Jefferson interviewed his friend and fellow poet Mike Bove about Mike’s new book EYE for the Fall issue of The Hole in the Head Review. In response to how Mike managed to write EYE over the course of the last snow storm of 2023, he said:
"And yes, the whole experience was a lot of effort but also very liberating. There’s so much play in this book, even if much of the subject matter is serious. I look back at those five days and I’m amazed I wrote so much. And I did other things too! I took walks with my family, took my boys skiing with my brother, even attended your book launch that weekend. I also shoveled the driveway more times than I can remember. But in every other moment I was writing. That’s what I was thinking with 'This Poem Isn't Going to Write Itself.' A common stereotype is that the muse visits and the work just pours out, as if the writer is simply a conduit for the universe’s magic. I always thought that made it sound so passive, when for me writing has always been active. Even when it comes easily, it’s still the product of years of active practice."
Interview with Miho Nonaka
Jefferson interviewed poet and translator Miho Nonaka about prose poems for the fall 2023 issue of The Cafe Review.
“Perhaps we have this tacit expectation that a proper poem must arrive at some form of insight or even transcendence. That is a lot of pressure. You shouldn’t worry whether your poem is going to take off or not when you first start drafting. Poetic ambition can be deadly in the beginning stage of creation. The prose poem is a great entrance into writing, because its down–to–earth, even unpoetic appearance takes some of the pressure off and makes us start playing with words right there and then. We can stay our quotidian selves and still be ecstatic. And who knows, one day, we might find ourselves flying, one way or another.” — Miho Nonaka
HIBRO reviewed in The Cafe Review
Poet Amanda Dettmann reviewed Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands in the Fall 2023 issue of The Cafe Review.
“These persona prose poems push us to imperfectly observe and participate in the ancient sounds of ocean life within a backdrop of family secrets and unanswered silences. With grief disguised as a “good sauce,” Navicky bends time between the living and the dead like a crab listening to the hum of her ancestors through her own seaweed–slicked shell.”
Poems from Here on Maine Public
Jefferson’s poem “Moon Review at the Emergency Vet” appeared on Maine Public’s Poems from Here series read by Maine Poet Laureate Julia Bouwsma. The poem originally appeared in Southern Humanities Review.
Southern Humanties Review
HIBRO in the Maine Sunday Telegram
Thanks to Editor Megan Grumbling for including HIBRO in the July 9 2023 Deep Water Column.
HIBRO in The Republican Journal
The former Poet Laureate of Belfast, Maine, Judy Kaber, included a prose poem from Head of Island Beautification in her column, Poet's Walk, in The Republican Journal.
Exacting Clam
Thanks to Exacting Clam, and Sagging Meniscus Press, for publishing three poems, including “Mid-American Science Fiction.” Cover art by the multi-talented Jesi Bender.
Poetry Book Review in The Cafe Review
Jefferson’s review of Dana Levin’s Now Do You Know Where You Are (Copper Canyon 2022) is in the Spring 2023 issue of The Cafe Review:
“The book is shot through with [doubt]. In ‘For the Poets,’ a poem that hoarse whispers in all us poets’ ears, Levin writes, ‘if only three people like a tweet does anything you offer sound in the forest?’ This is the kind of doubt that heads straight to the heart to ask, ‘why . . . do any of us do any of this?’”
HIBRO in the Boston Sunday Globe
Many thanks to Nina MacLaughlin, who called Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands, "peculiar, beautiful, beguiling” in the February 26th edition of the Boston Sunday Globe. She writes, “There is good heat here, like the hot sauces Bird uses, and sauce serves as paint, as creative juice, as flavor enhancer, as ingredient uniter.”
