On Dustin Pearson’s A Season in Hell with Rimbaud

A Season in Hell with Rimbaud by Dustin Pearson. Rochester, NY. BOA Editions, Ltd. 2022. 96 pages. $17.00. Paperback.

Dustin Pearson’s collection A Season in Hell with Rimbaud finds itself in conversation with Rimbaud and influenced by Dante as the speaker goes on a Dantean journey through Hell in search of his brother. Despite the influence of tradition that is evoked throughout Pearson’s poetics, this collection reexamines the Hell narrative as the Hell lyric that navigates a relationship between brothers and questions the world at both a beginning and an ending. Pearson’s Hell becomes both grotesque and dreamlike that leaves the reader questioning how much is dream and how much is Hell. The poems in this collection also explore who we are to another, or who others are to us.

“Who in your life would you walk through fire for?” asks Pearson’s speaker in the first of two poems titled, “Things I’ve Thought, Things I Do.” The speaker is asking this question of his brother; however, the poet also acknowledges the reader and asks them to ponder this question of themselves, too. The speaker’s own vulnerabilities are put on full display throughout the poem when Pearson writes, “The thought of asking that question used to bother me, having to listen to a list that didn’t include me, // or thinking the one name you’d say wouldn’t be mine.” In the final section of the poem, the speaker begins to confront their own fears, “Brother, I never thought my answer would be you. I’m not disappointed like I thought I’d be.” This poem becomes an acknowledgement of love, but it’s hard to not feel the sadness with which it leaves the reader, too.

This prosaic diptych of poems becomes a sort of confessional refrain after the second “Things I’ve Thought, Things I Do” builds upon the first which helps to anchor the book. The repetition allows the speaker to negotiate the Hellscape Pearson offers to his readers through the speaker’s search of understanding not only their brother, but themself. These sectional poems offer a breadth of space on the page as the speaker searches inward, “These days when I sift through the past like this, when you’re lying next to me on the bed before you’re lost again, I’m trying to tell you what I will miss.” This final line of “Things I’ve Thought, Things I Do” guts the reader with the speaker’s raw confession, once again, to their brother and leaves the reader contemplating their own histories, relationships, and what they are unwilling or unable to say.

Pearson’s speaker remains confessional and vulnerable within these poems. However, at times, this confession leaves the inner exploration of the speaker and feels as if the poet is speaking directly to the reader. “The World at Its Beginning” leaves readers with a tenderness. In it, Pearson’s speaker concludes: “I tell myself / I’d follow him anywhere / to keep the world / from ending.”

The last four lines of “The World at Its Beginning”––and the last four lines of Pearson’s Hell Lyric––become a compassionate reach from the speaker to his brother, from the poet to the reader. The poet is prevalent throughout the invention that is this collection which makes for another juxtaposition of speaker and poet. With the diptych of poems “Things I’ve Thought, Things I Do” and the final poem “The World at Its Beginning,” the self-searching chants through the outward compassion and both juxtapose the darker images that wander through many of the other poems in the collection. The speaker has been giving us the vulnerabilities, but it is the poet who has given us the realization of the final lines that end this collection. Dustin Pearson’s A Season in Hell with Rimbaud is an epic lyric worth entering Hell for.

––Tyler Michael Jacobs, Blog Co-Editor

An Interview with Nebraska State Poet Matt Mason

Matt Mason has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department and his poetry has appeared in The New York Times. Matt is the Nebraska State Poet and has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry, and in several hundred other publications. Mason’s 4th book, At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros, was released by The Old Mill Press in 2022. Find more at: https://matt.midverse.com/

You’ve served as Nebraska State Poet since 2019 and the position is a five-year appointment. How have your efforts as the Nebraska State Poet shifted, evolved, or surprised you despite the challenges surrounding the pandemic?

Well, yes, the main challenge is right there: the pandemic. My plan as State Poet has been to bring poetry events physically into all 93 of Nebraska’s counties. That seemed reasonable at first and then a bit impractical. Even so, I’m catching up and still have a shot before I’m done. During lockdowns, I shifted a lot of what I do to online appearances, which was okay but I definitely prefer being in a room with people to talk about poetry: it’s much more rewarding and effective, but you do what you can. I also made a major life shift by leaving my salaried nonprofit position to try and make my living as a writer and speaker. One year in, that plan is still going but I’m not sure how far, ultimately, it can go. So wish me luck…

Are you looking forward to a second term as Nebraska State Poet and how do you see the Poetry Pen Pal Program evolving into your second term, or beyond?

Right now, I actually feel that I might only serve one term. This position has been good for me in terms of exposure and I feel more Nebraska poets should benefit from it. And even if I’m not a CURRENT State Poet, I’ll always have been one and have that credibility, so I feel it will still help me as I’m not about to stop this kind of work which I’ve been doing since way before being named State Poet. The Poetry Pen Pal Program is one I’d love to continue, but it will need a new funding source. The program allowed me to go into communities around the state for a couple days with 2 other poets traveling with me, and it existed thanks to funding from the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation along with help from Humanities Nebraska, but it was part of a one-time fellowship.

How was it getting the opportunity to share the stage and have a conversation with U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón?

Oh, you know my answer: it was fantastic. It was my first time meeting Ada and she was nothing but wonderful. Add on to that how her event packed the Holland Center, a huge venue in Omaha. On this side of lockdowns, poetry audiences have struggled, so that was encouraging to see.

Since we published your poem “Mistranslating Neruda” back in the Fall of 2001 in vol. XXII no. 1, how has your relationship with submitting to literary magazines changed as your career has grown and evolved?

