Fabulous and Brunette: These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them) by Donovan Hufnagle - Book Tour - Guest Post - Giveaway

These Are Not My Words

(I Just Wrote Them)

by Donovan Hufnagle

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GENRE: Poetry

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BOOK BLURB:

Echoing Chuck Palahniuk’s statement. “Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known,” this collection explores identity. These poems drift down rivers of old, using histories private and public and visit people that I love and loathe. Through heroes and villains, music and cartoons, literature and comics, science and wonder, and shadow and light, each poem canals the various channels of self and invention. As in the poem, “Credentials,” “I am a collage of memories and unicorn stickers…[by] those that have witnessed and been witnessed.”

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EXCERPT ONE:

Refurbished

Susan taught me that poetic energy lies

between the lines, white noise scratching

and clawing between images, ideas,

things…

And like a poem,

the chair was molded by my Tio’s hands,

an antique wooden upholstered desk chair.

My Tio moved from Durango, Mexico

to Forth Worth in 1955.

He became a mason and wood worker.

He bricked the stockyards

He built the signs

He died in 2005.

Now,

matted. Worn. Faded floral design. Wood

scarred like healing flesh.

The arms torn, ratted by the heft of his arms

and the stress of the days. The foam peeks

out.

The brass upholstery tacks rusted. I count

1000 of them. With each,

I mallet a fork-tongue driver under its head.

A tap, tap, tapping until it sinks beneath the tack,

until the tack springs from its place.

I couldn’t help but think of a woodpecker.

A tap, tap, tapping into Post Oak,

a rhythm…each scrap of wood falling to the ground

until a home is formed.

Until each piece of wood like the tacks removed

shelter something new.

I remove the staples, the foam, the fabric,

the upholstery straps

until it’s bones.

I sand and stain

until its bones shine.

I layer and wrap its bones with upholstery straps,

foam, fabric, staples and tacks.

New tacks, Brass medallions

adorning the whole, but holding it

all together—

its bones

its memories,

its energy.

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GUEST POST:

Advice for New Writers

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… one of my mentors, as Obi-Wan Kenobi did for Luke, gave me advice. He told me, “It is more important to know how things come to mean rather than what things mean.” In other words, it is more important to understand how the poem functions in order to create its meaning rather than what the poem actually means. Though I use my mentor’s perception mostly to teach students how to read poetry, I also think it applies when writing poetry.

Trying to understand the meaning of a poem is the incorrect approach to understanding poetry. Maybe it’s not incorrect, per se, but if you want to be like Sisyphus and push an immense boulder up a hill, repeating this action for eternity, and never reaching the top of that hill, go ahead and try to find the meaning in poems. Besides, many poems don’t have clear meanings. Tell me what Ezra Pound’s famous poem “In a Station of the Metro” means, for instance:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

My initial response is, “Who cares?” What is more significant and thought-provoking to understand is that the poem contains two juxtaposed images that have some sort of implicit relationship. This connection is where the poetic energy lies. I think Billy Collins’s poem “Introduction to Poetry” says it best:

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

One of the main mistakes we make is to try and find meaning in a poem. First, feel the poem. Listen to it and stop trying to understand it.

Then, look at it parts. The poetic energy is not in its meaning, but in its formation. If we find meaning in a poem, great, but it is not worth trying to force the meaning as Collins writes. Instead, focus on how the poem comes together. The power of the poem is in the equation, the juxtaposition between the faces and the petals, for instance. What that equation equals is not as important if it is important at all.

My advice to writers, then, is to not trap yourself into thinking that your poem must have a clear meaning. Don’t get me wrong, the poem needs to have clear and tangible imagery; we need concreteness in the poem such as “In a Station of the Metro,” but avoid pigeonholing the poem to a prescribed agenda. If you have a good idea for a poem, allow the words to write the poem. Write one word or one line and use that line to write the next and the next. If there is a line you love, for example, but it doesn’t necessarily fit in the current poem, remove it and save it for later. In fact, I tell students all the time, “The thing you love most is probably the first thing you need to remove.” If you love something so much, you will be less likely to edit it. And all things will need editing at some point. Moreover, let the poem end itself. Don’t force an ending because you think it is going to work.

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AUTHOR BIO:

Donovan Hufnagle is a husband, a father of three, and a professor of English and Humanities. He moved from Southern California to Prescott, Arizona to Fort Worth, Texas. He has five poetry collections: These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them), Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Documenting Of, The Sunshine Special, Shoebox, and 30 Days of 19. Other recent writings have appeared in Tempered Runes Press, Solum Literary Press, Poetry Box, Beyond Words, Wingless Dreamer, Subprimal Poetry Art, Americana Popular Culture Magazine, Shufpoetry, Kitty Litter Press, Carbon Culture, Amarillo Bay, Borderlands, Tattoo Highway, The New York Quarterly, Rougarou, and others.

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CONNECT WITH DONOVAN:

Website:

http://www.donovanhufnagle.com

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/donovanhufnagle

Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/dhufnaglepoetry

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