Sunday, August 30, 2009

Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan was born to a Jewish family in the Bronx in 1932. She graduated from Radcliffe College and received an M.A. from Brandeis University. She is the author of Queen of a Rainy Country (W. W. Norton, 2006); The Last Uncle (2002); Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 (1998), which was nominated for the National Book Award; An Early Afterlife (l995); Heroes In Disguise (1991), The Imperfect Paradise (1988), a nominee for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; PM/AM: New and Selected Poems (l982), which was nominated for the National Book Award; and The Five Stages of Grief (1978), among others. From 1991 to 1995, Pastan served as the Poet Laureate of Maryland, and was among the staff of the Breadloaf Writers Conference for twenty years. Linda Pastan lives in Potomac, Maryland.


REREADING FROST

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

At other times though,
I remember how one flower
in a meadow already full of flowers
somehow adds to the general fireworks effect

as you get to the top of a hill
in Colorado, say, in high summer
and just look down at all that brimming color.
I also try to convince myself

that the smallest note of the smallest
instrument in the band,
the triangle for instance,
is important to the conductor

who stands there, pointing his finger
in the direction of the percussions,
demanding that one silvery ping.
And I decide not to stop trying,

at least not for a while, though in truth
I'd rather just sit here reading
how someone else has been acquainted
with the night already, and perfectly.



When was this poem composed? How did it start?

I don’t remember when, but I know I was actually rereading “I Have Been One Acquainted with the Night.”

How many revisions did this poem undergo? How much time elapsed between the first and final drafts?

All my poems go through dozens of revisions, usually over a period of weeks.

Do you believe in inspiration? How much of this poem was “received” and how much was the result of sweat and tears?

Only the ending was “received,” as you put it. The rest is always sweat and tears—even blood.

How did this poem arrive at its final form? Did you consciously employ any principles of technique?

I always experiment with line lengths and stanzas—the computer makes this relatively easy. My only principle is that it seems right.

How long after you finished this poem did it first appear in print?

Several months, if I recall.

How long do you let a poem “sit” before you send it off into the world? Do you have any rules about this or does your practice vary with every poem?

I try to wait at least a month so I can read it again with fresh eyes before sending it off.

Is this a narrative poem?

There is some movement over time. Does that make it a narrative poem?

Do you remember who you were reading when you wrote this poem? Any influences you’d care to disclose?

Obviously I was reading Frost. Does love imply influence?

Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

Not really.

Did you let anyone see drafts of this poem before you finished it? Is there an individual or a group of individuals with whom you regularly share work?

My daughter Rachel, a novelist, is usually my first reader and critic. And I often share work with poet friends around Washington, DC.

What is American about this poem?

Colorado? Frost? Pastan? Pessimism laced with optimism?

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

This one was finished!

Monday, August 24, 2009

Charles Rafferty


Charles Rafferty is the recipient of a 2009 NEA Fellowship in Creative Writing and is the author of four full-length collections of poetry: The Man on the Tower, which won the Arkansas Poetry Award (University of Arkansas Press, 1995); Where the Glories of April Lead (Mitki/Mitki Press, 2001); During the Beauty Shortage (M2 Press, 2005); and most recently A Less Fabulous Infinity (Louisiana Literature Press, 2006). He has placed poems in hundreds of journals — among them The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, Massachusetts Review, DoubleTake, Poetry East, and Connecticut Review. His work has also appeared in a number of anthologies, including American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press); Rhyming Poems: A Contemporary Anthology (University of Evansville Press); and Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets (University of Evansville Press ). He currently teach at Albertus Magnus College and in the MFA program at Western Connecticut State University. By day, he works as an editor for a technology consulting firm. He lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, with his wife and two daughters.


