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Annie Edson Taylor of Niagara Falls fame, Moss Hart, Karl Marx, Voltaire, George Westinghouse, Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Joseph Stalin, Jesse James, Charles Willson Peale, the botanist John Bartram, Federico Fellini, Caravaggio, William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, Kenneth Grahame author of Wind in the Willows, Eduard Munch, Roger Corman the b-movie director, Washington Irving, Annie Oakley, and zippity-do-daday Joel Chandler Harris. They all interest me. In truth, this wide scope is probably one of the reasons I‘m as productive as I am. The variety keeps my interest, stimulates my thinking, and goads me on. I should add a disclaimer. Although I‘ve written eight novels, none of them have received much attention. My poetry, by contrast, has received flattering reviews over the years. I‘d love to be able to write successful novels, but I don‘t think I‘m cut out for that job. EAH: I admit I‘ve never read your novels. I‘ll have to explore your bibliography. I suspect these books, too, are given character by the sheer volume of your interests — you‘re also a furniture-maker, painter, historical lecturer . . . How do you mesh all these activities with your writing life? GL: It‘s true, I‘m also active as an historian. Annually, I give between a dozen and two dozen public lectures on historical topics ranging from the Hitchcock chair to the history of money in 19th-Century America. Right now someone is trying to talk me into giving a lecture on potato growing and growers in upstate New York during the late 1800s. I haven‘t made up my mind on this one yet. For the past 13 years or so, I‘ve worked for local open-air museums. I curate exhibits, do historical research, reenact
19th-century trades and crafts, and consult with other museum personnel about exhibits they are building. I enjoy the challenge and the feeling of working with the real stuff of history. Of course, much of this work feeds the poetry mill. I dare say I am just about the only living poet to have placed a poem in Grasshopper, the Member‘s Bulletin at Old Sturbridge Village. While I was working in the shoemaker‘s shop learning how to make 19th-century men‘s work boots called Brogans, I wrote a poem called the Language of Tools that imagines the sound of the tools as they make a pair of shoes. Poets take readers into odd corners of the world they may not have visited yet. History is my entree to poetry. As chief Curator of the Valentown Museum in Victor, NY, I‘m frequently called upon to give tours and talks on a variety of historical subjects. I think most people assume history is about the accumulation of facts about the past, but the closer you get to historical documents, the more you realize people in the past were just as conflicted and contradictory as they are today. For example, while cataloging the Valentown Archive, I came across an old box containing Ku Klux Klan material from the 1920s. There even was a Klan robe for a child in there made of silk with red crosses sewn over the heart. At first, I was horrified by it and avoided the box. It made me feel dirty just to have the stuff around, but eventually when I dug into it, I discovered that the people who ran the Klan in the North of the 1920s did not think of themselves as running a hate group. They thought of themselves as an oppressed minority, and to some degree, what they felt was right even though I think how they acted on it was wrong. They pledged allegiance to the flag, professed Christian values, and espoused the family and home.