Category: Interviews with Writers

52 Haiku, Week 3

March 7, 2019 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

This is a Kansas City Star photograph of recent snowfall in the city. It also reflects the gloom of our last week.

So much changes in a week. Last post I was talking about a recycled, repeated past; this week we feel unfettered and lost in a disappearing past.

The Prompt: Fundamentals we take for granted

Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara.

As fish dart through the water, they are forgetful of water; as birds fly in the breeze, they are not conscious that there is a breeze. Discern this and you can transcend the burden of things and enjoy natural potential.
– Huanchu Daoren

Again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

So my sumi board isn't really working out. Or else Albuquerque water isn't working out. Each drawing is leaving a trace of past drawings.

This quote made me think about 'things we take for granted' as living beings: water, air…and time, especially time with loved ones. Monsieur Big Bang inherited a grandfather clock last weekend which we drove back to Albuquerque through the snow. It's looming pretense was in my eye line as I was working on this. I was pretty intimidated trying to draw a grandfather clock on the sumi board so I did a sketch first.

My Haiku

…inspired by the drawing.

Water, wind and time:
all the torrents and simmers.
The clock stops at five.

The Reflection

Donna Lee McCray (March 12, 1931 – February 25, 2019)

Now it's yours.

Interview with Arthur Sze

June 19, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

In this interview, we talk about poems from Arthur Sze’s latest book Compass Rose and about an older book River River. We also discuss poems about place: physical place, the mental place, the place of violence in a poem, his brand of particularity, the forms his poem take and his evolution between these books. Sze also comments andwhether art and science are antithetical.

Interview with Aurthur Sze, author of Compass Rose and River River

Photo credit: Gloria Graham.

Quote Deck, Good Finds

March 22, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Good Quote-age

I did enjoy my subscription to Poetry London over the last few years. I liked it for its many reviews placing large amounts of international poets—insiders and outsiders—on my radar. But it has been expensive getting the magazine stateside and so for now I've switched to a virginal subscription to Poetry Magazine and the tiny journal of short fiction called One Story. Tough times, tough choices.

My first issue of Poetry (February) included a pretty amazing experimental poem by Elizabeth Willis called “Steady Digression to a Fixed Point” with some skillful verbal weaving that actually takes us somewhere.

There's also a snippet of the Amiri Baraka poem “Tender Arrival” that I wanted to share:

“What do you call that the anarchist of comfort asks,
Food, we say, making it up as we chew. Yesterday we explained
language."

Lists of Poems

Over the last few weeks I've received two emails from Poets.org/The Academy of American Poets that were very interesting, one for St. Patrick's Day and the the start of spring and another for Women’s History Month. The emails include a list of relevant poems along with links to audio poems and video.

The poetry list for spring and St. Patrick's Day:

“Infinite and Plausible” by Tina Chang
“Spring is like a perhaps hand” by E. E. Cummings
“Luck is not chance (1350)” by Emily Dickinson
“In cold spring air” by Reginald Gibbons
“Anything Can Happen” by Seamus Heaney
“The Conditional” by Ada Limón
“Personal Poem” by Frank O’Hara
“Chance” by Molly Peacock
“The Chance” by Arthur Sze
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree ” (with audio) by W. B. Yeats

The list for Woman's History Month:

“Blues” by Elizabeth Alexander
“Alone” by Maya Angelou
“Slight Tremor” by Linda Gregerson
“The Weighing” by Jane Hirshfield
“Where I Live” by Maxine Kumin
“The Words Under the Words” by Naomi Shihab Nye
“psalm” by Alicia Ostriker
“City Lights 1961” by Diane di Prima
“Don’t Let Me Be Lonely [On the bus two women argue]” by Claudia Rankine
“The Poem as Mask” by Muriel Rukeyser

Visit their links above to view the poems and sign up for their emails to get these email lists.

