Be warned. We love the writers who submit to PBQ, slushies. We love doing this podcast. And we love you; we love that you listen to us discuss and deliberate. In short, slushies, as Mister Rogers would say: “1-4-3.” One. Four. Three. (I. L-o-v-e. Y-o-u). (Get it?!). We do. It’s hopeless. We’re hooked.
We discuss 3 poems by James Pollock in this episode. Join us for this wonderfully raucous discussion of craft and precision, technology and point of view, and big ass fans™. Addison is sleep deprived (too much late night coffee). Jason is in his jammies (sleeping in after hosting KGB’s open mic Monday). Marion is a cheerful maniac in Abu Dhabi, and Samantha calls in from Dubai.
Reminding us of Pinsky’s First Things to Hand, Pollock’s poems spin us around, bathe us with craft, and make us re-see things, especially the power of poetry. Yup: That sentence actually refers to all 3 of the seamlessly crafted poems Pollock shared with us– “Ceiling Fan,” and “Shower,” and “Spectacles,” And yup, by calling your attention to it, we just exposed our seams. (Ugh. Craft is hard. For poets and coffee roasters. “Form makes the language seem inevitable,” sayeth Jason (who is also “completely obsessed with tap water”). And great coffee should have a proper name. Ask KVM. Listen to the end of the show when she describes naming a new coffee for “Cup of Bliss” coffees in Collingswood, NJ. Spoiler: “Be My Neighbor!”).
At the table: Joe Zang, KVM, Samantha Neugebauer, Addison, Jason Schneiderman, Marion Wrenn
James Pollock is the author of Sailing to Babylon, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award in Poetry, runner-up for the Posner Poetry Book Award, and winner of an Outstanding Achievement Award in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association; and You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada, a finalist for the ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award for a collection of essays. He is also editor of The Essential Daryl Hine, which made The Partisan‘s list of the best books of 2015. His poems have been published in The Paris Review, AGNI, Poetry Daily, The Walrus, The Fiddlehead, The National Post, and other journals in the U.S. and Canada; they have also been broadcast on CBC radio, listed in Best Canadian Poetry, and reprinted in anthologies in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.. He is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, and lives with his wife and son in Madison, Wisconsin.
His website is www.jamespollock.org. HisTwitter handle is @JamesPollockPhD, and his Facebook address is https://www.facebook.com/James.Pollock.PhD.
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