Win a $25 GC: These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them) by Donovan Hufnagle

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What are four things you can’t live without?

I’m assuming that we are not considering the actual essentials of life like food and water, I mean cheeseburgers and Dos Equis…My family and close friends would be the easy answer. Though I enjoy my solitude away from people, being alone and isolated from the world at times, my family makes me whole. And I would be lesser of a person without my family and friends that are basically family, just not by blood. My current book These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them) focuses on identity and the quote in the back of the book “Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known” by Chuck Palahniuk sums it up best. My family and friends act as my pillars.

As a writer, I can’t really answer this question without saying that writing/reading play a significant role in my life. And they do. I consider writing and reading as one, too. When asked why I write, my typical gut reaction is to answer with “because I must.” Perhaps a copout response, but writing is not a want, it is a need. If anything, writing is my therapy, and I write all the time. Maybe not with my fingers, but in my head, I am constantly writing. And I think it goes without saying, but reading maintains a symbiotic relationship with writing. One would be nothing without the other.

My instinctual response is to answer with music; music would be something I couldn’t live without. Music not only inspires, but it soothes and excites. Music can be depressing or lifting. Music can challenge or do quite the opposite, leave us alone to just be. Moreover, music is everywhere and in almost anything. One of my favorite beats as a child was the crash of an ocean wave on the shoreline. As I am answering this question, the tapping of rain hitting the house and the yard plays its familiar tune. Perhaps my answer is sound, since most of the things I do such as write, sleep, drive, and so on has the background of sound and as I become older, sound becomes more and more precious.

What is your favorite television show?

My 20-year-old son just finished watching The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire upon my suggestion. I could argue that these are two of the best TV shows. I also tend to watch a lot of science fiction/horror shows such as The Walking Dead, Supernatural, and Being Human (UK). In fact, I think the original UK version of Being Human stands at the top if not in the top five shows. The premise is weird, but I appreciate the handling of the supernatural characters in the show and the ability to counter the standard treatment and expectations of main characters. The show centers around three main characters—a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire—that share a flat together and try to assimilate as humans as part of the world. Not to go too far into thew show, I respect that the vampire, as one example, doesn’t need to have blood. Blood is treated as an addictive want rather than the normal need. For another example, I appreciate the show not explaining why the vampire can be outside during the day, which is atypical for vampire shows. Typically, contemporary vampires either can’t go out into the sun or they have some explanation on why they can be outside during the day such as a ring, sunscreen or they sparkle. Anyway, I wrote an article “Being Human Has Never Been More Frightening” about the show a few years ago, which can be read on Americanpopularculture.com.

If you could be any character, from any literary work, who would you choose to be? Why?

I think Nick Bottom from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be my choice. Odd, perhaps, but he holds crucial functions in the play. Obviously, humor is the central connection people make with Bottom. He is funny, and I can relate to that idea because I’m always trying to make jokes. I was the class clown in school and now, Dad jokes come out of me left and right followed by my kid’s eyerolls. I am jealous of Bottom’s confidence. Though unfounded and misguided, Bottom’s confidence in himself is quite unmeasurable, and I wish I had a tenth of that confidence. And whether “bottom” refers to an ass or the butt of a joke, which I have been at times, he represents the base of anything: the beginning line, the baseline of culture, the lowest starting point, or the like. Bottom is the baseline between man and animal, a reflection of both nature and civilization. Bottom is also the only character that is aware of both the fairy world and the real world, the bridge between fantasy and reality. He may be a fool, but the fool is most likely the most important character in a Shakespeare play. I like to think the fools are the truth speakers. If you ever want to know what is happening in a Shakespearian play, listen to the fool.

What have you got coming soon for us to look out for?

My current book These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them) is a collection of poems that explore identity. Many poems reveal some personal histories and moments while other poems use the public arena and pop culture to transcend individual identity to our collective selves. Many poems are of discovery such as the poem “Lost and Found,” for example, which narrates the balance between the world of writing and the reality of life. The line toward the beginning of the poem “I am a bartender because I want to become/a writer” evolves full circle with the line toward the ending of the poem “…I’m tender, a barkeep because/I’m a writer….” The slight change of wanting and being a writer suggests that recognition necessary to grow as a writer and, ultimately, a person.

What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?

Off the top of my head, when it comes to the sound and rhythm of my writing, perhaps, Langston Hughes has the most influence. The blues poems in my book may represent this idea the most. The musicality of Hughes’s poetry, though, is always in my head when playing with language and words. Because I have a strong influence of documentary poetry in my work, too, I would say that William Carlos Williams, Ed Sanders, Charles Olson, CD Wright, and the like have challenged and influenced my understanding of poetry and art in general. As one of my mentors Susan Briante taught me, the poetic energy of the poem lies in the spaces between. I’m paraphrasing here, but my main interest in writing comes with the juxtaposing of the concrete and tangible to the ambiguous or the not-so-obvious. To use an example from Joseph Harrington’s book Things Come On: An Amneoir, Harrington juxtaposes his mother’s breast cancer with the Watergate scandal. These two concepts should not work together, but they do. The unique bridging of breast cancer and testimony creates an energy of tension and connectivity between the two concepts. Within the spaces between the words, our brains, at the very least, tries to build connective tissue and it is this tissue that delivers the power of the poem.

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.”

Enjoy an Excerpt

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.

About the Author:

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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