An Interview with Jonie McIntire: Finding Poetry and Community in the Midwest

Winter Wheat is just a little over a week away! As a part of the writing festival, on Saturday, November 7th, poet Jonie McIntire will be reading alongside Dave Essinger and sharing her work with us.

McIntire is a long-time Winter Wheat supporter, but additionally, she is deeply immersed in the communities she works within to support her writing and foster writing among others in Northwest Ohio. McIntire is a writer based in Toledo, Ohio and is the Poet Laureate of Lucas County, Ohio. She is the poetry editor for Of Rust and Glass and serves as Membership Chair for the Ohio Poetry Association. Additionally, she hosts a monthly poetry reading series, Uncloistered Poetry, which has been going for over six years and currently runs in-person and on-line events each month. You can read Jonie McIntire’s full bio here.

In the interview that follows, McIntire shared with us how she found her communities or formed them when they weren’t there. She discusses the value she finds in community, how they support and encourage her, both in helping her to generate and develop her writing. She also shared with us a little bit about what she will be reading for us at Winter Wheat and why you should attend. Read on to learn more!


You are a part of many literary communities including the Ohio Poetry Association where you serve as a Membership chair, and with the monthly reading series you host, Uncloistered Poetry. What are some of your favorite things about the writing communities you belong to?

What I love about artistic communities is how they overlap and interplay. I have been a part of the Ohio Poetry Association for many years, but during the pandemic, I took on the role of Membership Chair because I loved the work they do and wanted to help them grow. OPA is so well-connected to Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and other major areas in Ohio, and they work to move events around the state whenever possible. More and more poets from the Toledo area have been getting involved in OPA events, from the Underground Railroad readings to the recent River Roots anthology. I love seeing our local poets reach out and establish themselves in the wider writing community! In 2024, I moved into the role of Treasurer and, though we are searching for a new candidate to fill the position, I have loved seeing the group expand its reach and offerings. They have a lot planned in the next year or so. I can’t wait to see more activity in our corner of Ohio!

During the pandemic, I also found some new communities who have become dear to my heart. In particular, the Women of Appalachia Project, founded and led by the incredible Kari Gunter-Seymour. Working with Haley Haugen-Mitchell, Kari edits a yearly anthology of writings by women in and from Appalachia. I was born in Pittsburgh and found so much resonance in what these talented women had to say. Finding WOAP really helped me build my voice and give me a chance to focus on some stories from my past. And I truly find kindred spirits every year I get to read with the group. In fact, through this group, I came to learn about a writing retreat Pauletta Hansel hosts in Kentucky which I have now attended a few times and am excited to return to in the future. 

Beyond that, I have a couple writing workshop groups that I regularly interact with. One includes a few teachers from Toledo School for the Arts as well as a good friend I’ve known since college (Justin Longacre, Adrian Lime, Heather Smietanski, Lydia Horvath, and Kerry Trautman.) Kerry, Adrian and I have been writing together and reading together since the late 90’s. They are truly pivotal to who I am today as a writer, and they continue to be the best editors a gal could find. The other group I write with is online – a small collection of poets who are mostly new to me, but we email poems to each other, using a final line from the poet before us to start our next poem. I’ve been in this group for a few years now and it’s delightfully challenging but easy-paced (which is the right pace for me!)


Your reading series, Uncloistered Poetry— how did you come to create it? What prompted you to start it?

Uncloistered Poetry started in 2016, when my first chapbook “Not All Who Are Lost Wander” was released. There was a new brewery downtown called Black Cloister with the most delicious beer and a lovely little stage. So I asked if we could have readings, made our first reading a book release, and thought we might as well make this a monthly reading. At first, it was called “Cloistered Poetry.” Unfortunately, the location did not work out and we were only there for a few months before we had to move to Calvino’s. I changed the name to “Uncloistered Poetry,” and we stayed at Calvino’s for about three and a half years before the pandemic made us move to an online format. During that time, we were able to pay performers through an Arts Commission of Greater Toledo Accelerator Grant, and even raise funds for NAOMI House, Library Legacy Foundation, and Toledo Streets Newspaper. At the time, there weren’t many open mics going on. I was involved in Broadway Bards, which read at The Original Subshop and had been going for many years, but Hod Doering, who ran the series, was slowing down a little and I wanted to help build more stages for poets. Calvino’s opened on Sunday nights just for us, made us feel at home, fed us, and really gave us a space to grow in. 