AGAINST HESITATION

If you stare at it long enough
the mountain becomes unclimbable.
Tally it up. How much time have you spent
waiting for the soup to cool?
Icicles hang from January gutters
only as long as they can. Fingers pause
above piano keys for the chord
that will not form. Slam them down
I say. Make music of what you can.
Some people stop at the wrong corner
and waste a dozen years hoping
for directions. I can’t be them.
Tell every girl I’ve ever known
I’m coming to break her door down,
that my teeth will clench
the simple flower I only knew
not to give . . . Ah, how long did I stand
beneath the eaves believing the storm
would stop? It never did.
And there is lightning in me still.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

I must have written it sometime before 2006, which is when A Less Fabulous Infinity, the book in which it appears, came out. I confess I’m not sure. In fact, when you initially e-mailed me and said you wanted to talk about this poem, I wasn’t sure which poem you meant! Once I’ve published a poem in a book, I find that I almost never return to it—unless I’m giving a public reading of my work, which I don’t often do.

After rereading this poem, though, I do recall some of the circumstances of its composition. The lines “Some people stop at the wrong corner / and waste a dozen years hoping / for directions” come from a poem that I had wrestled with for a couple of years. The poem was a failure, and I’m sure I saved these lines as my favorites, intending to work them into another poem when the time was right.

How many revisions did this poem undergo? How much time elapsed between the first and final drafts?

If I discount the years when the above-mentioned lines floated in and out of drafts, I would say it underwent about a dozen revisions over a period of a couple of weeks. My habit is to revise a hot poem (one that’s in danger of getting completed) every day. The revisions aren’t drastic—just what I can get done during my train commute. Then I take it home, print out a clean copy, and stick it in my briefcase for the next day’s commute. My poems arrive in increments this way. When I get stuck and can’t think of anything else to change, I either publish them or stick them in a drawer and wait for the mistakes to rise.

Do you believe in inspiration? How much of this poem was “received” and how much was the result of sweat and tears?

Yes, though not in the sense of divine inspiration. There are moments, though, when we’ve had just the right amount of coffee or quiet or whatever and we become, momentarily, the perfect medium for the poem. By “perfect,” I don’t mean that the poem comes out fully formed on the first try, but rather that enough of the poem comes out that I can see what I have to work with. It’s like the story of the sculptor who goes to the quarry to see what the jumble of marble at the bottom will suggest.

How did this poem arrive at its final form? Did you consciously employ any principles of technique?

I used the same techniques I’ve always used—a daily working over of the poem, purging it of what seems unnecessary, and trying to find ways to surprise myself.

How long after you finished this poem did it first appear in print?

That I’m not sure of. I remember scrambling to put A Less Fabulous Infinity together, because I’d just published a book the previous year, so with this poem, it was probably less than a year between completion and publication in book form.

How long do you let a poem “sit” before you send it off into the world? Do you have any rules about this or does your practice vary with every poem?

I send out poems as soon as I can’t think of anything to change. This is probably a bad practice. If I had the patience to let things sit for six months, I’d embarrass myself less often. Unfortunately, I always think what I’ve just finished is the best poem I ever wrote. So off I send it.

I don’t want this to imply that I’m permanently satisfied with a completed poem. I almost always change a poem between the time it’s published in a journal and the time it appears in a book. And there are a number of poems in my books that I’d like one more crack at.

Is "Against Hesitation" one of those poems you’d like another crack at?


No, "Against Hesitation" is not a poem I have regrets about, at least not yet.

Could you talk about fact and fiction and how this poem negotiates the two?

In poetry, I don’t find it useful to distinguish between the two states. I’ll put into the poem whatever will make it a better poem. Whether this element was actually experienced by me is beside the point.

In this poem, there is a moment that I remember. I was at a wedding, and I was standing under the eaves with the smokers while it rained. My own cigarette was done, and I remember wanting to go back into the bar for a drink. But I thought, “Not yet. It’s going to let up. Give it time.” I wasted a good five minutes of my life that day.

Is this a narrative poem?

No.

Do you remember who you were reading when you wrote this poem? Any influences you’d care to disclose?

No.

Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

Yes, it’s a reader so deft he won’t miss anything I try to slip in. He hears the faintest of assonance; he’s aware of every layer of meaning.

In this case, I think I did have an audience in mind: “Tell every girl I’ve ever known …” This is a poem about regretting inaction. Part of me must have been feeling sorry for myself that day and wishing to right the unrightable. It’s a pretty common feeling, I suppose. Anyone who says they don’t have regrets isn’t aware they had options. Either that or they’re liars.

Did you let anyone see drafts of this poem before you finished it? Is there an individual or a group of individuals with whom you regularly share work?