It’s really waxed and waned, mostly depending how organized I am in that particular month or year. I still do it about the same: getting poems out in bursts, then not sending anything out for stretches. One good thing now is that I get more requests from magazines to send them work in the first place. That’s a real honor (and the acceptance rate is a LOT higher that way as even State Poets still get plenty of rejections).

Your collections The Baby That Ate Cincinnati (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2013), I Have a Poem the Size of the Moon (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2020), and At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros (The Old Mill Press, 2022) are all very focused on their respective themes: parenthood, Nebraska, and Disneyland. When you’re compiling a collection, do you approach it with themes in mind or do you discover those themes as the collection begins to take shape?

Yes, having a theme helps me organize the poems. My first book was much more scattered, but I still worked in a loose theme to help me select the poems and put them together. Those next three were much more centered and it helps me to work that way.

Will Rock Stars (Button Poetry, 2023) be a departure from such focused, themed collections?

Nope, it’s largely around the theme of “Rock Stars,” mainly with poems about 80s rockers, English Romantic poets, and others we might call a rock star.

You have had a fairly prolific few years having published three collections since 2020 and two back-to-back in 2022 and the forthcoming Rock Stars expected in September 2023. What effect does publishing so many collections so quickly have on your writing?

Actually, not a lot. For more than 30 years now, I’ve had a deadline to start at least one new poem each week, so I have a lot of poems. And when I type up the handwritten poems, I sort them into files based on themes, so books like Rock Stars and I Have a Poem the Size of the Moon have poems written over decades collected together in those folders. So I’m writing probably the same amount but I’m now benefiting from having more recognition as well as a large number of poems consistently written and worked on. It’s all in the poetry long game.

There was a gap between publishing your second full-length collection The Baby That Ate Cincinnati and your third full-length collection I Have a Poem the Size of the Moon. How did you spend the seven years between publishing those two manuscripts?

Like I said in the last question, the writing itself followed about the same schedule. In those years, though, I did a lot of poetry education work around the state with the Nebraska Arts Council, Humanities Nebraska and others as well as also seeing the nonprofit Nebraska Writers Collective, which I led until 2022, expand incredibly with the work it does in high schools, middle schools and correctional facilities. I also had a 2-week residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts where, instead of writing new poems, my focus was to gather poems into manuscript shape. That’s where I Have a Poem the Size of the Moon came into shape as well as parts of Rock Stars and at least 2 others I’m working on now.

Your poems seem to be rooted in Nebraska in some way or another, has that been a conscious decision of yours throughout your career or has Nebraska just been a place that lets itself in while you’re writing?

Sort of, I tend to write about what’s around me, so Nebraska is what I tend to be swimming in. Even the Disneyland book has a good deal of Nebraska in it!

What advice might you have for emerging poets?

Let yourself reinvent what a poem is. Don’t worry too much about what you’ve been told poetry is supposed to be, let yourself write the poems you wish you read more of in classes or on your own (even if you’re not sure if those are even poems or not).

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––Tyler Michael Jacobs, Blog Co-Editor

What We’re Reading, with Assistant Editor Mays Kuhail

I’ve been enjoying reading more poetry over the summer, and I’ve recently picked up If They Come for Us, a raw and poignant collection by Fatimah Asghar. I was instantly drawn to the rich themes of South-Asian culture, identity, and the undeniable link between past and present in the effects of political turmoil and violence. Asghar employs varied forms in this collection featuring both lyrical free verse as well as more experimental forms. I was especially intrigued by the creative experimentation which I thought worked really well with the themes Asghar taps into.  In “Microaggression Bingo,” Asghar contrasts intense and complex notions of Western microaggressions with a simpler bingo card form, many of which ring true in terms of one’s ability to address such statements and actions. In “Script for Child Services: A Floor Plan,” Asghar lays out her poem as a floor plan to portray being an orphan in the foster care system. I don’t think I’ve seen innovative forms like the ones Asghar makes use of. The collection is also a very informative one and builds on other intersectional struggles which share common themes and hardships. I often found myself having to pause to put the collection down and take in the work. It can be a quick read, but I held onto the collection for a couple of weeks to make sure I was able to grant each poem enough time and thought and to connect recurring threads anchoring the work, especially with more haunting and complex pieces.

—Mays Kuhail, Mid-American Review

What We’re Reading, with MAR Blog Co-Editor Gen Greer

High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez. Penguin Random House, 2022. 304 pages. 17.95, paperback. 

Earlier this month I decided to revisit Edgar Gomez’s memoir High-Risk Homosexual (2022). This was partly in honor of the book’s recent Lambda win in the category of Gay Memoir / Biography and partly because I’m obsessed with chaotic queer books. Gomez’s debut memoir tells his story of navigating life as a gay Latinx man from his Florida childhood, going to uncle’s cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, dancing in the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, and his move to California to pursue writing. One of the many things I admire about this book is the ways in which Gomez is able to capture both the agonies and ecstasies of queerness. Gomez’s narrative doesn’t avoid things just because they’re messy or painful. We follow them through nights obsessing over Jennifer Lopez rom-coms, his investigation of language and cultural identity, and the discovery of their community. They also take us through the struggles of surviving homophobic family members while still loving them, their fear of HIV & diagnosis of “high-risk homosexual,” and living with the echos of violence from the Pulse Nightclub shooting. If you’re looking for a brilliant queer memoir (you should be) that makes you want to laugh, cry, and possibly put on some coffee for a movie marathon this is the one for you.

––Gen Greer, Mid-American Review