When the pandemic moved us online, we found a new community there. People from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, Italy, the Phillipines and all over the United States joined us and shared their work. It was really an incredible experience to find new poets each month. 

As we were able to meet in person again, I wanted to maintain both series, the in-person and on-line. So we moved to The Attic on Adams for our readings in Toledo. The Attic has given us space to host all kinds of events over the years, from “Back to Jack” to book releases, even a few wakes for poets who had passed. And we were able to visit a few other locations, like the Switchboard, The Trunk (a long-time favorite haunt for local poets), and even The Peacock, all of which were incredible hosts.


As a writer based in the Midwest, can you speak to our community specifically? How does being a Midwest writer influence how you think about your work or impact the way you engage with the community?

Where you live and where you come from seep up through the pores in your writing. It’s in what objects you focus on and what attitudes you have about rain. Midwest writers talk about work even when they aren’t talking about work – because so much of what we do and where we live is centered on it. I guess I would say in my work, there is always a cloud – the dead body in the love poem, or the sadness of a sunny day. That’s pretty freakin’ Midwestern. I talk about the economy, about working class situations quite a bit, about women trapped by work and family, decaying houses and old dogs. 

I suppose you can tell I’m a Midwest writer because I shy away from the stage sometimes, but when I get up there, I say what I mean whether you like it or not. That feels pretty Midwestern to me. A begrudging frankness. But a need to see other people get up, a true deep joy when they push themselves to say something difficult and find that they are not alone. Maybe that’s not just Midwest. But it’s what I love about the poetry scene in Northwest Ohio. We show up for each other. 


Much of Winter Wheat is similarly about creating an environment for community and connection. As a past participant of Winter Wheat, I wonder if you can speak to some of your experiences for those who haven’t attended Winter Wheat before.

Oh you are in for a treat! I learned how to make little books at Winter Wheat. I learned how to use fairy tales in poetry to take allusions and assumptions and turn them. I learned how to do yoga and turn that into poems about the body. I learned about what journal editors look for and what they immediately reject. I learned about incorporating memoir into prose poetry. I learned about writing theater pieces that interweave multiple storylines. I learned about drinking tea and making that an experience that generated many poems. I learned about building poetic communities.

Winter Wheat is a reunion of writers. Not just local and not just academic, but from all over and from all genres and styles. Because the presenters can be from any walk of life, the classes can cover any aspect of literary art – from the physical production of paper/books/broadsides/collage, to the ideation of poems and plays, from craft to presentation. I love the creativity that workshop leaders bring. And of course, there’s the bookfair – another favorite of mine. You get the chance to talk to journal editors about what they are looking for, get free copies sometimes or purchase some to get a better idea where to submit. There’s always the opportunity to get to know the other writers at lunch time or between workshops. And then there’s the open mic – THAT IS THE BEST! No, seriously. Open mic at the end of Winter Wheat is how I want to let go this mortal coil. Walk out with the exhausted, inspired, frantic joy of feeling everything renewed again. Open mic is where you get reborn.


Finally, can you share with us a little bit about what you will be reading and how you selected it? 

What I’m going to read is a collection of various writing over the years. Because I want to tell the tale of how I got here. How I went from writing in college, to having kids and working, returning to poetry, retiring from corporate work at 43 years old, finding the courage to write about difficult things, returning to work at 50, and maintaining a sense of community through all of it.

