Category Archives: Interview

Interview with an Accents-published author, or someone else we want you to hear from.

Jennifer Litt and STRICTLY FROM HUNGER

Jennifer Litt

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book, Strictly From Hunger

My book, Strictly from Hunger, took shape from listening to the expressions and idioms my parents used in conversations with my sister and me. For example, “for the birds” and  “from hunger” inspired me to capture both humor and poignance in my poems, to understand that poetry is a life and death matter. Both of those phrases refer to people and/or situations that are less than desirable. See “Mother Superior Gets Porked Again” and “River Bend, Year’s End.”

What do you like most about it?

One of the things I like the most about my book is the lushness and music of my poems, that I believe captures the essence of me in words and certainly reveals my love for the Irish poets, especially William Butler Yeats. An example of this would be “Plenty of Fish.” I also love the layout of Strictly from Hunger. Accents Publishing produces distinct, beautiful books. Who doesn’t want to be part of “an independent press for brilliant voices.”

What did you have to overcome in order to finish and publish a book?

I tried to approach the isolation and potential loneliness of the pandemic with an intact spirit and a creative flourish to be able to complete the manuscript. I channeled my language muse and that’s all she/I/we wrote. I’m not sure I could summon that fortitude again. Reentry to the world of people was as difficult as it was vital to my emotional well-being. I also consider myself lucky that Katerina Stoykova appreciated the evolution of my writing over the years and was interested in publishing my first full-length collection.

What do you hope people learn/receive/experience from reading your book?

Although I’ve been writing creatively and publishing my work in journals for 30 odd years, I only published my first chapbook at age 59, followed by Strictly from Hunger at age 65, in time for a literary Medicare tour. While our time here is limited, we each realize our dreams and potential at different ages for many reasons. Katerina understands that. Her brilliance and empathy are her magic powers that lift others up.

What was your favorite interaction with a reader and/or a fan?

My favorite interaction with a fan/reader was with my now deceased Uncle Dick. “The Great Fire of February 1928” chronicles the fire that destroyed Fall River, Massachusetts, while my father and his mother (pregnant with Uncle Dick) look on with foreboding. Uncle Dick’s mother died giving birth to him, and my father was a devoted big brother to him. The poem always made him cry. That’s the power of emotional truth.

What are you working on now?

I recently completed my second full-length poetry manuscript, Shellbound, and I’m hoping it finds a good home. In September 2023 I reconnected with a recently widowed college boyfriend, and we’ve been developing a lovely friendship, a bicoastal relationship because he lives north of San Francisco and I live in Fort Lauderdale. We met at the University of Rhode Island.

Optional bonus question: Is there anything you want to get off your chest about writing or publishing?

A poem that I’ve labeled my ars poetica can be found in my new manuscript. It’s called “The Gulf of the Poets” and pokes good fun at the world of po biz. I let my writing do the talking.

Kevin Nance on the Accents Podcast

Kevin Nance on April 9, 2025. Photo by Mark Cornelison

Hey Friends,
If you have 37 free minutes, please listen to Katerina Stoykova’s conversation with Kevin Nance on the Accents podcast on WUKY! We discuss his book SMOKE and he reads several poems from it.
https://www.wuky.org/podcast/accents/2026-01-03/kevin-nance

Painted Daydreams (Accents Publishing, 2019)

Poet B. Elizabeth Beck answers questions about Painted Daydreams (Accents Publishing, 2019)

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book. 

This book took ten years to research and write. I have studied and taught Art History for years, so this was a natural book for me to write. Art is my passion. To combine everything I love was a joy.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not? 

I do still like it and am especially proud of the research notes included at the back of the book. Of course, I cannot take credit for the perfect formatting of those notes. Jay McCoy is such a good friend. He organized that work for me because he’s kind and generous and knows how to do these things correctly”.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it? 

Matt Hart, a professor at the Art Academy in Cincinnati called my poems, “formally diverse and kaleidoscopically (allusionistically!) rich ekphrastic poems.” I consider that high praise!

 

What didn’t make it in the book? 

Interestingly, every poem that isn’t in this book didn’t make it. What I mean is that I wrote this collection while I was writing my first two books which were NOT art history books. Painted Daydreams was my escape while I was writing about very difficult poems. This was my book of joy.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

 

In ancient Greece, Sophists

 

measure the existence of truth

as individual not universal; not absolute

Aristotle’s father and my grandfather

both physicians, yet Plato’s student blessed

with orphanage, blasphemous words

unless spoken by an insignificant girl.