Well, before a book comes out, I show the poems to my wife. And to my friend, the poet BJ Ward. They’re both good critics, and help me to see how certain poems are flawed or boring. I wish I took their advice more often.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

I think it’s fairly typical of a certain kind of poem I tend to write. At the moment, I’m composing mostly fables and monologues, and this poem strikes me more as a lyric.

Do you have another book in the works? If so, would you care to share any information about it?

I do have a new book in the works. In fact, I recently finished it. It's called American Catena. It consists of fifty-one poems–one for each state and the District of Columbia. It's kind of an odd book for me–the poems detailing my relationship with each state, which is sometimes quite tenuous. But this sometimes sketchy relationship proved to be a pleasing obstacle in completing the poems. I'm bankrupting myself now by sending it out to contests.

What is American about this poem?

Well, there’s a frustration underlying the poem that strikes me as an American sentiment – how we’re always wishing for something better or grander. But maybe everyone in the world thinks in those terms. I confess I’ve never considered the poem through the lens of nationalism.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

I don’t like my choices here. “Finished” makes it sound like it was published in a perfect state, which is too good ever to be true. “Abandoned” makes it sound like I didn’t bother to fix some obvious mistakes. Let’s say that it was as good as I could make it at the time, but if I looked really closely, I’m sure I could find something to rearrange. This is what a Selected Poems is for.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Jim Daniels

Jim Daniels’ recent books include Revolt of the Crash Test Dummies, winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize, Eastern Washington University Press; Mr. Pleasant, (fiction) Michigan State University Press; and In Line for the Exterminator, Wayne State University Press, all published in 2007. He teaches creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University.


EXPLICIT

In Amsterdam my friend Dr. Zero
put the Dutch equivalent of a quarter
into a machine to watch some fat hairy
zombie fuck a pig. A real pig. The screen
was tiny, but not tiny enough, for he invited me
to take a peek, and, given my only chance to watch
a man fuck a pig, I took it. I liked Holland
because we could also call it The Netherlands
and call the people Dutch so we had a lot of options
while smoking legal marijuana in a club
that warned us not to shoot up in the bathroom.
Everybody draws the line somewhere. Perhaps
you drew it a few lines back, and I'm whispering
my sins to a dusty screen and I won’t be getting
any penance for my trouble. Dr. Zero was sufficiently
disgusted and chose not to watch the one
with the donkey. Not that I hadn't put a few guilders in—
that's it, guilders! What a great name for money.
And they have the best dimes in the world.
Smaller than ours. It's great to come upon one
in the deep lining of a coat, walking home
from the hash bar knowing you're not broke—
yes, I'd used up all my change at the arcade
watching variations on a theme. Twenty-five years ago.
We didn't get tattoos like we'd threatened to,
and it's a good thing, seeing as how trendy they are
now. The past is like a bad back—not subtle enough
to haunt anyone. Ten years ago a doctor told The Doctor
he might have AIDS and Dr. Zero obsessed
about that prostitute in Amsterdam he spent five
minutes with, even though she'd unrolled
a condom on him. It turned out he had
chronic fatigue syndrome. Every story
is a long story. We didn't shoot up. We didn't
fuck any animals. We told each other the truth
most of the time. I haven't seen him
in sixteen years. The world is a bad joke.
Sometimes we laugh because we think
we're supposed to. When I showed him
the Dutch dime, he took it and swallowed it
so I'd really be broke. I forgave him.
I made a wish.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

I don’t know exactly when it was composed. It was originally published in 2005, so probably sometime in the previous year. It started with a memory of my friend Dr. O when we were in Amsterdam together. He’s a larger than life character, but I found that while I’d often told stories about him, I’d rarely found a way to work those stories into poems.

How many revisions did this poem undergo? How much time elapsed between the first and final drafts?

This one came pretty naturally, so I’d guess less than ten drafts. I work on a lot of poems simultaneously, so it’s not one continuous process with each poem. It’s hard to tell with most poems how long they actually took because I pick up these folders of poems I’m working on and try to move various poems forward depending on which I’m drawn to (and ready to return to) at a particular moment. It’s a messy process in a way, but it frees me from the pressure on any individual poem. At some point in the process, if I’m lucky, the poem moves into the “done” folder and I begin to send it out.