An Interview with Paula J. Lambert & Juan Rojas: On Translation, Collaboration, and Community

With Winter Wheat just around the corner, we asked our guest readers, Paula J. Lambert and Juan Rojas about their work, what they will be reading, and about their Winter Wheat experiences to share with our readers and participants.

Lambert and Rojas were asked to respond to the following questions via email and what follows is their written descriptions depicting the beautiful working relationship they have developed to produce their works of translation and the importance of their communication and understanding of each other.


Can you share with us a little bit about what you will be reading? 

Paula & Juan: We’ll be reading poems excerpted from Juan’s full manuscript El camino que lleva nuestros nombres / The Path that Carries Our Names in the original Spanish and the translated English. The last section, as you know, was published in MAR as a featured translation chapbook, so we expect to finish the reading with that last section of the book in full. We also look forward to discussing the translation process itself, as time allows—how it unfolds, and the key elements that shape it.


Your work is a work in translation. Can you speak to the process of translation? 

Paula: For us, the work was as much a process of editing as it was translation, as Juan came to me when he’d finished the first draft of the manuscript, and the poems needed quite a lot of work. I’m a very good editor, and many of the poems that were quite long and rather confusing were edited down to something far more concise. Additionally, some of the poems had already been translated to English by another poet who was not a native English speaker, and though that should have made things easier for me (I actually don’t speak or read Spanish) it actually made some things more difficult, as we had to sort out what was problematic from the original words Juan wrote and what may have been a problem with an inaccuracy in the first translation. So, ours was a sitting-side-by-side process, with me asking him over and over, “Is this what you really mean? Is this what you intended?” Sometimes that led to him realizing the drafted poem was not very clear, and sometimes it meant there was something in the language or the cultural references that I was not yet understanding. And of course once we got through all the individual poems, all translated fully and clearly into English so that I had a much clearer understanding of the overall story being told, we had to take a look at how the poems were working together—where there were redundancies, for example, or how some parallels needed to be highlighted.

Juan: The translation process involved four essential elements: excellent communication—between poet and poet, poet and editor, and poet and translator; a willingness to explore new creative possibilities; trust in our instincts and in the original poetic essence; and the courage to embrace transformation.

For me, it was crucial to truly listen to Paula—not only as a translator, but also as a poet and editor in her own right. I wanted to ensure that what I originally intended to “chant” could be creatively reimagined through translation. After all, every translation is its own new creation.

I made a point to reflect on the changes Paula suggested—not simply agreeing or disagreeing but engaging in meaningful discussion. Dialogue has been essential throughout—before, during, and even after the translation of the manuscript—especially as we’ve shared this work together in multiple conferences and literary festivals.


How did you come to collaborate and what was that process like collaborating?

Paula: We’ve been friends and colleagues for many years. I’m not honestly sure where we first met, but I’d heard him read on the local poetry scene and, as I was hosting Peripatetic Poets here in Columbus and a show called “Celebrating the Night Sky” at Perkins Observatory in Delaware, I invited him to read. When he read at the observatory, he brought his two children, very young at the time, who played “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on the violin as he read his poems over their music. It was magical. When that event evolved into the Sun & Moon Poetry Festival, I invited him to take part in the Haiku Death Match. It was fascinating watching audiences respond to his performances. People literally swooned over his tiny, powerful poems. So, I invited him to do a little chapbook for Full/Crescent press, and that turned into De caña de maíz y miel: 12 haikus de Ohio / On Cornstalks and Honey: 12 Ohio Haiku. Haiku are very hard to write, and the original poems he gave me needed a lot of work, so the process was similar. “Is this really what you mean? Why did you use this image?” And so on. I was not yet his translator, but we found through that process that we worked very, very well together as poet and editor. It turned into a gorgeous little pocket-sized, hand-stitched chapbook with a cover that was just beautiful. And it sold out almost immediately. When he found himself in need of a new translator a few years ago, he told me he had a new manuscript and asked if I might like to try working together on that, to ensure the work was solid in both languages. And here we are. We’re co-workers and friends, able to be very honest with one another. I’m able to tell him when something is not working—and of course, when it’s working incredibly, beautifully well. He’s able to tell me that something needs to be a certain way and can’t be changed. It’s very give and take and very rewarding for both of us.

