This article presents an interview with poet Stefanie Marlis. Marlis' poetry is often described as spare, delicate, and intimate-words that are ultimately too precious to describe the burly things Marlis does with words and phrases. Her poetry is not adjectival; it's built on the actual, not the accidental--there is no difference between word and life. She is the author of four collections of poetry: Slow Joy, rife, fine, and cloudlife. The recipient of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and the Brittingham Prize, among other awards, she works as a freelance copywriter. She says that writing copy is like writing poetry, but the practices are also as different as a pool is from a river. According to Marlis, her writing is influenced by Buddhism. She thinks that poetic strategies are useless, worse than useless. They are damaging to the process of fiction writing.
