A 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.
“A Man in a Monkey Suit Believes in Himself” has two settings, at least two settings, as many poems do, as stories do, and in fact as people do.
Don’t we?
It’s set in the vastness of space, of course, and it’s set on some monkey bars. But it’s also set in two different parks, two different playgrounds, and in the dreams where the night-grass and the darkened swing-sets in those parks and playgrounds mix and mingle. They swap details like lined-up chromosomes. They fail to tell themselves apart. They insist that all the crushes you’ve ever had in your life are one and the same. (They aren’t?)
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 MoreWe'll be opening submissions again on September 15th for our Spring Issue (58). The issue will not be themed so give us everything and anything with draw, kick, and quality. As always, we'll be accepting prose, poetry, translations, and visual art. The only way to submit to HFR is through Submittable (just follow the link on our "Submit" page). The staff can't wait to dig in!
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.
Read MoreI love moving to a new place – how strange everything seems! The air has a different taste and color, the people dress differently, eat particular foods, the roads are wide and flat or narrow and winding. In the first few weeks, before I’ve become accustomed to the atmosphere, it’s like I’ve been dropped into someone else’s story. Paradoxically, this makes living feel more real, a texture that rubs against the senses constantly, saying, “You are in the world.”
I’ve always been fascinated by “What if” questions. In fact, when I was a kid I had a whole book of “What if” questions called If: Questions for the Game of Life, and I loved reading it and quizzing my whole family about things like, “If you had the power to hypnotize anyone for a day, who would you pick and what would you have them do?”
In my writing, I like to ask “what if” questions in love poems of possibility and imagination. My chapbook Alternates, for instance, is set in a series of parallel universes, and my first book, Annotated Glass, builds physical wonderlands out of dreamlike grief.
Read More