Juan: My collaboration with Paula has developed alongside our friendship. Not long ago, translation was often limited to the works of deceased authors. Today, the translation of contemporary poetry is increasingly common—and vital. Many poets now see their work published in multiple languages and take part in international festivals, a trend that reflects the global reach of poetry.

When a poem is translated, the process depends greatly on the poet’s involvement. If you know the language, you work closely with the translator. If not, you trust that the translator will remain faithful to your voice and vision. I feel very fortunate that Paula and I have spent countless hours together on this project—reviewing, discussing, and fine-tuning every line until we both felt completely satisfied.

I always know when Paula is truly moved by a poem—she gets goosebumps. That’s when I know we’ve done something right.

Paula: (Yeah, that goosebump part is absolutely true.)


As past participants, how does it feel to be coming to Winter Wheat as a reader this year? How might that experience feel different for you?

Paula: Well, I can say for myself that I’m thrilled, as I last read in Prout Chapel as an MFA student in 1995 and 1996. I was focused on fiction at the time and read both years with poet Tania Runyan, who is still a close friend. So to come back as an invited guest reader, and as a poet, and as part of a translation project, is deeply meaningful. It’s an honor to have been invited back to read, and it’s humbling to think of all the ways my work as a writer has changed in nearly 30 years!

Juan: It’s an honor—one I will always cherish—to have been invited to Winter Wheat. It’s a meaningful opportunity to engage with both regional and national writers, to learn from their work, and to share my own.

As a poet who writes primarily in Spanish, my mother tongue, I’m aware that language can sometimes limit access to new readers. But translation changes that. It opens doors, allowing English-speaking readers to connect with and appreciate my poetry.

I was genuinely thrilled to learn I’d been invited as a guest reader, alongside my friend, poet, and translator Paula J. Lambert. It feels like a living testament to the idea that poetry—shared across borders and languages—can make the world a better place.

Winter Wheat offers a moment to connect with other poets, to explore new paths, and to feel welcomed by the vibrant Ohio poetry community.


Can you speak to your experiences at Winter Wheat? What have you encountered/experienced? What has kept you returning? 

Paula: I’ve heard so many extraordinary writers at Winter Wheat! Tyehimba Jess was a favorite, when Leadbelly was brand-new. That was a favorite poetry collection for so many years. Carl Phillips was just lovely, as was Camille Dungy. Allison Joseph…so many great writers and readers. For a while, several years after I graduated from the program, I came back to BGSU to teach, so it was easy to attend, and it always felt like a reunion of sorts, as many former students and faculty would come to town for it. In recent years, I’ve tried to come up more often again and though I recognize fewer attendees each time, it’s always great to meet new people, and it’s interesting to see what the current MFA students especially are interested in and wanting to teach. And of course it’s been a chance to think through whatever new project I’m working on, as when Juan and I together taught a workshop on the long poem. At the time, I was writing very, very long poems, and Juan and I had just started working on his manuscript, which is made up of short poems but together tell a single, long story. Teaching is always a wonderful discovery process as, if you’re going about it right, it makes you think hard, in explaining to someone else, about what exactly you’re doing and why. And of course you learn so much from your students in the questions they ask and what they share of the projects they’re working on. I think all writing, ultimately, and even all teaching, is at its core collaborative. It’s a discovery process for everyone.

Juan: Paula and I first participated in Winter Wheat two years ago. At that time, we presented some of our initial translations and reflected on the fresh, unfolding experience of co-creation. It is a true joy to return as invited guests—to share what has happened since, how the manuscript has evolved, and what we envision for the future of El camino que lleva nuestros nombres / The Path that Carries Our Names.

Winter Wheat has become, for us, a kind of homecoming—a return to the wellspring of language and creative energy. Like going back to the well to draw water, we return in search of poetry—expecting it, welcoming it, dreaming it.