I do not have the Oedipus privilege of gouging

my eyes I need to read Aristotle’s writings

on nature making him the world’s first scientist

 

when I am the last to understand and only learned

through Whitman’s leaves of grass transcendental

truth. I revere martyrs like Socrates executed

for corrupting youth and Holden Caulfield whose

merry-go-round Odyssean journey searching

an oracle in Phoebe futile; although the sentiment

 

appreciated as I practice Plato’s philosophy

of aesthetics, a branch he invented I teach

as an excuse to day dream in paintings

drenched in exuberance Van Gogh graces

the pages of the art history text I leaf ahead

(abandon Doric, Ionic, Corinthian) to look

at starry nights and potato eaters, again.

 

 

How did you arrive at the title? 

The title evolved from what I call Van Gogh’s paintings. I have been daydreaming in his art since I was seven years old.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one? 

My favorite Accent Publishing book is “The Occupation” by Jay McCoy. His poems are stunningly brilliant.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward? 

Please continue to publish these beautiful books. Most importantly, please continue fostering writers. Without Poezia, I would never have published. I have learned so much about writing from being part of the Accents Publishing family.

 

What are you working on now?

I have just finished writing a novel about a young man named Sam who meets a group of kids and goes on tour with Phish. The working title is “Summer Tour”.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing. 

“We were a new generation of seekers, intent in preserving the beauty of freedom from the Grateful Dead culture into a new evolution. Where it would lead was yet to be found, a fact that incited pure adrenaline; anticipation to join in what would be a remarkable slice of reality shaped between a guitar, bass, keys and drums performed by four ordinary dudes with extraordinary ideas. The fact that this tribe had found me and dragged me into this journey seemed destined. I couldn’t wait to swim among the sea of thousands of other like-minded people. I was ready for all things.”

Andrew Merton’s Poetry Collections

Poet Andrew Merton answers questions about his Accents Publishing collections. 

 

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing books.

Early in 2011 Katerina published four of my poems in Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems. Emboldened, I sent her the manuscript of what would become my first book, Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs.  We corresponded for several months, she saying she liked the manuscript but was not sure she was in a position to publish it.  Then, on May 12, my 67th birthday, she called and said it was a go.  That remains the best birthday present I have ever received.  Accents has since published my second and third books of poems: Lost and Found (2016) and Final Exam (2019).

 

Do you still like them? Why or why not?

Yes, I like them all.  The first one retains a special place in my heart because 1) My colleague and mentor Charles Simic generously wrote the foreword and 2) although previously I had published poems in journals, I did not fully identify as a poet until Chairs was out there in the world.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for your published books?

The New Hampshire Writers’ Project named it their outstanding book of poetry for the years 2012-2013.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

Lots of really bad poems.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

 

Why I Left The Poetry Reading Early

 

I wanted to applaud

after the very first poem,

in which the famous poet

 

revealed the secrets of the universe

and the human soul

with no more effort than a shrug.

 

The second poem put the first to shame.

I was forced to restrain myself

by gripping the edges of my chair

 

and sitting on my thumbs.

Soon it took all my resolve

to keep from shouting “Bravo”

 

after nearly every line.

Five more minutes of this

and nothing would have stopped me

 

from rising, unbidden,

and burbling superlatives.

So I left.

 

As I tiptoed down the hall

I thought I heard the famous poet say:

“Now we can really begin.”

 

How did you arrive at the title?

Many years ago—just as I was getting serious about writing poetry—Mark Strand, then at the peak of his fame as a poet, gave reading at UNH, where I taught, that blew me away.  The idea for the poem occurred to me as I listened to him read.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

A Brief Natural History of an American Girl by Sarah Freligh.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

If Accents continues to evolve as it has over its first decade I’ll be very happy.

 

What are you working on now?

More poems. (Okay, my most recent book has a kind of elegiac title, Final Exam, but who knows, maybe I’ve got another one left in me.  Possible title: Post Doc.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

This one appeared in the American Journal of Nursing, September, 2019.

