Having risen from a branch of the Ni River
during a lull in the Battle of Spotsylvania,
she settled on the blue upper lip of a dead
Confederate corporal, weary. . . .
—from “The Mayfly: May 12, 1864,” Volume 60, Issue 1 (Spring 2019)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first “serious” poem I ever wrote...
Begone deadpan
mother into stones
arranged like a skeleton,
begone fatherly blades
that scotch my greening. . . —from "Ballad of the Wild," Volume 60, Issue 1 (Spring 2019)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Most of my first successful (sort of) poems I wrote in the MFA program at UMass and published in my first book, Blue Colonial. They focused on my hometown, Plymouth, Massachusetts...
They said dragoon and sconce and prithee then
and cursed not their work—rock-hauling, hog-murdering, thatch-gathering,
even as it stiffened their fingers, wrenched legs into question marks.
—from “What Is the Cause That the Former Days Were Better Than These?”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My earliest extant poem is one I wrote when I was eight and gave to my mother for Mother’s Day. I put a carnation in the poem so that I had a rhyme for “celebration”—already I was letting form determine content. A couple of years later, I wrote a short novel that my fifth-grade teacher thought impressive enough to read aloud to the...
A god, speaking to anyone
who wants to listen, paints apart
this person from that limb, this ceiling
from that sky, this mouth inside a child’s mouth
like those TV puppets that scared
me, sitting wood-jaw & vertebra upright in the lap.
—from “The Neighbor’s Dog Would Not Stop Barking”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I presume you mean when did I first start writing poetry? I was twelve. I had a marvelous teacher that brought the imagination into the classroom. Before that, it resided in the art room, at home, and in museums. So, my first poem turned out to be like a painting. Then, fast forward, some bad stuff in 8th grade,...
“My father calls in tears to tell me that two burly paramedics have just wrestled my mother to the ground, strapped her into a straitjacket, and forced her inside an ambulance. I am, in this moment, on a meditation retreat. Never in my life have I gone on a meditation retreat. And never since.” —from Marigold, Spring 2018 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first piece I ever wrote was an unfinished novel, when I was nine. I taught myself to touch type on my mother’s electric typewriter, then decided I would compose a novel on that magical mystical machine. I remember the tingle of excitement as I tapped the words. The manuscript proceeded dramatically, though...