There’s a poem in the manuscript that speaks to this feeling:

“Wandering my Dreams, I Find Direction”

We’ll drink water from the well.

We’ll meditate.

We’ll meditate within these dreams,

     unraveling mysteries not yet revealed.



Paula J. Lambert and Juan Rojas’ translation chapbook, The Path that Carries Our Names, a collection of poetry written by Rojas translated from Spanish by Lambert, was published in the most recent issue of The Mid-American Review. Rojas is a Mexican-American transborder poet, essayist, and scholar.  He currently serves as the President of the Hispanic Ohio Writers Association. Lambert is an alumna of Bowling Green’s MFA program and author of five full-length poetry collections. Lambert owns Full/Crescent Press, a small publisher of poetry books and broadsides, through which she has founded and supported numerous public readings and festivals that support the intersection of poetry and science. You can read our guest readers’ full bios here.

Interview with Jose Hernandez Diaz, On Poetry & Publishing No. 16

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024), The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025) and Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025). He has been published in The Yale Review, The London Magazine, and in The Southern Review. He teaches generative workshops for Hugo House, Lighthouse Writers Workshops, The Writer’s Center, and elsewhere. Additionally, he serves as a Poetry Mentor in The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program.

I really fell in love with the poems in Bad Mexican, Bad American. The poems in the first section are largely in verse and the rest of the collection’s three sections have poems exclusively in prose: How do you view this book’s relationship between the poems in lineation and the poems in prose?

The first section, in linear verse, tends to be autobiographical poetry about my real life growing up first-gen Mexican American, back and forth between Northern Orange County and Southeast Los Angeles. There are a few prose poems in the first section, however, that are not entirely autobiographical.

The rest of the book is written in prose poetry, often surreal, often absurdist, often with Mexican and Mexican American imagery and/or settings. As far as why dual or varied aesthetics/forms? I like to play the blues, Ranchera, psychedelic and Mariachi. I try not to put limits, borders, or boundaries on myself.

Bad Mexican, Bad American feels very close to the poet but also, at other times, feels distant. How do you view the relationship between the poet and the speaker in this collection?

Yes, some of the poems are more confessional, personal, autobiographical. Others are more surreal, absurd, and existential. I contain multitudes as Whitman said. 

I thought about separating the books into separate collections: autobiographical linear verse and prose poetry, but then thought: no, I’ll mix it up as it is a closer representation of my complex self and my hybrid aesthetics… more representative than if I split the books into only showcasing one style or aesthetic. Plus, I hadn’t really seen such a varied voice or aesthetic in other contemporary poetry books, so I thought: why not break boundaries and be different/innovative.

You had The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press) publish in 2020 and Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books) publish this year and two collections, The Parachutist (Sundress Publications) and Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press), forthcoming in 2025: How has this success and exposure impacted your writing?

I have been more calm lately in terms of not feeling as much pressure to write. Trying to balance my life out more, not just as focused on the writing. Teaching more. Going to more readings. Early on I felt more pressure to have a book published and out in the world. Now, I want to enjoy being an author with various books out and on the way and no pressure to produce. Can take a deep breath and enjoy the fruits of my labor. 

The first poem of yours I ever read was “The Jaguar and the Mango” from the January 2020 issue of Poetry Magazine which is a prose poem. Why is the prose poem the perfect form for this sort of personified exploration in the poem?

I think it is the perfect form for condensed writing and you can still get a scene or an angle of storytelling in. Sometimes we just need a window into a scene not the whole backstory and inner monologues. We sometimes want to fill in the blanks on our own. Minimalism, haiku, short stories, have always been fascinating to me for their brevity and intensified mode/power of expression.

Your chapbook The Fire Eater is all prose poems and Bad Mexican, Bad American is primarily prose poems. What is it about the prose poem form that keeps you returning to it?

It hasn’t gotten old to me. I still love writing a vibrant prose poem. The discovery, spontaneity, freedom, The associative leaps. The imagination, The pace of it, musicality. The voice. The persona. The art of condensed writing.

