Friday, February 21, 2014

The idea of the leap


"I love Robert Bly's idea of the leap and Lorca's duende. For me, these two concepts can supercharge a poem. They are jet fuel. Bly defines a leap as movement from the conscious to the unconscious and back again. For me this is true to the way the human mind works. We are continually moving between the reality and dream, daydream, memory, fantasy. And duende is that acknowledgment of mortality—the shadow of death. So for me these concepts are central to the poetic process: the self or voice, sense images, moving from the conscious to the unconscious, and duende." -- Barbara Hamby, in an interview in Superstition Review
I've really been enjoying her New and Selected Poems









Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Dear Wrought Iron Fence,



In troubled times I imagine turning you into
a weapon. Tonight in full

moonlight I decide what you might say
if you could speak,

a voice that sounds like Mary Tyler Moore when
she holds a spear.

In December ice is your secret
friend, I can tell

by the ferocious way each glass
knife finds

a way to embrace you.



(One of the 69 Letters poems)