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Welcome to It's Raining Books. What is your favorite ice cream flavor?
I don’t eat much ice cream anymore. Ice cream and I are not good friends at this stage of my life. But I love rocky road. You can’t go wrong with chocolate ice cream and to add marshmallows and almonds to it, well, that should say it all. A little crunch with more sweet from the mallows is all you need. It meets all the nostalgic buttons. A lot of the poems in my current book These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them) have a sense of nostalgia, too. The poem “First Loves” is a personal narrative poem about some of the friends and neighbors I grew up with and loved. The inspiration for the poem came from that common feeling when you go back to your old home, school, or wherever, and everything seems so small. And the way we remember things is usually so skewed. Some of the last lines of the poem ask, “Why do I carry these carnival mirror/perspectives?/Are they narratives bloated from myth and dreams?” Perhaps, my memory of Rocky Road is the same skewed dream.
Which mythological creature are you most like?
For my myth and monsters course that I teach on occasion, one lesson asks students to choose a known monster that reflects one of their biggest fears. I jokingly suggest that I should bring out a couch for students to lay on as they divulge their answers, expressing their fears to me and how that monster illustrates those fears. Most choose monsters such as the siren or the Kraken. And typically, these monsters suggest fear of the being powerless. When I share my response to this assignment, I tend to choose more contemporary monsters or things that are not necessarily considered a classic “monster.” One monster I choose is the clown. My monster is the clown. I tend to fear monsters of duality such as the werewolf or as I stated the clown. Or monsters that can hide in plain sight like the contemporary vampire or as I stated—a clown. Obviously, a clown is not a mythical creature, but they are monsters and monstrous in every way. A person hiding their face behind a fake painted smile triggers my own idea of powerlessness.
First book you remember making an indelible impression on you.
Honestly, there are so many books that have influenced my writing or influenced me in different ways that it is difficult to pin down one book. I will say, though, I struggled as a child to read. I had learning difficulties and, unbeknownst to my parents at the time, I needed glasses. We didn’t discover I needed glasses until fourth grade, so I was behind a bit in my reading. Reading, for me, at least early on, was a contentious relationship. It wasn’t until later in life that reading became more enjoyable. I have vivid memories, though, of my high school English teacher discussing To Kill a Mockingbird. Till this day, I remember my teacher talking about Mr. Avery peeing off the porch. And when Jem and Dill engaged in a peeing contest, Scout feeling left out for obvious reasons. I love The Great Gatsby. The first poems that started it all for me were Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night” and William Carlos Williams’s “This is Just to Say.” Though the book that maybe has had the most impact on me is The Best Nest by PD Eastman. I read that book to all three of my children. They love the book and the song within it still rings in my head today, “I love my house. I love my nest. In all the world my nest is best.”
How do you develop your plot and characters?
I know this question is more directed to writers that focus mainly on prose, but as a poet, I enjoy writing narratives and even within my poetry, I don’t lose sight of plot or character. I argue that the sonnet is one of the best short, short, short, story forms, for example. The sonnet has all the basic elements of a good narrative: the buildup, the climax, the resolution. I have a couple contemporary sonnets in my current book These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them). The sonnets are not traditional Shakespearian sonnets with iambic pentameter and a rhyme scheme, but they typically tell some sort of story. The poem “…At Home” stars the Brown Hornet, which is the meta cartoon in the cartoon Fat Albert.
I have many narrative poems in the book as well. I tend to take a character that is familiar to me such as a friend or family member and meld them that with a famous person such as the blues musician Blind Lemon Jefferson. The poem “The Spirit of Deep Ellum” uses the location known as Deep Ellum in Dallas, Texas to set the stage. The narrative follows Hank, a starving musician, playing on the corners of Deep Ellum. He follows in the footsteps of Blind Lemon Jefferson, who we find out is Hank’s grandfather.
Describe your writing space.
I took over my oldest daughter’s room, since she has moved away to college. Typically, I am sitting behind the floating desk I made and typing on my laptop while my dog chews away at her chew toy below my feet. The desk is a live edge slab of black walnut that I sanded and epoxied. The laptop is a 13” MacBook air. And my dog is a lilac French Bulldog. Her name is Gertie Rose, named after the poet Gertrude Stein. When I am working, I tend to have books all around me or piled up on the dresser adjacent to the desk for references. Luckily, I am the primary user because my wife has OCD and would flip if she had to work in my “creatively organized” space. I wish I was using my wife’s Tio’s office chair that I write about in the poem “Refurbished” from my current book, but, spoiler alert, I haven’t finished refurbishing the chair completely. Don’t tell my publisher. When I am not working, I sit on the leather sofa directly behind my desk and either watch TV, read, or, yes, nap.
Echoing Chuck Palahniuk’s statement. “Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known,” this collection explores identity. These poems drift down rivers of old, using histories private and public and visit people that I love and loathe. Through heroes and villains, music and cartoons, literature and comics, science and wonder, and shadow and light, each poem canals the various channels of self and invention. As in the poem, “Credentials,” “I am a collage of memories and unicorn stickers…[by] those that have witnessed and been witnessed.”
Read an Excerpt
Refurbished
Susan taught me that poetic energy lies
between the lines, white noise scratching
and clawing between images, ideas,
things…
And like a poem,
the chair was molded by my Tio’s hands,
an antique wooden upholstered desk chair.
My Tio moved from Durango, Mexico
to Forth Worth in 1955.
He became a mason and wood worker.
He bricked the stockyards
He built the signs
He died in 2005.
Now,
matted. Worn. Faded floral design. Wood
scarred like healing flesh.
The arms torn, ratted by the heft of his arms
and the stress of the days. The foam peeks
out.
The brass upholstery tacks rusted. I count
1000 of them. With each,
I mallet a fork-tongue driver under its head.
A tap, tap, tapping until it sinks beneath the tack,
until the tack springs from its place.
I couldn’t help but think of a woodpecker.
A tap, tap, tapping into Post Oak,
a rhythm…each scrap of wood falling to the ground
until a home is formed.
Until each piece of wood like the tacks removed
shelter something new.
I remove the staples, the foam, the fabric,
the upholstery straps
until it’s bones.
I sand and stain
until its bones shine.
I layer and wrap its bones with upholstery straps,
foam, fabric, staples and tacks.
New tacks, Brass medallions
adorning the whole, but holding it
all together—
its bones
its memories,
its energy.
About the Author: Donovan Hufnagle is a husband, a father of three, and a professor of English and Humanities. He moved from Southern California to Prescott, Arizona to Fort Worth, Texas. He has five poetry collections: These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them), Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Documenting Of, The Sunshine Special, Shoebox, and 30 Days of 19. Other recent writings have appeared in Tempered Runes Press, Solum Literary Press, Poetry Box, Beyond Words, Wingless Dreamer, Subprimal Poetry Art, Americana Popular Culture Magazine, Shufpoetry, Kitty Litter Press, Carbon Culture, Amarillo Bay, Borderlands, Tattoo Highway, The New York Quarterly, Rougarou, and others.
Website:
http://www.donovanhufnagle.com
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/donovanhufnagle
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/dhufnaglepoetry
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/These-Are-Not-My-Words/dp/B0DBMN46M4/ref=sr_1_1
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