There’s a lot of discourse surrounding the composing of poems in lineation and poems in prose. Do you feel that the form dictates how you approach writing the poem?

For me: my autobiographical work tends to be primarily in linear verse while my fictional or surreal work tends to be in prose poetry. Not always, but generally this is how it works for me.

After drafting a poem, how do you approach revision?

After getting the first draft on the page I will go back and read it to myself until I get it just right paying attention to line break and form if it’s a poem, specificity of imagery, do I need more description, or less description, musicality, titles, awkward moments which need to be blended in a seamless way, and overall wow factor, does the poem leave me wanting to read it over and over in awe..

Your publications range from first issues of magazines to well-established journals, what advice do you have for emerging writers who are submitting their poems to literary magazines/journals?

I like to have a range of submissions and publications. Would be a long and boring wait if I only submitted to the heavy hitters. It also feels good to be part of a journal’s early issues and help get them off to a good start. This is a poetry community and oftentimes you can connect more with smaller journals. With that said I like to be in fancy journals like anyone else, can’t deny it, so I always send out to dream journals as well even though they require more patience and perseverance. 

My advice: prolific writers are always prolific readers first, rejections don’t always mean bad, talent is important and worth ethic but also we must have the ability to bounce back in the face of constant rejection and knock on doors to places we might feel like are too big for us or we’re imposters for trying to get into.

Bad Mexican, Bad American is a collection that challenges its readers, but it’s also a collection that allows the reader to have some fun as well. When you’re reading a collection, what is it about the experience that makes a book spectacular for you?

I love getting pulled into the language, storyline, imagery, voice, persona, politics, struggle, humor, craft of it, passion of it, duende, Kafkaesque quality, deadpan, codeswitching, Spanglish, barrio poems, hood poems, surrealism, gritty realism, honesty, vulnerability, empowerment, love.

For writers soon to be leaving MFA programs, what is a piece of advice you wish you had coming out of your MFA program?

The book publication process is a marathon not a sprint. Time will help the process. Patience is difficult but a virtue. Time also allows for fresh eyes with revision. Enjoy the small victories along the way. Don’t compare yourself to other writers though this is hard to avoid. Treat others how you want to be treated. Call your parents, if they’re supportive, on the weekend.

***

––Tyler Michael Jacobs, Blog Co-Editor

Featured Writer: Charles Fort + Interview

On Thursday October 26th at 7:30pm, Poet Charles Fort will be reading some of his work for the Fall 2023 Prout Chapel Reading Series at Bowling Green State University. The reading will be held in the Prout Chapel on the BGSU campus. The event is open to the public.

Charles Fort has preserved a decades long career that has produced 16 full-length books and chapbooks of poetry which include: The Town Clock Burning (St. Andrews Press) and We Did Not Fear the Father: New and Selected Poems (Red Hen Press). Fort’s poetry has appeared in countless literary journals and anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2001, 2003, and 2016 and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors throughout his career. During his time as a professor of poetry and creative writing, Fort held the Reynolds Endowed Chair of Poetry at the University of Nebraska-Kearney where he is now Distinguished Emeritus Endowed Professor. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University.

Fort’s poetry becomes a response to his lived experience and at times seemingly addressed to someone specific, as if the epistle is holy, or, perhaps, he makes it the holiest form in which his poetry can love. In “Prose Poem for Claire Fort” from The Town Clock Burning (St. Andrew’s Press), Fort addresses his daughter, remembering her birth. The poem opens with the date and time placing us into his world at 3:23am. Fort writes, “Winter brings my wife a child and your birth arrives with the morning tide like wings alive in a jar.” Fort’s poems feel like song, like something that must be taken care of, protected. A theme throughout many of Fort’s poems is family or parental figures. In his poem “We Did Not Fear the Father” from The Best American Poetry 2001, Fort explores a more complex relationship to parenthood and family dynamics. In the final line, Fort writes, “We did not fear our father until he stooped in the dark.” His work examines the complex nuances of these relationships and peels back the layers to understand each as honest and complete as any great poet does.