 

Transcendence

 

It comes every month or so

while I am shaving

 

or peeling a potato

or watching a woodpecker

 

hammer away at an old dead pine:

shimmering blues, greens, yellows,

 

a rainbow effect

suffusing whatever is before me

 

with an otherworldly aura.

Doctors say these episodes

 

are manifestations of migraine.

The bird and I know better.

Your Live as It Is (Accents Publishing, 2014)

Poet A. Molotkov answers a few questions about Your Live as It Is (Accents Publishing, 2014) 

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book.

“Your Life As It Is” arose from the perception that most of our lives consist of similar repeating building blocks: we go to sleep, we wake up, we form relationships, we suffer loss. I was interested in creating a series that would play with these recurring themes. I started it before a trip to Russia my partner Laurie and I took in 2011. (Russia, the former USSR, is a country where I was born and which I hate intensely.) As we travelled, I tried to write a page or two each day, incorporating small details from the lives of the strangers we ran into. To further enhance the interplay of possibilities, I added a layer in which chess figures appear as characters.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

Yes, I’m still fond of it. I think it captured what I wanted it to capture, and readers seemed to appreciate it.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

I received an Oregon Literary Fellowship based on the submission of this poem. It ended up becoming the final work in my first full-length collection, “The Catalog of Broken Things” (Airlie Press, 2016).

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

Everything made it. I wanted the book to represent a generic life most generically.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

The book is a single poem, so I’ll share a page:

 

You wake up in the morning. The clouds outside your window are strangely immobile, as if they were painted on the glass. Perhaps the wind is still asleep. You realize it would be nice to do something meaningful today, but no specific ideas come to mind.

 

Your husband’s car is still in the driveway. You are surprised he has not left for work. It’s not like him. You walk out into the living room and find him resting on your beautiful hardwood floor. You don’t feel anything at the thought of his absence.

 

Your skin is a reflection of your attempts to get closer to the true meaning of your life, but you suspect that it might be inside out. The bishop has given up faith and no longer finds satisfaction in diagonal existence. You remember your own memories better than your past.

 

You walk outside and find yourself on another street, next to another house. You might have been a different person all along, or perhaps there is a better explanation for all of this.

 

 

How did you arrive at the title?

I suppose there is some irony in it. “You” are the character in the book, and to state that “you” represents the reader is both correct and preposterous.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

I need to read more of Accents Publishing books, but currently, “Grief & Other Animals” by Patty Paine is my favorite. It’s been a few years since I read it, but I was moved by its handling of grief. It’s a powerful collection.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

I feel that the press’s focus is very keen and necessary. Maybe Accents would be interested in publishing full-length poetry collections?

 

What are you working on now?

I’m always jotting down poems and editing new ones. Recently, I completed a memoir, “A Broken Russia Inside Me”, about my years in the USSR and my immigration. My agent is trying to sell it as I work on my next novel, about hate crime in America. (My previous two novels are unpublished so far, but my agent is working on that as well; I keep my fingers crossed.)

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

This poem was just published by Salamander. It was written in memory of the Portland poet Sam Seskin and titled with a quote from his poem. Many in the Oregon poetry community knew Sam; he was an inspiration. Sam’s first encounter with cancer six years earlier nearly ended his life and allowed him to view the extra time and his impending death with serenity and wisdom. The Inflectionist Review, a small press I co-edit with my friend John Sibley Williams, published his final collection of poems, “To Have Been Snowed On”.

 

 

Breath’s Opinion

 

                                                in memory of Sam Seskin

 

 

All I know is: at this

moment, a young scholar solves

 

a century-old problem. A group of six

climbs Everest, a group of twelve

 

is rescued from a hurricane. The same

smile faces us in the mirror after

 

all these years, but we are

so much smarter, so

 

lovingly open. And just now,

the doctor is born who will

 

cure everything that ails us, in

other patients. Easy now, don’t

 

be sad, small engine. There is too much

breathing left to do.

 

Original Ruse (Accents Publishing, 2010)

Poet Barbara Sabol answers questions about Original Ruse (Accents Publishing, 2010).

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book(s).

I submitted the chap manuscript for Original Ruse during a “Winged Series” chapbook competition in 2011. The book was chosen as a semi-finalist, I believe, with your offer to publish it. I was just finishing up my MFA at Spalding University, and taking myself seriously as a poet; or should I say taking the presence and power of poetry in my life seriously. The prospect of having my first collection in print was  an absolute thrill. It really is a legitimizing experience when an admired publisher offers to make a book of your poetry!  

