An E-Mail Interview with Raylene Hinz-Penner

(November 2005)

Who introduced you to poetry?

My father. A gentleman dairy farmer, he had memorized lots of poems and recited them to awaken us: "Good morning, Merry Sunshine. How did you wake so soon? You've scared the little stars away and shined away the moon. I saw you go to sleep last night just when I stopped my playing. How did you get way over there and where have you been staying?" and on and on. My mother read to me every nursery rhyme and Bible story she had. I started school early because they needed students to keep the school open. So my first Christmas piece was a little ditty poem:

My goodness sakes alive!
If you were only five
Could you sit still a week
And learn a piece to speak?
I couldn't either
so, that's all I know!

(I remember the red dress my mother made me wear to come out and say that at the Christmas program because my teacher thought it so cute, but I found it offensive, knowing that I could have memorized a much longer piece!)

Also, I went to a tiny country church where we memorized frequently, and we sang lots of hymns. To this day I am amazed at how all the words to these hymns come back if I hear the tunes. To this day I can sing the books of the New Testament (whatever for??) as taught me by my Sunday School teacher. We loved words, talked lots in my family, and my father had wanted to be a school teacher. My mother and father home schooled us at the same time we were in public school! They tried to make up for the lack of a music program with piano lessons, clarinet lessons, vocal groups, etc. But I did miss out on art!

What did being a Mennonite mean to you as a child?

It meant I lived in divided worlds. I went to school and to town in Kansas, and had no Mennonite friends at school. I always had the sense that I believed somewhat differently than my friends--about worldly issues like dancing and movies, though my parents allowed me to do those things in high school. The first time I went to a dance it was because I was homecoming queen and they weren't going to deny me that! However, I am sure when they saw my awkward dancing after the crowning, they wished they would have stopped me! My father did have the good sense to talk me out of trying out for cheerleader, persuading me that a tall gangly girl with size 9 shoes would look awkward jumping around with the petites! I was forever grateful later!

My best friend was a Christian Scientist, mostly at her mother's request. I saw that I was a Mennonite by my own choice and that I needed to internalize and understand those values--to choose them! My choice was intellectually motivated. I needed to understand what I was choosing. I had developed very little sense of myself as a pacifist. My real friends were church friends. I knew they were the ones who were to define how I would live and who I would be. I agonized over catechism issues and beliefs. We discussed them at length at home. I have a poem about the time I went to talk to my preacher about the Unpardonable Sin during catechism.

What does it mean to you now?

Today, being a Mennonite defines my values, beliefs, lifestyle and community. I have chosen to continue to be influenced by Mennonite community and traditions. I am a better person in constant dialogue with Mennonite community than I would be without it. However, I do not ever want to be in dialogue only with the Mennonite community. My neighbors are Catholic and I am persuaded by many of their disciplines and ideas. I personalize my faith and beliefs, and these change over time. I teach at a secular university, Washburn, in Topeka, and respect very much the ongoing dialogue with my secular friends and friends of other denominations. Mennonites do not have a corner on Truth. But then, the truth is always as perceived by an individual, "through a glass darkly." I've never trusted those who know the Truth.

How has your family/community reacted to your poetry?

Usually, with interest. Often, with great puzzlement. Often, they clearly see me as, if not eccentric, at least different in my perceptions of family and community experience. They recognize what I write as my own truth.

How has teaching poetry in the prison system influenced your writing/poetry?
 
It has strengthened my belief that writing poems is less a gift of certain inspired writers and more, as William Stafford believed, a process that people often need to be helped to believe in and trust. Whereupon, they are able to write pretty good poems. I've put together the poems of my inmate writers after each class I've taught, and I'm proud of their efforts. I'm also grateful for the experience of teaching them.

Who are some of your favorite poets?

My favorite poet right now is B. H. Fairchild. I would love to write a poem someday like "Beauty," Fairchild's opening poem in The Art of the Lathe. Fairchild actually lived in my hometown of Liberal, Kansas for awhile in his youth. I sometimes drive by the machine shed he writes about in "Beauty" and wonder how on earth such a poet came out of Liberal.

…favorite writers?

I'm reading Umberto Eco's latest book right now, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. I love a writer who stuffs a book with the detritus of our modern existence and makes meaning of it! Thus, I like novelists like Bellow, Pynchon, Joyce Carol Oates. My favorite novelist is Toni Morrison. I am proud of the fact that in the very first contemporary fiction course I ever taught in the late 70's I told my class, as we were studying Morrison's Song of Solomon, "Watch this one. She is going to be bigger than Faulkner." I love her work. I love her wisdom. I feel that I have learned a great deal about life from her writing, which I have been faithfully reading now for thirty years!

As a writer, teacher, editor, poet, etc., how do you respond when people ask, “what do you do?”

I was a teacher before I was a writer, so I guess I'll always answer the question, "What do you do?" with "I teach." I have always taught first, written second. I am comfortable with that. Teaching gives me lots more satisfaction than writing.