Better-late-than-never review of David Ferry's excellent and National Book Award-winning Bewilderment at the LEO Weekly.

Interview and review with Rebecca Gayle Howell

I talked with Rebecca Gayle Howell, author of Render / An Apocalypse, chosen by Nick Flynn as the 2012 winner of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Award.

The Next Big Thing self-interview

Joseph P. Wood of the University of Alabama tagged me to do a brief, self-interview for The Next Big Thing about my forthcoming chapbook of poems, Hibernaculum. Which is good because it comes out in only two months or so.

What is the title of your book?
Hibernaculum

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
As Frank Stanford said, “Freedom, Love, and Revolt.”

What genre does the book fall under?
Poetry

Where did the idea for the book come from?
It all began to be grouped under the word “Hibernaculum,” a wonderful word I found in an issue of National Geographic. It means, in one sense anyway, “winter tent,” and that’s how I felt at the time: toughing it out in the cold.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the book?
This is hard to say, because I constantly edited and revised it. Probably two years.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The initial poems began when I read the Collected Books of Jack Spicer. Spicer’s poems were liberating for me. It was also a cap on other reading I’d done, especially David Foster Wallace and Virginia Woolf. At the time, I started writing very early in the morning, so the ideas came out of that middle world between sleep and coffee.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
The chapbook will be put out in around May of this year by Slash Pine Press at the University of Alabama.

What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?
There is no way I would compare my book to anyone else’s in poetry. For good or ill.

What actors would you choose to play the characters in your book?
Bill Murray, in the same general character as he played in Broken Flowers.

What else about your book might pique a reader’s interest?
The fact that Jameson Welch, who had previously accepted one of the long poems, “Hibernacle,” for publication in Spork, said it was an example of the Necro / pastoral, which was in vogue at that point. There seems to be an obsessive address to a nebulous Muse. There’s one of my infrequent attempts at a prose poem. It begins and ends in a desert, with apartment complexes and strip clubs in between.

My first cover story for the Kentucky Monthly

My piece on Kentucky longrifle craftsman, "A Long Tradition," is in the Kentucky Monthly and online at their website.

New poem in Sixth Finch

My poem "The Grip of All We Cannot Grasp," which will be featured in my new chapbook Hibernaculum, due in spring, is in the new issue of Sixth Finch. Thanks to Rob MacDonald for including me in this stellar journal!

The Imagined Field reviewed at Bookslut!

I am proud to have had my first book of poems, The Imagined Field, reviewed by Cort Bledsoe and published at Bookslut. Gratitude to all involved in helping promote my book!

New poem on ILK

My poem "Dream with Horses" is in Issue Seven of ILK. My thanks to the editors!