Charles Jensen on “The First Risk”

Charles Jensen is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including Living Things, which won the 2006 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award;  the founding editor of the online poetry magazine LOCUSPOINT; and the director of The Writer’s Center, based in Bethesda, Maryland. His new book and first full-length collection of poetry is The First Risk, a marvelous work that features four extended sequences, each with its own focus and identity and yet each resonant with the others on a number of levels. The first section, “Safe,” revisits the murder of Matthew Shepard in October 1998 and juxtaposes that crime with an exploration of the myth of Venus and Adonis as depicted in a painting by Luca Cambiaso. The central sections — “City of the Sad Divas” and “The Double Bind: A Critical Text” — respond to the characters, plotlines and persistent themes in two films: Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, respectively. And the final section, “The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon” — previously published as a chapbook in its own right — explores the often chilling, ultimately heart-rending attempts by physicists Edward and Maribel Dixon to reach “The Ghost-World.”

Jensen read from the just-pubished collection in September at the Fall for the Book Festival and graciously agreed to a few questions here about how the book came together.

Art Taylor: Many of the poems in The First Risk respond to or are inspired by other stories, both real-life and fictional: the murder of Matthew Shepard, a Renaissance painting, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Pedro Almodovar’s All About My Mother. Does your work usually grow out of your “readings” of news stories or films or other arts? And to what extent do you anticipate that your own readers’ experiences will depend on knowledge of those sources?

Charles Jensen

Charles Jensen: While this book in particular is very ekphrastic in nature, I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily typical for me. I’ve been very interested in exploring voice in the last few years, trying on different guises. And I like blurring the lines between reality and fiction, which I think this book does extensively (the “real story” is murky with mythology, while the most invented story appears to be the most factual/documented). Since finishing The First Risk, I’ve been working on a sequence of poems in the voices of Dorothy Eady/Omm Sety, who was the most “reasonable” evidence for belief in reincarnation; Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon Church; and Dorothy Gale, the protagonist of The Wizard of Oz. As a whole, the three voices are negotiating the relationship between faith and love, faith and certainty, and faith and reality. For this sequence, because the voices are so enmeshed in those ideas, I’ve included “historical notes” with the poems to give them context, but doing so makes me wonder if somehow the poems haven’t failed. I’m still working that out. I think a lot about what my reader needs to know when encountering the poems, and I’ve been trying to determine, particularly in readings from The First Risk, how to fill them in. I hope that readers can still enjoy the individual pieces or sequences without having ALL the background information, but I think knowing the stories behind the poems gives them added dimension.

NC Literary Review: New Issue, New Look

The North Carolina Literary Review has just announced the publication of its 2009 issue, boasting a focus on N.C. drama and a smart new design! 

As always, NCLR offers a combination of scholarly criticism and creative works. For example, this issue includes both a recently discovered interview with Paul Green and the text of White Dresses, one of Green’s plays; and  the balance of the drama section includes both critical perspectives on works by Tennessee Williams (whose Clothes for a Summer Hotel was set in Asheville), Elizabeth Spencer, and Jim Grimsley, and insider views on the state’s history of “musician’s theater” by none other than Bland Simpson himself, and original plays by June Guralnick, Richard Krawiec, Kat Meads, and Sam Post. 

Beyond that focus on drama, the new issue also covers the full range of genres: an interview with Betty Adcock, a review of one of her poetry collections, and a sample of her own poetry; a short story by Malcolm Campbell, winner of last year’s Doris Betts Prize in short fiction; an interview with first-time novelist William Conescu (also interviewed by me in Metro Magazine), and much more. I’m proud to have an essay of my own included here as well, discussing mystery novelist John Hart’s three books, The King of Lies, Down River, and The Last Child.

In all, a great issue, even without my bias in being included in its contents! I can’t wait to work my way through it, and glad to encourage it here.

A Quick Shout-Out to The Poetry Instigator

The mention of poet Fred Chappell in my previous post (I’m working through his enjoyable but more-challenging-than-I’d-expected new collection, Shadow Box) reminded me that I’ve been remiss is calling attention to a new blog by some of the fine folks at George Mason University. MFA poets Lucy Biederman, Eleanor S. Tipton, and Alison Strub have recently started “The Poetry Instigator,” a site which offers up regular writing prompts and then works submitted by writers responding to those prompts. A great idea — and fiction writers, don’t fear: You may find inspiration here as well. The most recent prompt, for example, is inspired by the Baltimore-based journal Smartish Pace and encourages works that are both “narrative AND fragmentary, storyteller-ish and lyric.” The challenge here: ” This week, write a poem that tells a story, but incorporate non-narrative elements into the poem –whether through form, sentence structure, voice, or anything else.” (Fiction writers, just substitute “write a flash” for “write a poem,” and you’re set.)

The site — quick attractive in its design, I should mention — also features discussions and interviews, and it promises great things to come.

And speaking of interviews, be sure to check in again with another great poetry blog previously mentioned in these posts: Brian Brodeur’s How A Poem Happens, featuring weekly interviews with poets reflecting on their own works.

Festival News Across Two States

As part of my various jobs, I keep tabs on two literary festivals in the Carolinas and Virginia — and both have breaking news.

Jill McCorkle

The North Carolina Literary Festival has just announced a terrific addition to its line-up. Authors Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle will join musicians Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman for an evening celebrating the highly acclaimed musical Good Ol’ Girls, which debuted as a work-in-progress at the first NCLF in 1998 and recently made its television premiere on UNC-TV. Smith and McCorkle will read and discuss selections from their fiction, works which first inspired the show, and Berg and Chapman will perform songs from the musical itself. The September 12 event, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be sponsored by Metro Magazine, under whose aegis I write this blog. For more information on the event and on the entire festival, September 10-13, check out the NCLF website here. 

Rae Armantrout

Up in Virginia, Fall for the Book has announced a large slate of poets who will be appearing over the week-long festival, September 21-26 at George Mason University and at locations throughout Northern Virginia, D.C., and Maryland. Headlining the list are two seminal “language poets,” Rae Armantrout and Ron Silliman (the latter also the author of a tremendously successful blog on contemporary poetry), and nearly a dozen more poets are included so far — among them one of my own new favorites, Charles Jensen, a fascinating wordsmith and fine blogger in addition to his work directing The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD. For more information on Fall for the Book, check out that festival’s website here.

N.C. Poet Al Maginnes Interviewed

Al Maginnes

Al Maginnes, a fine poet based in Raleigh, N.C., is the focus of this week’s blog How A Poem Happens. I’ve admired Maginnes’ work for a long time and even worked with him briefly when I was a managing editor at Spectator Magazine (the precursor to today’s Metro Magazine), so I was especially pleased to see him turn up online here talking about the genesis and the process of writing his poem “What Maps Will Not Show.” Definitely worth checking out!

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