Lists of Review Outlets

Poets & Writers Magazine has a database of book review outlets: https://www.pw.org/review_outlets

News Links, March 22

What Happened When A White Male Poet Read Michael Brown's Autopsy As Poetry (The Huffington Post)
A Poet In Every School – the Detroit iO Program (The Huffington Post)
Interview with poet Jane Hirshfield – Hirshfield has out a new book of essays about poetry (SFGate.com)

As a teen I was very inspired by Mark Twain’s home in Connecticut and his typewriter in Hannibal, Missouri. Since then I've always looked forward to visiting writer's homes. Poet's don't get as many museums turned out of their homes, however. But now we have one more:

TS Eliot Foundation buys poet's Gloucester summer home (WCVB Boston)
Quiz: Can You Match These Homes to the Poets that Lived in Them (The Guardian)

And because I've had family in Anchorage and Santa Fe…

A Long Way From Anchorage: Poet Joan Kane Gets a Boost in Santa Fe (Indian Country Today)

Poetry Apps

Last week I found an app called "The Waste Land" from Touch Press Limited costing a pricey $13.99. If you're a big fan of this poem however I'd say the cost might be worth it. The app boasts having a performance of the poem by Fiona Shaw, audio readings by many people from Ted Hughes to Viggo Mortensen to Jeremy Irons and lots of references, allusions, and notes on structure. There are also 35 perspectives on the poem and the original manuscript with Ezra Pound’s editing. Find out more: http://thewasteland.touchpress.com/

Or you can buy the African American Poetry app for 99 cents and this app includes hundreds of poems.

A Book About the Dark Side of the 1970s

December 11, 2014 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Over on my sister-site Cher Scholar, I've just published a recent interview with the author of a new novel, Sister Golden Hair, about a pre-teen girl named Jesse growing up in the early-to-mid 1970s. I talk to author Darcey Steinke, the daughter of a minister and a beauty queen, about how a celebrity-obsession with Cher works in the narrative and what Cher's "text" means vis-à-vis our struggles with ideals of beauty, role models and holiness. We also talk about the construction of her novel and depicting the trials of a teenager navigating issues of identity.

Interview with Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair

A Book About Neighbors

September 15, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

I've just posted a recent interview with Gwendolen Gross, novelist and author of When She Was Gone, as well as many other books. Wendy (and Ann Cefola) and I graduated from the same MFA class at Sarah Lawrence College (back in the olde pre-Internet days).

We discuss the border between our personal lives and our sense of our neighborhood,
how to assemble a novel with a "gravitational" central character who
drives the story, the motives of characters and opportunities of plot,
pacing and point of view.

Interview with Gwendolen Gross, author of When She Was Gone

Interview with Poet Ann Cefola

June 5, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

I've just posted a recent interview with poet Ann Cefola.

We
discuss poems about landscape: the New England landscape, the landsape of grief,
the female landscape, the landscape of the night sky, inspirations from
painting, writing found poems and translations..

Interview with Ann Cefola, author of Sugaring and St. Agnes, Pink-Slipped

Interview with Poet Jon Davis

May 20, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

I've just posted a recent interview with poet Jon Davis.

We
discuss aspects of meaning in language, the poetic seam, the allowance
of sentiment in poems, prose poems, being Santa Fe's Poet Laureate and his alter ego Chuck Calabreze.

Interview with Jon Davis, author of Preliminary Report and Scrimmage of Appetite

A Book About Mothers, Daughters and Women’s Voices

March 24, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

I've just posted a recent interview with poet Barbara Rockman.

This
interview talks about ways to write the mother-daughter poem, the child
and marriage poem, writing grief and the benefits of silence in a poem.

Interview with Barbara Rockman, author of Sting and Nest

A Book About Birds

October 7, 2012 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

I've just posted a recent interview with poet Tom Crawford.

This interview talks about the importance of birds, meditation in poetry, the use of place, accentuating the ordinary and the inspirational hunch that begins a poem.

Interview with Tom Crawford, author of The Names of Birds

A Book About Moses

June 17, 2012 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

I've just posted a recent interview with writer Maurice Harris.

This interview talks at length about a modern and progressive interpretation of Moses, as well as some inspiring and informative discussion on when Maurice found time to write, publisher rejections and pre-writing marketing research.

Interview with Maurice D. Harris, author of Moses, A Stranger Among Us