Life has been too hectic lately for me to write as much as I would like, but I did have two new poems come out around the holidays season: “Just Before Dawn” in VoegelinView and “The Bluegrass Players” in Anti-Heroin Chic.

“Just Before Dawn” is a poem about steeling oneself for some coming wildfire. I wrote it in 2019 while waiting on a work meeting that I knew was going to change the trajectory of my career, potentially for the worse. But the poem has only become more and more timely since.

“The Bluegrass Players” is a semi-autobiographical poem, which I got the idea to write while reading Matsuo Bashō’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Here is the passage that especially inspired me, in my own translation:

While waiting out a storm at Ōishida, I found the scattering winds had blown the seeds of haikai there which had taken root in the villagers’ minds. The resulting vines were bearing sweet perennial flowers. The smell brought back old times and softened the heart—like the clear notes of a flute. Yet the village poets were lost in the forest of error, unable to distinguish between the old and new ways, trying to take both at once without anyone to guide them. I sat and composed a collection of linked verse with them, leaving it as a gift, trying to be of some help during my own travels.