The Blue Mountain Review Issue 6

Interview with Gretchen Heffernan Information Collected and Composed by Clifford Brooks Gretchen Heffernan is an astute judge of character with a way of writing that leaves her impressions clearly imbedded in the reader’s long term memory. Her writing mimics the way she speaks: Clean, calm, determined, and worldly. Whether you speak to her on the phone, or read her creative works, there is no wasted space. Now, in America that may translate to mean she speaks quickly without regard for another. In Heffernan’s case, nothing could be farther from the truth. She listens intently. Her ability to use that focus to not only edit her work, but the work of others, can be likened to a brain surgeon with deft hands. She brings out the best in other’s writing. For this reason her skills are highly sought after in the classroom and between colleagues.

Heffernan is not dainty in her delivery, but bold. In prose she delivers two punches with succinct passages to set up the scene, and then natural dialogue that could easily fit the demands of a screenplay. You will see her gift at the tail end of this interview with an excerpt from her new novel, The Carving Circle. I will warn you: Once you begin, you’re gonna have to buy the book. Luckily, that link is added in the interview to grant you the means to an end.

Gretchen Heffernan’s poetry is no less vibrant. Yet, it is proof that she has an ear for music. Every word she slips into a line of verse is an individual singer within a choir of other syllables. The whole of it – each poem, especially if you read it aloud, resounds with thunderous joy, biting distraction, or the tones sorrow leaves in the throat through scars. It is life. Heffernan’s education, publishing resume, accomplishments as a publisher, and ability to see the worth of ones words make her an exceptional human, rarest of writers, and a marvelous friend in a world of hacks. Please read on to discover a mind undaunted by time.

What makes Gretchen Heffernan tick? What have other interviews missed in getting to the marrow of you on paper? What music gets you centered for your mind palace to open its gates for creating poetry and prose?

Apart from literature and art, science and innovation thrill me, behavioral studies and physics in particular. Few people fully appreciate the imagination necessary to be a scientist or a mathematician, for an artist and a scientist both bend the rules until they snap in order to reinvent the known world. It takes a certain personality to manage this and that is the type of character I’m drawn to. My husband is a scientist and our children are fantastic inventors. In fact, we have created a family business specifically to patent and research our concepts. On Friday nights you’ll find us sitting around playing games and hatching theories. The same fury that exists behind a poem exists behind an equation.

I listen to music with the repetitive tendency of an eleven year old! I like my songwriters to be storytellers. My favorite musicians are Nick Cave, Beck, The National, The Decemberists, Leonard Cohen, Wilco, Richard Hawley, Led Zeppelin and The Cowboy Junkies. I also revere the piano music of Glenn Gould, the conductor and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the composer Ludovico Einaudi.

But my early roots are old country and I still love Don Williams, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, 68 | T h e B l u e M o u n t a i n R e v i e w I s s u e 6