Carole Mertz is an author, poet, and editor who’s had works published in literary journals in America, Canada, Great Britain, and Africa. An Oberlin College graduate, she’s Book Review Editor for Dreamers Creative Writing; reader of prose and poetry for Mom Egg Review; member of the Prize Nomination Committee for Ekphrastic Review; and an advance reader for the WNBA 2018 Poetry Contest. Kendra Boileau of Penn State University Press notes: “Mertz is a master of poetic form, imagery, sonority, and wit.”
Your poems show a knowing of the darkness but also of the sunrises while “…searching for a distant view of everything.” The poems encompass childhood, courtship, marriage, maturity, and the reader is advised to “hang on to your memories.” How did you decide the chapbook’s title?…
Her
fingers move up and down the neck with the nonchalance and silky smooth rhythm
of an old master. They don’t even seem
to be touching the strings and frets.
The gentle yet commanded rise and fall of her right wrist, as sure and
steady as a metronome, brings to mind the repetitive yet precise swinging of a
pendulum, back and forth, back and forth, each stroke as methodically beautiful
as the next, the lost momentum subsumed by subtlety. It’s like her entire body’s an extension of
the guitar, and the rhythm seems to be rising from her feet like the duende of
the flamenco maestros Lorca knew so well, slowly, steadily swelling up and
swathing the rest of her person, guitar included, ‘til it rushes over like a
wall of water, cascading onto the crowd and drowning their inhibitions, replenishing
minds and bodies of those fortunate enough to bear witness. …
We
make direct eye contact. He asks “is there anything I can help you find”, and I
have more-or-less five seconds to answer before my pause is awkwardly long. Is
he being polite? Did his customer service instincts kick in on auto-pilot? Or
does he want to spend time with me?
I
had been avoiding Barnes & Noble since my sister told me he moved back home
and was working there. But things were different now. His hair was insanely
long, and I was in a relationship. His hair covered his name tag, making him
simply Mic. It had been two years
since he spent most of his (and my sister’s) college graduation turned around
to glare at me.
“I’m good. Thanks, though.”
I
could’ve said I was looking for the lit mags five paces from him, but I kept it
simple.…
Britain
Evangeline Pursley announced her presence by arriving late to the first day of
my father’s class, The Ethics of War. The
door slammed shut behind her, with her poise like a sail that caused everyone
to stare.
Her
voice came defiant, as she told him, “Sorry, big building, small minds and a lot of people who think they own the
hallways.”
My
father didn’t appreciate tardiness, and really wouldn’t from her if he knew why
she were here, but he didn’t know and wanted to keep his reputation as the
“cool professor.” He told her it was alright, “Take a seat right here up front
beside my daughter.”
A
wave of eyebrow lifted her face. “No problem Dr. Orrico.”
Most of my friends, even the ones who share many of my interests, hate the books I recommend to them (at least for the first fifteen pages). Probably because I have an unconscious addiction to the trauma of being dropped into a confusing situation. Something about replicating birth. When I first meet a book, I like it to make me feel out of place. I like to feel the structure or language push up against me and be totally unsure about its rightness or wrongness. Andrew Weatherhead’s latest book of poetry, $50,000, has made me feel what all my favorite books do. What begins with jarring confusion over form transformed this reader into a believer in the pace and texture of the mundane.…
