Writers Who Read: Athena Kildegaard

Who are you?
In summer I’m a gardener and a canner. In winter I teach and sometimes I shovel the front walk. In fall I walk and kick up leaves as I go and smell the must that they leave behind as they fall back to the ground. In spring I think about what I’m going to accomplish during the summer and in fall I mourn what didn’t get done. I’m the mother of two beautiful adults who surprised me even before they came out into this world, and I’m the wife of a man who balances me. I play the piano and I’m learning to knit. And I write poetry and some prose—including four books of poetry, Rare Momentum, Bodies of Light (a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award), Cloves & Honey (a finalist for the Midwest Book Award) and Ventriloquy, just out from Tinderbox Editions.

Which book or series was your gateway into the world of reading?
Hop on Pop – that’s the first book I remember reading. And when my children were small I read it again, with pleasure. Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle was my first book of poetry, a gift from my parents when I was eight or nine. It’s an anthology of poetry for children that treats children as people with a sense of humor and serious concerns. I learned about the wide range of things poetry can do from that anthology. And another gift from my parents was The Wishing Tree, a novel for children by William Faulkner that I loved so much I read it every summer when we drove from Minnesota to Texas. It begins, “She was still asleep, but she could feel herself rising up out of sleep, just like a balloon: it was like she was a goldfish in a round bowl of sleep, rising and rising through the warm waters of sleep to the top.” How marvelous is that: “a goldfish in a round bowl of sleep.”

Nowadays, what makes you crack open a book instead of pressing play on your favorite Netflix show?
There are some great shows on Netflix, but I’ve started some shows and then abandoned them because the books I’m reading are more dense, more challenging, more surprising than most shows.

Which authors are auto-buys for you? Why?
Anthony Doerr because he has a big heart and he writes sublime sentences.

Lorna Crozier because she’s funny and serious and she touches what matters with both humor and gravitas.

Robert Wrigley because he’s got an amazing ear and a sharp eye and he makes you look.

Rebecca Solnit because she’s full of passion tempered by intelligence.

Caroline Bergvall because she really knows how to play and how to make it count.

What is your book kryptonite—those unique settings, tropes, or character types that make you unable to resist reading?
Novels of exploration or sea adventures or frontier life: Jamrach’s Menagerie, by Carol Birch, about an expedition to get a dragon, told from a boy’s perspective; The Voyage of the Narwhal, Andrea Barrett’s wonderful novel about explorers who get stuck in the Arctic; Fred Stenson’s The Trade; Guy Vanderhaeghe’s trilogy about settlement of Canada; Kate Grenville’s trilogy about early Australian settlement. I like to be carried away into the life of adventure, risk, and wilderness.

What is your ideal time and place to read?
Sunday morning early, before my husband is up, when I don’t feel as if I must read something, I can just turn the pages and be gone for awhile. Where do I read? My chair in the living room, early light streaming in, a cup of hot strong coffee beside me.

Are you a re-reader? Why or why not?
I re-read poems and books of poems. Individual poems that I love I re-read for different reasons: to be reminded of what’s possible, to feel joy, to feel that this thing we do as human beings matters. I re-read books of poetry because they get better on re-reading. I’ve re-read novels, but not recently, though this summer I plan to read Tristram Shandy because it has been haunting me, but I want to wait until the semester is over so that I can really give myself over to the novel. I once re-read War and Peace to get the taste of a manipulative and cheesy best-seller out of my mouth. It worked!

Which books have had the biggest influence on your writing?
Elizabeth Bishop’s Geography III has been a big influence—for her attentive restraint. And Theodore Roethke’s Words for the Wind for his attentive exuberance. In my twenties I adored Ted Hughes, for his music—particularly his ear for the hard consonants—and for his love of mythology, something I admired but didn’t completely understand.

What makes a book a satisfying read for you?
Whatever the genre, a satisfying read contains beautiful writing. Sentence by sentence, or, if it’s poetry, line by line, I want to feel that I’m in the presence of someone who values music and syntax and words, but isn’t intent on impressing me. If it’s fiction then a satisfying read also creates a world in which things happen that matter and it contains characters that are complicated and strange and human. From non-fiction I want to learn in the company of someone who is passionate about the subject matter.

What are you reading right now?
I’m reading Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer, a novel that imagines E.M. Forster’s time in India. I discovered Galgut, a South African writer, when I was living in Denmark during a sabbatical eight years ago. The library in the town where we lived had a marvelous and eclectic collection. And I’m reading Creating Minnesota by Annette Atkins, for a new way of thinking about my home. And for poetry I’m lapping up Maureen N. McLane’s World Enough and Jane Munro’s Blue Sonoma and a gorgeous new chapbook of James Tate’s last poems, published by Rain Taxi, called The Meteor.