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

 Yes, very much! It’s especially special because it was “my first.” I’m still fond of many of those poems; a few have made an appearance in my first full-length book, and two others landed in this forthcoming book, Imagine a Town. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to read poems that you wrote years ago and not want to revise most of them! Also, the book is lovely―perfect bound with Simeon’s original art on the cover. In fact, I still read from it at readings, and continue to sell copies.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

In his jacket comment, Greg Pape  noted that the poems “explore connections between art and survival, the ordinary and the mythic. . .” Those tensions were exactly what I was aiming for, and what I continue to explore. To me, the highest praise is that of a reader who really grasps your themes and meanings.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

I don’t think any poems were cut. I have a faint recollection of you questioning the inclusion of one or two of the poems, but at that point in my writing, I was too attached to each of my “darlings,” and resisted. I’m now much more willing to let a poem go if it doesn’t cohere with the whole. 

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

Yes. The closing poem, “Happiness.” I sometimes close a reading with this one, as happiness is a note I like end on in any context.

the mouth

of the vase

is not calling out

 

for asters

for water

its cobalt glass

 

curves

around the notion

of flowers

 

a quenched stem

and window light

scattering

 

the blueness

 

How did you arrive at the title?

It’s taken from the title poem, which I thought had an enticing ring to it. It’s what I want in a title and in poetry: to be enticed.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

It’s difficult to name a favorite from among the terrific Accents books through the years. I actually have two favorites, equally favored but for different reasons. The first is Biblia Pauperum, by T. Crunk, because these spare poems  both challenge on an intellectual level and charm on a visual and emotional level―a wonderful combination.  And I’m completely enamored with Kingdom of Speculation by Barbara Goldberg. The element of magical lyric rendered in very sophisticated story book fashion completely engaged me. Plus, both books are physically beautiful.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

Accents has grown so much since its inception – going from chapbooks to full-length books. I love that the press has now extended to include a literary magazine, and a wonderful one, at that. Two areas that appeal to me as a reader, that broaden the scope and service of a journal: book reviews and essays. There is no shortage of new books to be reviewed, and book reviewers are always looking for journals to place their reviews. Literary Accents  could be such a place.

 Anthologies also make for another really engaging read. It’s always so interesting to read the variety of voices and forms on a given theme in an anthology. The Accents anthologies have been terrific, and I’d love to see more in the future.

 

What are you working on now?

I’m wrapping up the edits for my second full-length book, which will be out later this month from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, titled Imagine a Town. As you well know, putting the finishing touches on a book is both a painstaking and exciting enterprise. So that’s consumed my time and attention these past months.

I am also well underway with my next book, a collection of persona poems in the voices of victims, both identified and “Unknown,”  of the  Johnstown  flood of 1889. An archival treasure trove has been made available to me by the Flood Museum and the National Park Service; I drew my characters from the original morgue book . This may sound like a depressing project, but not so! From the snippets of description in the morgue tome, whole characters can be concocted and reanimated.  I’m especially drawn to the “unknown” victims, of whom there were an estimated 2,200―people never claimed or properly mourned. The end of the 19th century was a true crossroads, culturally and economically, with the beginnings of the industrial revolution, railroad travel, etc., so that sketching out the books’  figures in this historical context  makes for fascinating research and material.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

Sure, gladly. From Imagine a Town, this poem, “Ode to the Big Dipper,” is, on one level, an elegy for the decrepit roller coaster in an abandoned amusement park near my home.

 

Ode to the Big Dipper

 

Slip with me, child, through the ragged

cyclone fence; the air here sparks.

Let’s walk by the feeble coaster

where the wind turns shrill.

Even the Silver Rocket in orbit

over Chippewa Lake was eclipsed

by the Dipper’s serpentine reach.

 

See how bindweed twines the latticed frame,

and dried thistle, iron weed scale the

corkscrew tracks that carried cars slow,

slow to the rise then

plunged―

unhinged our grip to level earth.

Now un-done by oaks that split

the crossties’ nails and bolts; that

collapse the rickety shell of a thrill

into the abandoned park’s understory.