To find out more information, visit Charles Fort here: https://www.poetcharlesfort.com.

––Tyler Michael Jacobs, Blog Co-Editor

Assistant Editor Christopher McCormick conducted the following interview with Charles Fort via email.

Christopher McCormick: You famously wrote 300 villanelles. What was it that drew you to the form? Can you share any insights or discoveries you made while completing this project?

Charles Fort: I have now completed 500 villanelles. I believe I am finished. I started writing them 10 years ago. The subjects include: Stravinsky, Hendrix, Beethoven, Duke Ellington, Van Gogh, Beatles, Motown, Miles, Coltrane, Pinter, Manson, Charlie McCarthy, Robert Johnson, Woodstock, Coleridge, Little Black Sambo, Knucklehead Smith, Bergman films (complete catalogue) the Inferno, the ancestral Fort journey on the ship Golconda––A Villanelle Vérité Redoublé––On May, 14, 1868, the ship Golconda set sail from Savannah, Georgia to Liberia. The journey of 7 generations of Fort ancestors starboard…There is a city named Fortsville, Liberia, Stephen Hawking, others…

I was a member of a well-known weekly workshop in West Hartford, Connecticut (via Northampton, Mass. and Cape Cod) led by the former President of The Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens, once called the friends of Wallace Stevens until one member noted his scarred writing/comments on race. I credit Stevens for allowing me to disregard Ashbury and the Ashbury Jr’s that walked the halls of Bowling Green in 1975-1977. I introduced a new villanelle to workshop each week for years. The group nearly asked for reparations.

CM: “We Did Not Fear the father” is driven by two seemingly contradictory emotions: love and fear. Does contradiction play an important role in the shaping of poems?

CF: Was it Vonnegut who said writers observe the terror and absurdity in the world. I might add beauty to that paraphrase. Love, fear, and the fear of love. In an early draft of “We Did Not Fear the Father,” I called my father the scaremonger! I changed it to the honorific term: our provider.

CM: “Prose Poem for Claire Fort” begins and ends with the image “wings alive in a jar.” In fact, repetition appears throughout your work in very interesting ways. How does repetition factor into your creative process?

CF: I want repetends to dissolve the rivets of poetic forms. No matter the form, I want to alter tradition in subversive-hidden ways. At times, I create a narrative thread that allows for a contemporary sensibility inside a vessel overflowing—shipwrecked with coal and precious stones.

CM: Some of your poetry touches on personal loss, most notably your wife, Wendy Fort who passed from Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. What does it feel like to release such intimate work into the world?

CF: I wrote poems about my wife immediately after her passing into everlasting light. I felt guilty and torn between being a husband and father with two daughters. I was ashamed I was a poet. Had I taken advantage of such grief? I had to write about my experience and reveal it to the world.

CM: You seem to be equally comfortable writing in free verse, form, and prose. Are any of these favorites?

CF: In my Graduate Workshop and Seminar, in the first half of the semester, I introduced the sonnet, villanelle, sestina (using the six images within the line), prose poem, and a form I created I called a medievalist-echo-verse. The second half of the semester the students wrote whatever form or free verse they wished.

The aleatory nature of the creative process in the arts and sciences, the sullen craft. I paraphrase Stravinsky: The more one toils with the creative process, the more one is set free.

Typing poems was like playing my silver clarinet as a lad for ten years and a tenor saxophone for one. I remember the exact moment I went from writing in longhand in large artist sketchbooks to a computer. First drafts to eternal final drafts. One of my professors at Bowling Green spoke of the three conditions of language: Educated—job interviews, speaking to your parents, grandparents, asking for money: Colloquial—capturing the linguistic nuances of your birthplace: Jive—the polyphonic, street wise, warnings, and when to run fast. The writer might want to learn to master all three levels of language and write them into their work at the same time, following physics into the past, present, and future at the same moment.

