Negative Capability Press Poetry Blog

Sue, I’m sitting here watching perhaps my favorite movie of all time, and just checked my email to see if I had heard back from someone I was waiting on something from, and I saw that there was a new post on the blog.

And with all of that going on, I started reading and the voice in my head as I read the words was your voice. I admit it was a bit weird, but it was also rather uncanny, and while I’m not sure what it means, I’m pretty sure it means that this is some very good stuff. It is true Sue, so to speak.

I also think you’ve found your “project,” a volume of short poetic biographies of Southern writers.

I love “Like sweet peas.” But don’t let Rini see it; she’ll try to claim royalties…

I’m not sure, though, about the four-line passage “and while she…left to him.” I don’t have any suggestions coming to mind, but I wonder if you can come up with a more creative way to say basically the same thing–it just seems a little inefficient and prose-like to me. And yet, it still seems plenty good. I just wonder if it could be made better.

I love the ending especially!

I love this foray into biographical poetry! I knew it would be dynamite as a medium, especially for the lives of creative people. For some reason, it makes so much sense that Flannery O’Connor would read Poe–now that I think about it, her short stories could easily become gritty, Southern Poe stories with some poetic tweaking–yet I never knew that fact about her. I really like that you threw in that fact about the summer reading courses at her public library, mostly because it makes me feel connected to her–I used to be involved in those in elementary school. Also, it seems like the specific details chosen play a big role in transforming a prose biography into a poetic one.

All right already - I am not the only poet to put “peas” into a line, Rob

Anyway, what I like about this is that O’Connor has always seemed Poe-esque to me. I love the references to “Good Country People” - the wooden legs and the glass eyes and hearing aids - multiplying what O’Connor wrote. And the the head in the bed is so “Faulkner-esque” - Emily’s rose comes to mind here,

I love all the allusions, and I want to know all the ones I missed! This is really fun!

It is also quite demanding, in that the ersatz ’simple’ surface is rather like quicksand - ready and waiting to “suck in” the reader - wary ot otherwise, no matter her age.

Rini

I’m drawn to the literary biography and, because you know Flannery O’Connor so intimately, this is simply delicious. It has the dark comedy of O’Connor’s own work. You show us just a tiny snippet of O’Connor’s childhood, a window on her larger life. I like “relished” and “savored” … evocative verbs for a book-devouring twelve-year-old.