 

O Dipper! Splintered bone heap

of reckless joy, wooden relic of amusement,

heart-in-the-throat conveyance, you are restored

in memory’s gyres. I am transported

to ten, trespassed here at your crumble foot;

behemoth, splayed to the sky, to your

namesake constellation, given over

to a sad gravity, you bow to the ground

of our daring, our once shudder.

Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (Accents Publishing, 2014)

Poet Lynnell Edwards answers a few questions about Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (Accents Publishing, 2014)

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book.

I was teaching an ekphrastic community workshop for Louisville Literary Arts and we visited Flame Run studio where I had made a contact with the owner/artist Brook White. I wrote a short poem myself (below) during the workshop, and I was so taken by the process that I decided to ask him if I could install myself as a kind of poet-in-residence during that summer of 2010. I hoped to just watch and ask questions and write and see what happened. It was an exhilarating project that resulted in a chapbook-length manuscript which I kind of sat on for a while because I knew that my third full length book for Red Hen, Covet, was due out in the fall of 2011 and I didn’t want to crowd that publication release. There were a few of the poems published, so I had the sense that it was good work that would appeal to a wider audience even though the subject was a little bit technical and obscure (which is why there are some end notes explaining vocabulary). In fall 2013, I began the conversation with Accents about this manuscript and was delighted they were interested in the project! We had a really fun launch for the book at Flame Run after its release in June 2014 and the book got some nice coverage in the Courier-Journal.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

I loooove this book. I love chapbooks generally, but I am really happy with the way I experimented in the book (there are a couple of shaped poems) and the liberating effect of having all kinds of new vocabulary from glass blowing at my disposal.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

People have enjoyed this book and informally told me how intriguing and energy-filled it is. But perhaps the highest praise has come from Brook’s own endorsement of it and his sharing of the book among his friends, family, and the shop.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

I think there were probably a couple of poems that I started but never really finished and I honestly can’t remember what they were. But there was one longer piece that I really worked on and wanted to make fit but didn’t which was about another glass blowing team that came in after hours to work – Brooke had invited them to use his studio. It was fascinating to watch them – in part because there was a whole different vibe – but strangely, I couldn’t make the poem quite cohere and it seemed out of step with the other poems. At that point, then, I realized that the poems I had been writing and the book they would become was as much about the spirit and work of a particular studio and its particular personalities as it was about glass blowing generally.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

This is the first poem I wrote, after my initial visit to the studio, and it ended up as the final poem of the book:

 

“Heart of Glass”

Feel its pulse and flare still —
beat of primitive fire, memory
of the molten womb from which
you drew it glowing and gave it
shaping breath: never
cold, never still.

 

How did you arrive at the title?

“Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop” came to me really early on and there were no other competing or working titles. Simply put, the glass blowing crew played loud rock music all the while they were working and there was such confidence and verve in what they were doing that it seemed obvious to me that this was a rock and roll hot shop.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

I selected E.K. Mortenson’s The Fifteenth Station for the 2012 chapbook prize and I still think it’s a remarkable sequence imagining, with a nod toward the biblical, the “least of us” and the struggle in dark places we in the first world too often turn from. I also really like Sarah Freligh’s A Brief Natural History of an American Girl – an inventive and clear-eyed memoir in poems that startles and delights.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

Keep publishing awesome books, for one! The new projects – the journal, the workshop series – all of these things help to nurture writers and readers and I am excited to see them succeed. I’m interested in the ways in which fine art and writing mutually resonate and it would be interesting to see some manuscript collaborations among poets, printmakers, and other artists.

 

What are you working on now?

I have another chapbook length manuscript titled This Great Green Valley that will be published by Broadstone Books in the late spring of this year. It consists of poems I wrote during a sabbatical in 2018 and is based on my research at the Filson Historical Society into the pre-statehood history of Kentucky, along with a long poem about my own childhood on the Kentucky River. Red Hen has a full-length manuscript from me tentatively titled The Bearable Slant of Light that will likely be released in late 2021; it explores the explores the effects of mental illness on the family and is much more experimental in many ways. Very different from my last book with them, Covet.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

This is the very last stanza from a very, very new poem titled: “Carpool, with boys”

“Remember where we were going and how
we couldn’t wait to get there: the impossibly
green fields, the bright lines of play, the whistle
to begin high and bright as birds lifting in flight.”

 

Childhood (Accents Publishing, 2014)

Poet Emily Grosholz answers a few questions about Childhood (Accents Publishing, 2014)

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book.