Do you believe in inspiration? How much of this poem was “received” and how much was the result of sweat and tears?

Well, there weren’t any tears with this poem, but a fair amount of sweat. I don’t believe in the Muse coming down and touching you. I feel like I have to wake up the Muse and put her to work—so I guess I believe in a qualified inspiration—inspiration that emerges from hard work.

How did this poem arrive at its final form? Did you consciously employ any principles of technique?

I wanted it to use lots of enjambment and have it look a little ragged. I wanted to create this wandering around feel, a casualness to the voice and narrative—I come out and address the reader, for example. Too much overt control would make that more mannered I think.

How long after you finished this poem did it first appear in print?

Given the nature of the poem, I had to choose carefully where I sent it. Slipstream, a fine journal, was a good fit because of their lack of qualms about printing work that deals frankly with explicit subject matter, and because of my history with the editors. I felt like I would get a good read there, and it would be a good fit. Fortunately, the editors agreed.

How long do you let a poem “sit” before you send it off into the world? Do you have any rules about this or does your practice vary with every poem?

I think I kind of answered this earlier. I’m not sure how long I let them sit. Usually, I pull a lot of things together at the end of the summer to send out. I have no rules. I tend to have a lot of poems circulating though, so I don’t feel any pressure to rush the new ones out there. Definitely time for my initial enthusiasm to die down before I send it out.

Could you talk about fact and fiction and how this poem negotiates the two?

You know, given the length of time, and our state of mind in Amsterdam, I’m not sure I myself could even distinguish between fact and fiction. He probably did not swallow the tiny dime. I wanted to write a kind of wholesome poem about friendship while dealing with unwholesome subject matter, if that makes any sense.

Is this a narrative poem?

Yes.

Do you remember who you were reading when you wrote this poem? Any influences you’d care to disclose?

I don’t remember. I often am reading things totally disconnected from what I’m writing. Reading calms me down enough to get to the place poetry comes from, but I rarely find another writer’s style or subject matter creeping into my writing while I’m reading that writer.

Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

Not really. I’ll take any audience I can get. With this poem, it’s pretty graphic—which is why I just went and called it “Explicit”—so I suppose an adult audience for that one poem.

Did you let anyone see drafts of this poem before you finished it? Is there an individual or a group of individuals with whom you regularly share work?

Sure. I’ve got some old poet friends I’ve known since I was an undergrad who still read my work sometimes, and they’re great critics, since they’ve known me and my writing for so long. My wife, the writer Kristin Kovacic, reads more of my work than anyone. She is a very tough, excellent critic, and I owe a lot to her for all the help she’s given me over the years.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

Well, it’s more explicit. And it’s set outside the U.S. Most of my poems are set in American cities. The style, to me at least, seems pretty representative of my poetry.

What is American about this poem?

I don’t know. Maybe the bumbling Americans enjoying the legalized debauchery of Amsterdam makes it “American.”

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

Both. I assume it’s finished at the time, though often change things, even after they’re published, if given an opportunity to take another look at them.


["Explicit" appears in Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies, Eastern Washington University Press, 2007.]

Monday, August 10, 2009

Carrie Jerrell


Carrie Jerrell's debut collection, After the Revival, received the 2008 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Waywiser Press. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and Texas Tech University, she is an assistant professor at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, and also serves as the poetry editor for Iron Horse Literary Review. During her summers, she can be found in Tennessee, working as the Coordinator for the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference and on the staff of the Sewanee Writers' Conference.


BIG DADDY

Called me Hot Stuff. Called me Ragtop,
Lugnut, your Deere-in-the-Driveway Duchess.

Called forth Bad Company from the pickup’s stereo
and, lo, I appeared with a buck knife

and a hundred-proof smile, my battered hunter’s manual
tucked in the waistband of my cutoffs.

What were we at first but two necks of the same guitar,
high on the blister of our power riff? Each night

was a stadium tour, each day an album cover
fit for collecting. How precious,

how practiced we looked those weekends at the lake,
posing in our matching hipwaders and stabbing

at the world’s swamp-stink with the gig of our love.
But forever is a black fish hiding in cattails, a fat plop

always sounding out of range. Soon, the lake iced over.
The far-off smoke of forest fires stole your attention.

