DOCK CONTRIBUTOR KATE GREENE EXPLAINS complicity in an age of mass-media
KJB: In Pierogies from the Old Country, the speaker seems to torn by their complicity in the creation of disaster. Yet, the exit from the poem pushes the idea that our voyeuristic tendencies can both highlight a problem while making it seem distant/other. Do you find this happening more and more in an age of what some pundits term “slack-tivisim”?
Read MoreDOCK Contributor Muriel Nelson shares the secret behind the delicious final stanza in her poem, "On Silent Haunches"
KJB: The line from Psalm 19:2 seems to be a perfect companion for the way in which you respond/pay homage to Sandburg’s, “Fog”. Did you find any of the rest of the Psalm informing the poem, or did the line just spring out to you organically?
Read MoreRW: The story focuses on food and household items rather than people, is there a specific value you are trying to place on objects in household routines, maybe more so than the actual people?
DA: I was trying to prioritize objects over people, but couldn’t manage it. After the idea for SoBT was born I stuck with revising it for a couple years because I wanted to write a story without people that was still interesting for the reader.
Read MoreA surprising take on the dance of continents, Trever Ketner's poem Erode is one you're not soon to forget. He is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2015, we're just happy we got to him first.
Check out the interview between Kyle Bassett and Ketner below, then head over to The Dock for a fresh catch.
Here's a mini Q and A with our poetry editor, Jackie, and Angela to get you excited. Read the piece here.
JB: The poem is based on a real event which I heard about from someone, who had heard from someone, who had heard from someone else. Some details, such as the setting, are factual: I knew what the weather was like that day and I was familiar with the creek and the dam. The omniscient speaker, I think, was born of my struggle to imagine what everyone in this unimaginable situation was feeling. Mortality and weakness were both the inevitable conclusion and discovered through the process. I think that’s why that line, “you see where this is going,” got in there—there was no other conclusion, no other way for the story to go.
Read MoreRead Andrew's poem over on The Dock and check out an interview between poetry editor, Jackie Balderrama, and Andrew below.
JB: I am very attracted to the parallels this poem draws between physical and mental disease. It calls to mind an awareness that suggests pain can be both visible and hidden to the observer. I think the piece especially resonates with the events of this past year's Ebola outbreaks. How did you decide to describe these diseases with the address of "you"?
AE: Beyond being a type of list, this is also a persona poem, so the second person is reflexive, conversational. I imagine this poem in the voice of someone in captivity.
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