I wanted to create a book with my poems about small children (my four children when they were small) to support UNICEF. I’ve been a supporter of UNICEF for thirty years, since my first child was born. I had a friend in Paris, Lucy Vines, who drew lovely pictures of small children, so I lobbied her for a year to collaborate with me, and finally she agreed. Just at the same time, I met Katerina and realized that Accents Publishing was a promising place for this book, and she too agreed! We have raised over $3500 for UNICEF since Childhood was launched in 2014.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

My affection for this book grows with every passing year.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

The highest praise for this book is the different ways in which it has been translated. It has been translated into Japanese, Italian, French and German, and now Katerina is translating it into Bulgarian. And some parts of it have also been ‘translated’ into songs, by Mirco De Stefani in his CD Childhood Songs, Koko Tanikawa in her CD First Piano Lessons, and by Bruce Trinkley in his CD Songs of Two Bellevilles. This fall, when we were working in Rome, my husband and I went up to Venice for a concert at a wonderful villa just north of the city. We were joined by Mirco and his wife, and the soprano Cristina Nadel sang and the pianist Igor Cognolato played the Childhood Songs to a warm and enthusiastic crowd. I just got the poster framed, to remember one of the happiest days of my life.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

I couldn’t put in my poems about mathematics and science, but they do show up in other books, and in Great Circles: The Transits of Mathematics and Poetry, which helped to launch a new series of Springer Books about Mathematics, Culture and the Arts in 2018. Oddly, five of the poems in Childhood also show up there in Chapter 4.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

Here is the poem that got turned into a song twice! This poem is dedicated not only to all my children, but also to their piano teacher, Leslie Beers, who taught them both piano and violin over so many years. (In Great Circles, in Chapter 7, I argue that music is the middle term between poetry and mathematics.)

 

First Piano Lesson

For years they have been pressing the white keys,
Sometimes the black, occasionally, haphazardly
Great fingerfuls together. But where
Exactly was the music, they wondered? Gone.

Today they built a bridge from C to G
As if across Giverny’s garden pond.
Perhaps it is a rainbow? G to C,
Aural, slant-visible, inevitable, clear.

They stand amazed around the grand piano
Capable at last of lifting up
From sound’s long restlessness the dripping
Glittery net of intervals and in its knotted strings

That golden fish, a song!

 

How did you arrive at the title?

The book included all my poems about childhood (from the perspective of a parent), from conception to the day when the children leave to make their own way in the world.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

I have two favorites. One is The Season of Delicate Hunger: Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry, edited by Katerina. It introduced me to the life of that country in the last century or so, in abstract and concrete ways as poetry does. And my interest is now intensified by my reading, during the past decade, many books about the Black Sea, and also by the prospect of the Bulgarian translation of Childhood: I hope to turn that poetic experience into a real visit. My other favorite book is Circe’s Lament: Anthology of Wild Women Poetry, edited by Katerina and Bianca Lynne Spriggs. I remember intending to send some poems in to be considered for that collection, but somehow I missed the deadline, and was sorry about that: I do have some wild woman poems and I like the category. However, getting the book and reading through it is a consolation, inspiration and fun, because of the way it combines myth and modern life, transforming both.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

Keep on publishing good poetry and thoughtful translations; and I think creating the related journal Literary Accents was a very good idea. How about publishing collections of literary essays?

 

What are you working on now?

I’m on sabbatical, working with one of my brothers who is a marine biologist in California and a friend from high school who became a population geneticist in Minnesota: I’m using their work (and political engagement) as case studies for a book on philosophy of biology and practical deliberation. Visiting their field sites on Tomales Bay, Bodega Bay and San Francisco Bay, and then all across the state of Minnesota, inspired quite a few poems, not surprisingly. Two months in Rome also inspired a few poems, and cosmology and number theory are still giving rise to the odd poem.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

Here’s the beginning of one of my Rome poems: wherever you go in that city, you find a poem lurking behind a church or piazza or small forest of umbrella pines! Or the banks of the Tiber!

 

The bougainvillea blossoms lightly fall
Across the pavement and desert the trees.
The pomegranates splatter on the grass
And sidewalks, and disturb the sailing green
Parrots that come from Africa. All through
October those bright flowers and fruits still shone
And breathed their colors on the city streets…