While I dreamt pyrotechnics for our stage duets,
you and your matchbox slid out the window.

No note. No final mix tape. No rose left thorny
on the nightstand. I searched for you in parking lots

until a passing trucker said he’d caught your show
in Denver, that you wore a silk shirt and played everything

acoustic, and the news rocked me like a last track ballad.
Oh Big Daddy, Daddy with the Long Legs,

father of a stillborn promise and my liveliest rage,
for weeks I choked on your name, stuck so deep

in my craw it took a crowbar and two months
of keg stands in Assumption, Illinois to dislodge it.

Now, I drink sweet tea in a Southern state. Now,
I am patient. Here, small likenesses of you croak to me

from their lilypadded thrones. I’d like to mistake
their bellows for green apologies, but I know better.

At night, I hunt them with a three prong. I fry them
in batter and grease. We both know what they taste like.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

I wrote the poem in late June of 2008. I’d been in a pretty gross writing funk since March, and it was making me cranky. One evening when I was visiting my family in southern Indiana, I went to an old-style country buffet with my folks. The buffet had frog legs, of which I heartily partook, and that brought on a conversation with my dad about frog gigging—the best times to hunt, headlamps vs. flashlights, two or three prongs, etc. So I started carrying around that subject in my head.

A few weeks later, a friend of mine and I were discussing pet names we’d been given by (or had given to) significant others, and we each listed the best and worst from our personal experiences. After our phone call, when I sat down to write for awhile, the first few stanzas worked themselves out pretty quickly, and I liked them a lot. Down the dark tunnel, I could see a possible ending for the poem, too, and I was hungry to figure out how to get there. Playing with language was exciting again, and I think that feeling—that return of energy after being so miserable at the desk for months—was just the lift I needed.

How many revisions did this poem undergo? How much time elapsed between the first and final drafts?

It took about a week, which is fast for me. I tend not to rewrite poems entirely or write multiple drafts. Instead, I usually obsess over lines or phrases, so I’ll work at one for hours, sometimes days, until I like it, then move on to the next. Sometimes I have to go back to earlier lines and tweak them as the poem develops, but I rarely overhaul a poem once I’ve written it. Overall, it’s a slow and often maddening way to write, but it works for me.

Do you believe in inspiration? How much of this poem was “received” and how much was the result of sweat and tears?

I absolutely believe in inspiration. Of course, I have to put in the time and effort, but if there’s no magic in the air, then all I’m doing is pushing words around, and that’s just boring. Inspiration can be found in anything (Amish buffets, anyone?), and it shows up at various times when I write. Some days, I have to write awhile before something happens that’s greater than me and the words on the page; other times, like in the case of “Big Daddy,” the inspiration comes early on. Either way, I’ll take it.

How did this poem arrive at its final form? Did you consciously employ any principles of technique?

Yes and no. I write mostly in traditional forms, and the last project that I finished before “Big Daddy” was a sequence of sonnets on the subject of weddings. Though the sonnets were challenging and a great deal of fun, I really wanted to move away from forms, so I resisted the temptation to utilize a set form for the poem. I liked using a two-line stanza because I felt the reader might need a little more breathing room in a piece filled with so many jumps from quirky image to image, and I didn’t want this poem to feel dense.

Probably the aspect of the poem I worked hardest at was the syntax; I wanted the structures of the sentences to be as enjoyable and unpredictable as the images in them. As with all my poems, much of it was composed by sounding out those sentences. I spend a lot of time pacing the room, talking out the lines until I find the combination of rhythm, sound, and image that I want.

How long after you finished this poem did it first appear in print?

About ten months or so. I sent it to Subtropics in the fall, and it appeared in their Spring/Summer 2009 issue.

How long do you let a poem “sit” before you send it off into the world? Do you have any rules about this or does your practice vary with every poem?

