Spotlight on Loren Kleinman, Student Poet

Senior Loren Kleinman is not your typical Drew student. Still in college, her first book, a collection of poetry entitled Flamenco Sketches, is due out in May or June. Not too shabby.

Kleinman transferred to Drew from the University of Hartford in Connecticut three years ago. She chose Drew because it was small, intimate, challenging and beautiful. It's also close to her family, who live 20 minutes away in Wayne, N.J.

She is presently interning at the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival --- a large, renowned poetry performance and reading event that is held in Waterloo Village, N.J. every other year. It was held in September and featured poets such as Rita Dove, Amiri Baraka and Billy Collins --- the present New Jersey Poet Laureate.

She is also taking a poetry workshop here at Drew and is busy checking and re-checking the layout of Flamenco Sketches. Kleinman is an English major and a Writing minor. She will continue writing after college, but plans to do some teaching on the side, for cash.

Her Craft

She’s been writing ever since first grade, but only started taking writing seriously when she became a freshman in college and gained enough confidence to start submitting her pieces. They were often rejected. “It may take 450 rejections just to get one measly acceptance to some small-time magazine,” she said, “but you gotta get used to it.”

She’s learned how dangerous it is for a writer to attach herself to closely too her work. Being able to stand away from it and see it as something separate from yourself is important. You make more room for improvement, you learn how to skillfully manipulate words, emotion and objectivity, and you train yourself to think about the reader of your pieces as well. “After all,” Kleinman said, “writing is all about sharing.” This is something she learned from her mentor, Professor Robert Ready. “He's just amazing,” she said. “He’s so honest, so encouraging, so critical, but so helpful. He knows what I’m capable of and tells me directly if a piece does not quite reach my potential.” However, Kleinman adds, every writer should be her own worst editor. Kleinman admits that she revises obsessively. “It’s just never done!” she jokes.
Her favorite poets are Octavio Paz, Sonia Sanchez and Louise Bogan. Kleinman has tried writing fiction, but finds her talent lies more in poetry. “It’s always good to dabble in everything, though,” she said. She’s also “dabbled” in some performance poetry. She was the featured poet at Ramapo College for Women’s History Month last year and said it was a wonderful experience. She will definitely do more performance pieces in the future.

Her Book

Kleinman is in love with jazz, especially Miles Davis. She describes the poems in her book as “movements, sketches, beats and rhythms, very much like jazz itself, fast like improv.” Some poems are also experimental, like “Thank You, Jack Kerouac,” running for only three lines, and others, like “Up, Down, Sideways, and Across,” running for only two sentences. Short, condensed and free, but meaningful, is this poet’s thing. Her works are very evocative.

The title, Flamenco Sketches, was inspired by a Davis CD entitled Kind of Blue. Flamenco is a very erotic dance, and plenty of the poems in the book are of that nature. In “Something For Your Arms II,” Kleinman writes, “It is always going / to be this way --- me wanting you to / spread me like a fan and roast my insides, / Wanting to burn your waist red and then blue.” All the poems also deal with love --- romantic, erotic, familial and friendly --- which Kleinman believes is a tough subject because it is a very popular theme. The trick, she says, is learning how to write about it without sounding trite and old-fashioned. The trick is in method rather than content.

In fact, the arrangement of the poems was extremely important to Kleinman. “I wanted the book to flow into a kind of circle --- complete,” she said, and perhaps it does. The last line of the final poem “The Native” reads, “It will bring me home,” and deals with a silence the first poem of the collection (“Something For Your Arms I”) speaks about. Kleinman organized all of her poetry into a book last summer, then sent it out to the Spire Chapbook Competition, thinking nothing of it at all. It was only two months ago that she got the notice saying she had won $200 and a chance to be published. “I just couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I guess it was luck.” Kleinman had already been featured in other small magazines, like Splitshot and Poetry Motel, but this was her biggest accomplishment.

”I realize that business goes on behind every creative endeavor. You just can’t get away from it,” Kleinman said. For her, the publishing process was tedious and long. “So many contracts to sign, so many copies to make, so many things to remember!” she said. She is currently busy promoting her book and will receive 15% of the royalties once it reaches a certain selling point.