Book Report - THE DOCK: September 2014

Enjoy our prose-poem of the month, a lovely piece by Jenna Le.

HFR: "Book Report" clearly takes an interesting form -- in a way, mimicking the form of a book report or journal entries; and in the broader sense, a prose poem form. What was your thought process in creating this unique form? Did the title come before or after the final result?

JL: I was inspired to write “Book Report" after reading Ocean Vuong’s poem “Aubade With Burning City” in the February 2014 issue of Poetry. Because Vuong’s poem is written in long lines, I initially envisioned “Book Report” as a poem with long lines, even though I usually write poems with short lines.

Dana DSeptember 9, 2014Bulgaria, International, Prose Poetry, The Dock

Contributor Spotlight: Michael Marberry

Here are five notes on two poems (“first son” & “sixth son”) from my short project, The Seven Sons of Golden, featured in Hayden’s Ferry Review #54…

1. I had an idea for a story: A young woman’s scandalous, unwanted pregnancy is unfortunately revealed when her belly begins to glow and change colors: an absurd exaggeration of a very real skin-pigmentation phenomenon that sometimes occurs during pregnancy. How do our bodies betray our secrets? The story, of course, never materialized; I’m not a very good writer. But the seed of the idea gestated and transformed into the short poetic sequence from which these two poems (“first son” & “sixth son”) are taken. The mother’s physical discoloration became, in the poems, something allegorical via her naming, i.e. “Golden.” Instead of only one pregnancy, she becomes a sort of grotesque baby-factory – churning out son after (figurative) son.

Sam MartoneMay 28, 2014Contributor Spotlight, Poetry, Prose Poetry

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