I am super thankful for this interview with Kelly Fordon on the topic of my personal favorite poem. I used the occasion to think about what makes a poem work. Here is a little bit of what I wrote:
"I believe that a good poem needs to surprise its writer and also to risk something aesthetically or emotionally, preferably both. “Shadowbox” is a poem with origins in a writing prompt that my friend, the poet Elizabeth Austen, introduced me to one Friday morning.
Once a month we meet, drink coffee, share what we’re reading and then write together. When life becomes overwhelming our meetings ensure that we will still have some poetry drafts started. Now as we begin our fourth year of meeting together, we have seen several of our Friday morning poems grow-up to be revised, polished, and eventually published. For this poem, I began with a random set of words that would become the end-words for each line of the poem (horses, something, decisions, coming, dark, aftermath…)."
Kelly hosts a blog that features poets and fiction writers from across the country. You can click here to take a look.
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