Blog / 10 Questions

10 Questions for Patrick Donnelly

May 29, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

1. CHLORIS HAS HER SAY

“If it’s true, Chloris, that you love me,
and I’ve heard you do love me well—”
was a fresh way for you to begin.
After that you lost the thread a bit,
scorning ambrosia and the prospect
of trading places with kings if my love
were sure. (No kings were offering.)
—from "Anti-Pastorals," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My mom read poetry and gave me the idea that poets do estimable work. I knew which poets were her favorites—Chaucer, Yeats, Pound, and, weirdly, Swinburne. So as a kid I tried to write poetry and would come to her with my efforts; it was one currency of a relationship that...

10 Questions for Jill McDonough

May 20, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

Before we brush our teeth and get dressed, before
I take two kinds of blood pressure pills and three
fiber gummies, put coffee in one kind of go-cup,
kale smoothie in another, get into the car, I say I want
to have one more cup of coffee in bed and read you
this Ellen Bass poem, but it’s short and then we’ll go.
I am always drinking 1% in my coffee and trying
to tell Josey we have plenty of time. Josey wakes up
saying We’re running out of time! Which makes
no sense. You can’t be running out when it just started!
—from "The Good Work," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I kept a...

10 Questions for Jen Ryan Onken

May 15, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

At dawn, when I have to pee and there is that dread of standing, and after
I pee and drink a small jam jar of water, you’re the first thing I put in my hand, Pill.

In my palm you’re so perfect and white and round, and then I add
another one of you, broken so that the half-shard is less perfect but still a good Pill.

Lately I’ve been wondering which part of me is me-me and which part that
feels a little better than before when I just couldn’t but did— was that Me-Pill
—from "Ghazal for Pill," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I wrote the poem "Breezy Point after the Hurricane" about eight years ago, I was...

10 Questions for Acie Clark

May 6, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

We knew what we would lose before we had it, 
but I know why I stayed.
When I close my eyes, I can still see
our kitchen skin and half a lemon left there,
turning in on itself like the fists
our mothers made in every cardinal direction,
and how late it was in the afternoon.
You were rinsing out the soup pot.
The sun had already lost track of its day
but all these kids were still out there,
hurtling past on past year's bikes.
A season simply became another season,
a year another year, back then. 
—from "Epithalament," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote. 
My first poem was essentially poetic...

10 Questions for John Hennessy

April 30, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

In another life, I join the hierophants
of New Jersey, drink petrochemical winds
swirling across Route One, a new Delphi,
speak their ethylene mysteries. Called back

by my inexorable childhood, it becomes
impossible to ignore my sons’ own strange
gifts: smokestacks stop smoking, chimney
fires burn green as pine trees, then flare out.
—from "In Another Life," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In my last year in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas, I dressed up as the Greek demi-god Pan for Halloween. It was quite the costume, involving both mud and makeup, a leather jacket with no shirt underneath, and red maple leaves crushed into...