I have no rules about this. I’ve sent poems out a couple days after finishing, and I’ve also got a few that sat around for months before I did anything with them. Generally, if I like it, then I send it out soon after. If I’m hesitant, it usually means there’s an aspect of the poem that makes me uncomfortable. But, when it comes to submitting to literary journals, I try to stay as detached as possible from the whole process. If I became too invested in what the mailbox held for me each morning, I’d spend roughly 360 days of the year disappointed, and I sure as heck don’t need that.

Could you talk about fact and fiction and how this poem negotiates the two?

Many of my poems spring from personal experiences, but few of them are factual accounts from beginning to end. The poems—the questions they explore and the manners in which they use language to go about that exploration—come first, always. I’ve certainly been angry and disappointed like the speaker of “Big Daddy,” but the poem, which is so figurative to begin with, isn’t necessarily the play-by-play of any particular relationship I’ve had. I am happy to say that I have never looked for anyone in a parking lot of eighteen-wheelers.

Is this a narrative poem?

Yeah. There’s a pretty clear beginning, middle, and end, with complications in the plot along the way. And the speaker seems to be, or at least wants to be, a heroine, and she would like very much for the reader to view her ex as her antagonist.

Was this always a funny poem?

Yes. I think, at least right now, I write heartbreak best when I can be funny, too. Humor often keeps my poems from becoming too angry or sentimental. I think the sheer glee that I felt at the time of this poem’s composition simply worked itself onto the page, too.

Do you remember who you were reading when you wrote this poem? Any influences you’d care to disclose?

I’d been reading lots of people, probably too many at once, because I was stuck, so it’s hard to say exactly who might have made the strongest impression. I’m sure Richard Hugo was in the mix, because I am always reading Hugo. His poetry does for me as a writer what my pink blankie did for me as a child: calms me down and makes me believe that everything is going to be okay. I’d been reading Mark Jarman’s Epistles, too, and loving the sentences in those poems. I’d also recently reread Plath and Sherman Alexie, as well as Pam Houston’s short story collection, Cowboys are My Weakness. Often, the music I’m listening to while I’m writing is just as influential, if not more so, than the poets I’m reading. I know the soundtrack to “Big Daddy” included a good deal of Loretta Lynn, Aerosmith, and the Black Keys.

Do you listen to music while you write?

I do, sometimes obsessively. I come from a very musically-inclined family, and we had music on all the time. A good deal of it was religious, too, so I think early on my siblings and I associated music with higher powers. I can't listen to anything new to me while I'm writing or else I pay more attention to the tunes than the poems, but usually I have one or two albums on repeat while I'm working. Occasionally, it's just one song on repeat, which always tests the patience of anyone within earshot. I was very fortunate the past two years to have a housemate who loved country music as much as I do, otherwise I probably would've had to pay the rent by myself while writing my first book.

I can't always explain why a particular album or artist fits the writing of a particular poem. Sometimes it's the lyrics. Other times, it's the music. But it doesn't take me long to know when something isn't - how to put it? - supportive enough. As with the poets I read, I have favorite albums and artists that I go to when I'm stuck. They, too, can usually provide a pretty good kickstart.

Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

I don’t really have a particular audience in mind while I’m writing, though sometimes I think about audience when I finish a poem. Then I wonder if the poem is clear enough, or too clear, but I try not to get hung up on those questions. In the end, it’s my name on the poem, so if I’m satisfied with it, then that’s enough for me. I realize that may sound snotty, but it’s more a matter of survival. If I start to cater to the preferences of my imaginary readers, I’d never finish a poem.

I don’t think I have an ideal reader. I’d like to think there’s at least a little something in my poetry for just about anyone to enjoy, but perhaps that’s wishful thinking. If I have an ideal reader, I bet he/she listens to a lot of Tom Petty.

Did you let anyone see drafts of this poem before you finished it? Is there an individual or a group of individuals with whom you regularly share work?

No one saw “Big Daddy” at any point, but I did include it in a reading just a couple weeks after finishing it, so in some ways I gauged its success by the listeners’ responses. And no, I don’t show my work to anyone else—at least not right now. In part, this is just a reaction to having been in workshops for years. I’m content these days to work on my own; the poets I read and admire provide plenty of scolding.

What is American about this poem?

Bad Company, John Deere, and frog gigging.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

Finished!

[Click here to listen to Jerrell reading “Big Daddy.”]