Local Lyrics hosted by John Wojtowicz appears on the 3rd Monday of each month. In it, John features the work and musings of a local poet.
“I find that most people are hungrier for poems than they know. It’s like having a vitamin deficiency. Your stomach may be full, but your body isn’t being nourished.”
MOON AT DAY
Pulling down the rotten boards
of a swing set no longer loved,
I feel you up there over my shoulder.
I built these swings myself
a dozen years ago. The tilt,
the lurch, my work for sure.
Now I pull it down and you pull too,
eye that couldn’t wait for the night.
The tide in me rises to think
of those unborn children
who might have made me keep
these posts from falling apart.
A little paint. A little patch.
Maybe you’re one of them,
looking down on me now
as I go about my best work:
destruction. Only one of you there,
precocious, ignoring bedtime.
Where’s the other?
Maybe Halley’s Comet, silver sibling,
running wild across the heavens,
not to return till I’m most surely gone.
These boards are full of rusty nails.
My knees creak like the gallows.
My daughter is sealed away in her room
writing stories that don’t include me.
Only you can see me wipe my eyes
that burn in the lowering sun.
Only you have the grace to linger
as sky gives way to sky, empty blue
to a black freckled with impossible light.
Q and A:
How would you describe your poetic aesthetic?
I would say my poetic aesthetic is as broad as the range of poets who have influenced me. Sometimes my poems resemble the philosophical “mindscapes” of Stephen Dunn. Sometimes they are weirdly surrealistic like the work of Russell Edson or James Tate. Sometimes humorously bewildered like the prose poems of Louis Jenkins.
In your award-winning book Overtipping the Ferryman, you’ve collected poems that cover experiences over a breadth of (seemingly) lived experience. What was your process in selecting/organizing these poems?
That book is essentially every poem that I had written over the course of maybe ten years that I deemed worthy of being included in a book. One of my poetry mentors, Renee Ashley, always writes poems with the end goal of a book in mind, but I had never written poems before with the intention of publishing a book. Once I chose the poems I thought were good enough to collect, I looked for links between them—themes, images—and then ordered them accordingly.
You are retiring this month after 34 years of teaching high school English. How have your thoughts about the place of poetry in America changed during your tenure working with youth?
I find that most people are hungrier for poems than they know. It’s like having a vitamin deficiency. Your stomach may be full, but your body isn’t being nourished. I’ve seen young people come alive not only from being given permission and the time to write poems, but also in the interpretation of poems in non-creative writing classes. Poetry is often neglected in the American high school, and everyone is much worse off for that fact. Many times, young people have introduced me to poets they are passionate about as well, so I would say the place of poetry in America is a still a very narrow street but very much a two-way street.
Is there anything unique about your process? Do you have any advice for writers struggling to find their voice?
Usually if I’m not reading poetry, I’m not writing it either. There something about reading good poems that primes the pump and makes me want to pick up a pen and make something of my own. For my second book, The Holy Both, I typed up aphoristic passages from Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave, cut them into strips and used one strip a day as a springboard for writing. Although it worked out for me, I do not recommend this process. As for voice, my own voice seems to change from poem to poem. I don’t know that writers need worry about finding their voice. They should let each poem’s voice find them.
You are a songwriter as well as a poet. Your new single “Could’ve Been the Stars” has gotten a lot of play at least on my stereo system. What is your experience with the differences/similarities of writing a song verses versus a poem?
Stephen Dunn has remarked that if a line in your poem sounds like it belongs in a country and western song, take it out. What I do is take all those deleted lines and voila!--instant country songs! Seriously, when I write poems, I generally write in free verse. My songs conform much more to rhyme and fixed rhythms. I find that structure comforting when writing songs, like following a road map to an unknown destination. Whether writing poems or songs, though, I try to heed my own advice that I give my students: it’s your job to write something that has never been written before, not something familiar.
Where can readers find more of your work? Where can we buy your books? Listen to your music?
Overtipping the Ferryman is available on Amazon and The Holy Both is available on Main Street Rag’s website www.mainstreetrag.com My CD is available on Amazon and is also on most streaming services.
R.G. Evans’s books include Overtipping the Ferryman (Aldrich Press Poetry Prize, 2013), The Holy Both, and the forthcoming Imagine Sisyphus Happy. His original music has been featured in the poetry documentaries All That Lies Between Us and Unburying Malcolm Miller. His debut CD of original songs, Sweet Old Life, was released in 2018. Evans is retiring this summer after thirty-four years teaching high school English. He teaches Creative Writing part-time at Rowan University. www.rgevanswriter.com.
Catfish” John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he serves his community as a licensed social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured in the Philadelphia based Moonstone Poetry series, West-Chester based Livin’ on Luck series, and Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM. Catfish John has been nominated 3x for the Pushcart Prize. He has been a workshop facilitator for Stockton University’s Tour of Poetry at the Otto Bruyns Public Library of Northfield and will be facilitating a haiku workshop at Beardfest Arts & Music Festival at the end of August. Recent publications include: Jelly Bucket, Tule Review, The Patterson Literary Review, Glassworks, Driftwood, Constellations, The Poeming Pigeon, and Schuylkill Valley Journal. Find out more at: www.catfishjohnpoetry.com