CM: Do you approach writing free verse, form, and prose differently?

CF: No. I first begin all my writing in prose. As a lad, I wrote up to fifty pages on single-spaced 8 x 14 legal pads. I would capture the images, phrases, and lines that caught my eye, ear, and heart. The fifty pages might become one sonnet or many other forms. 

I write blues, jazz, poetry of witness, pastoral poetry, etc. I admire Hopkins and Etheridge Knight.

CM: What is the single most important attribute of a good poem?

CF: Tear away from the historical and cultural definitions of poetry until the center falls apart. There is good poetry and bad poetry. One needs an hourglass, compass, and the heart’s metronome to locate the best words in the best order.

CM: You have multiple poems that share the title “In a Just and Miniature World.” What is it about that title that captured your imagination? 

CF: If I may say so, I love its musicality and lyricism. I think of the child who walked into the wilderness and came upon a poem nailed to a birch tree. The poem was Loveliest of Trees. The child became a poet. I wrote In a just and miniature world decades ago in a poem titled “The Writer at His Desk” now called “The Writer”—the poem won the Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize judged by Fred Chappell. I read the poem outdoors wearing my father’s very old shark skin suit in front of the Jarrell or was it the O. Henry Sculpture? Maxine Kumin was the main speaker. I felt like Robert Frost reading trying to read against a strong wind. 

CM: Many of your poems combine images of the natural world with intimate scenes of family life. Does this suggest a special connection between the natural world and the human world?

CF: Yes! I attended the first Earth Day. As a lad, I read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Observe and remove environmental racism! Save the birch trees! Save us from war!

CM: What role does American history, world history, and personal history play in your poetry?

CF: It is difficult to escape history. I try. Imagination is central to my work no matter the subject. Kafka knew there was no escape.

CM: You, along with your late wife, Wendy Fort, staged a performance, Afro Psalms: a Special Showcase in Ekphrastic History, with Charles Fort and Wendy Fort, that combined poetry with visual art and dance. How did you find these three mediums worked together to create an experience for your audience?

CF: I collaborated with my late wife with the dance she choreographed to my poetry. I wrote a libretto that was set to full choir and orchestra at Thalian Hall in Wilmington, NC. The poem went on to win the Poetry Society of America Prize for poem best set to music. I stayed at the Gramercy Hotel. The ceremony was hosted by George Plimpton across the avenue at the National Arts Club. Denise Levertov was the main guest. I sat in a rather elegant leather chair that once sat JFK. I sipped the rarest single blend scotch I could find.

I have read my poetry accompanied by nearly every instrument in the world. Violin to Piano to Double Bass to Saxophone. When the saxophonist was not available, I became the saxophone!

***

––Christopher McCormick, Mid-American Review

Why We Chose It: “Forcemeat” by Henry Goldkamp

“Forcemeat” by Henry Goldkamp was selected for publication by Mid-American Review poetry staff for issue 42.1.

“Forcemeat” brings you into a unique moment between two people as they play a game of deciding if something is more like a muskmelon or muskrat. “The felled log we set on this noon. // That would be muskmelon.” But, more than a game, these images take you as a reader through an emotional journey that is set by the speaker but up to the reader to interpret. The form and spacing works to guide you through the piece, to pause at the right times, to experience the new.

“Forcemeat” is uniquely itself, and unlike many poems we receive in our submissions manager. It was something as poetry editor I’m always keeping my eye out for, something that surprises me, changes me, and lingers. “Forcemeat” was a poem I couldn’t shake. The distinct voice Goldkamp works into this piece helps ground it and give these unnamed characters life. There are many things our editors found to love in this piece, and images that felt distinct to something Mid-American Review gravitates toward. As a reader you walk away with part of this poem following in your shadow, hiding in your mind. It leaves you looking at everything and asking, “Is it closer to a muskmelon, or a muskrat?”

––Megan Borocki, Poetry Editor