse from my mother (she put me to work when I was two and never stopped) made me thoughtful and introspective: Why did my mother hate me?  I realized later that my existence had ruined her life.  I’m sure my birth was not the only one to do that for a parent.

My travels to my Germany, the birthplace of my great grandfather, who was my special buddy when I was very young, and to the Baha’i World Center in Haifa, Israel, have had the most influence on my work of all the places I’ve been.

Q5:  What do you consider your most meaningful work creatively to you?

Duane: Remnants of a Life, a retrospective poetry collection that I could not put together until after my mother’s death.  Those poems deal most directly with our relationship She could never comprehend or accept the damage she had done all her life.  When my memoir is completed, it will be the most significant.

Q6:  What is the favorite line/stanza from your writings?

There are many, but the most recent stand out because they are the freshest.  At the moment it would be the short verse I’ve now decided I’d like on my gravestone:

SAY INSTEAD

When I die –  
don't say,
"He died."
Instead say,
"This one day
his true love
woke him up,
and
took him home!"

Q7:  What kind of music inspires you the most?  What is a song or songs that always come back to you as an inspiration?

Duane: So much music inspires me that I don't think I can list then all.  Lark Ascending, The Steppes of Central Asia, would be at the top of that list.

Q8:  Favorite activities to relax?

Duane: To be out in the country were the only sounds are those of animals and birds.  I own a small part of the farm where I grew up and going there is my refuge.  If I could live there, I would gladly, but I can't afford to.

Q9:  Do you have any recent or upcoming books, evetns, projects that you'd like to promote?

Duane: My memoir, tentatively titled: “Make Sure He's Safe.”  It covers my childhood, when I was first suicidal at age two, the years I spent longing to be dead, then my unintentional avoidance of that and current reflections of events along the way.  I'm now past seventy (OMG!) and my work has been published around the world, in several languages, and has won some awards.  All, despite my dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, cyclothymia, an anxiety disorder, situational mutism and post traumatic stress disorder, and I may be on the autism spectrum, but more tests are needed to determine that.  I've been told by a psychiatrist that I shouldn't be able to function at all, but I've been forced to do impossible things since I was two and simply haven't learned how to stop.

Q10:  Any funny memory or strange occurrence that you'd like to share during your creative journey?

Duane: One time in Germany, I was in the bookstore at the visitor center for the European Baha'i house of worship, and looked for books with work of mine in them. The staff became excited that an international author was visiting.  I was a hero!  I left with a feeling of amazement.  That was opposite from my mother's attitude to my desire to write.  She forbid it.  There was work she demanded I do instead.  Now, I was a hero!  WOW!!!