Into
Certain Sentences
just
checking on this year’s dates
remarking I
hadn’t heard from you
was
told you and Jack had just spoken that morning
and were off
to Florida again
What
are we going to do with that wayward brother?
a pithy note
in the margin of the minutes
kick
exactly where needed
down on those
knees, back into Scripture
this
matter of discipline rules the house
meaning
they’ve disowned him, while Grant has surgery
in
the afternoon though his wife’s pregnant
this time with
complications
am
I reading too much into certain sentences
or too little,
such joys to embrace
pulleys in the wind
Interview
TSTmpj:
Where are the best places to overhear snatches of conversation?
Jnana Hodson:
Where not? Restaurants, before and after meeting for worship or a poetry
reading, at contradances, in art galleries. I "overhear" a lot
visually, too, at the corners of my eyes.
*
TSTmpj:
Who are some of your favourite poets, and why?
Jnana Hodson:
The touchstones I keep returning to over the decades are Gary Snyder,
Philip Whalen, Roger Pfingston, Robert Bly, and Richard Brautigan.
They're all from my lifetime, for starters.
Snyder's poetry is lean with an exceptionally sharp diction while his life
experiences have also served as an elder for the pathways I've wound up
following. Whalen's mind roams much as mine does. Pfingston's work is a model
of bejeweled understatement that focuses on the most central experiences of
humanity set in the Midwest we've shared. Bly, well, he always upsets my apple
cart. And Brautigan's innocent surrealism is downright fun and energizing.
And then there are the hundreds of others I
also cherish.
*
TSTmpj:
Do you "find" poems often? Or are they diligent labours
with much time and redrafting?
Jnana Hodson:
Most of my work originates in bits that float up to my awareness during
meditation, while walking or driving, or even while journaling or
corresponding, as well as the snatches of conversation already noted. Even so,
I distill and hone and revise extensively to discover where the work wants
to go.
Bio Note
Jnana Hodson’s novel Hippie Drum (Smashwords) is just out. His micro-chapbook Waves Rolling Too appeared in April 2013.
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