confetti - Featured Poet: John Grey

BIOGRAPHY

John Grey is Australian born short story writer, poet, playwright, musician. Has been published in numerous magazines including Weird Tales, Christian Science Monitor, Greensboro Poetry Review, Poem, Agni, Poet Lore and Journal Of The American Medical Association. His latest books are Between Two Fires and Covert available through Amazon. Has had plays produced in Los Angeles and off-off Broadway in New York. Winner of Rhysling Award for short genre poetry in 1999.

INTERVIEW

confetti: What sparked your interest in poetry, and who was your earliest influence?
John Grey (JG): My earliest memory is of a fourth grade teacher who was pretty much a poetry fanatic. And, somehow or other, his enthusiasm rubbed off on me. The poem I especially remember from that year is “Tyger” by William Blake, which I can still recite to this day. I had no thought then of writing my own verse but I did enjoy reading poems aloud.

confetti: How would you characterize your writing style?
(JG): I never thought of my writing as having one consistent style that runs like a thread through all of it. It seems to adapt itself whatever theme and tone I’m trying to convey. Even the physical look of my poems can vary from very short lines in some work to those extend across the page in others. So, when it comes to style, I let the work dictate and I just go along for the ride.

confetti: What are you working on currently, and what can readers expect from you in the future?
(JG): During the week, I try to write at least eight poems a day and I typically achieve my goal. On the weekend, my social life and house chores interfere, but I still do manage to crank out something here and there. So in the future, I expect to do more of the same while doing my best to getting it published and finding an audience.

confetti: Who is your favorite poet and why?
(JG): I have a hard time thinking in terms of favorite anything because, to me, naming so-and-so as the be-all and end-all of poetry begs the question “why read anyone else?” But if there is a poet whose work has haunted me from boyhood until now, it’s Samuel Taylor Coleridge, especially how he so brilliantly captures the sense of foreboding in “The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner” or can create a literary fever dream like “Kubla Khan.”

confetti: Is poetry still relevant in our society? How? How do you think poetry can be used to challenge, improve, or subvert societal or personal norms or expectations?
(JG): There is a lot of poetry out there on the internet, so it is obviously relevant to many, many people. I think those of a sensitive bent still find it the perfect media for expressive, close to the heart personal writing. And reading, of course. In the wider world, it’s unlikely to ever have the presence it did back in the 18th and 19th centuries. There are just too many other louder and more flashy attention grabbers in our modern society. But I still believe that poetry whether in a poet-audience or teacher-classroom situation, or even in a solitary setting with just a book of verse or pen and paper in hand, can challenge the intellect, the imagination, or even the self-examination that can help all of us as we wade through this life.

confetti: Favorite poem or style of poetry?
(JG): I enjoy a good poem no matter what its style. I’ve read limericks that are far more clever and pertinent than many a word-bound page or two of free verse. I do love the sound of a poem. The subtle rhythms. And a little wit doesn’t hurt.

confetti: What are you currently reading?
(JG): When it comes to reading, I usually have a few things going at once. My Kindle is currently a veritable library of out-of-copyright classics. It’s perfect for bedtime. And my process for picking what to read on it is so arbitrary even I don’t understand it. Right now, I’m halfway through George Du Maurier’s Trilby. In hard copy, I’m reading Tristram Shandy for the first time.

confetti: What are your three favorite books?
(JG): This is as of this very moment and will be different this time tomorrow: I’ll go with Middlemarch by George Elliot, Great Expectations by Dickens and a book that I’m sure no one would list in their top three, The Octopus by Frank Norris.

confetti: What are your three favorite movies?
(JG): See books above: Chinatown; Children of Paradise; and another oddity, The Constant Gardener.

confetti: What is your favorite song of all time?
(JG): The song that will always remind me of my wife: “Brown-Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison.

confetti: What advice would you give to young writers?
(JG): Stick at it. Don’t be put off by rejection. Best of all, take your work seriously but yourself, not so much.

POETRY

FIRST BEACH IN JULY

A blinding sheen turns the sea
to bobbing cobalt. Haze swirls
from rocks where raging waves collide.
A single surfer cuts a trail,

in and out of the water’s curl,
behind then in front, below
and above, keeps a trembling balance.
on a bucking board.

The sky is ocean’s counterpoint,
neither sure which is color,
which is merely reflection, in
their dissolving meeting point,

where spray foams, air gleams,
the surface buckles accordingly.
On a wooden pier with concrete feet,
fishermen stake their claim

on the life beneath with hook and bait,
dull eyes and patience. The young
flop on the sand. The old retreat
beneath gaudy umbrellas.

Children, who could be any or all
of these others someday, are content
now in the giddy repetition of their
young years, splashing and digging,

exploring and gathering. And terns
squabble. Sanderlings sprint. Laughing
gulls chuckle. This much life in such
a small place, in so short of a time?

Seek it here.
There is no elsewhere.

ODE TO A COURT REPORTER

Her job is to go unnoticed,
wedged down below the judge,
belt-high to prosecutor and defending attorney,
scribbling, in shorthand,
swiftly and silently, every word said.

Hour after hour,
her pen adheres to Pitman verbatim,
with no unnecessary emphasis,
not a better word or a rephrase,
and certainly not an opinion.

Robbery, rape, murder,
monotone recounts
or passionate pleas for understanding,
to her hands, her notepad,
all are the same.

She doesn’t sympathize
with the woman attacked
on a date gone wrong.
She has no venom toward
the man who shot and killed
his wife and two young children.

In the outside world,
she can feel the best and worst of people.
But here, her heart plays dead.
Accuracy rewards indifference.

THE BIG CUT

I cut my long hair,
shaved moustache and beard,
years ago.

The man you see
before you,
deemed respectable
by modern mores
is unknowable
to the ones he hung with
in the land
of youthful memories.

I can pass an old buddy
or an ex-girlfriend on the street,
and, though I know it’s them,
they wouldn’t recognize me
so I say nothing, walk straight by,
save them the embarrassment
of confused looks and head-scratching
down on Main Street.

Besides, what would I have
to say to them?
The past has long been shaved
from the chin of the years
with barely a nick here and there.
The good times fell away
like tresses snapped
by a barber’s shears.
Even the feelings were trimmed
to the point
where nothing is felt at all
these days.

Old buddy, ex-girlfriend,
I can only ever be a stranger.
To you. To me.
To everyone.
It’s my short hair
that gives me away.

THE ARTIST’S LAST DAYS

I keep to myself
the journey that gets worse,
heed, with gritted teeth,
pain’s rote-like teaching.

Daily, it’s harder
to make sense
of what I was born for,
when even home is a hospital.

Survival is wasted on me.
Others could surely use
the stuff that still works.
Then it rains, makes every loss

that much more tangible.
The window mists up.
And the mind goes fast.
In the foggy headlands,

it does its best
to lay down markers.
But dark clouds, brusque wind,
give it nothing to come back to.

I have pen and sketching paper
But my work is already
my body’s ill will,
the storm’s constant abasement.

MISS FINICKY 2022

No dust upon the furniture.
Even the mice have cleaned up their act.

No mold in the moldings.
Hers is the perfectly cold apartment.

I am the enemy constantly rubbing
his beard, aching for a cigarette.

She makes coffee, watches me closely as
I drink, afraid that I might spill a drop or two.

Her eyes cover more ground than prairie grass.
At rest, her speed is relentless.