Life Unhinged, poem by Sonya Gray Redi (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

LIFE UNHINGED
by Sonya Gray Redi

umm I wish
I was everything.
I feel magical.
I still feel that way.
I guess I am going in more
of a sardonic narco swing.
People don’t think my
stuff was about free
feelings.
Love and
life unhinged.
I hope we are growing.
People feeling murky,
disconnectedness,
dark waiting-
all I know

SOURCE: Lana Del Rey interview in The Guardian by Tim Jonze (June 2014).

IMAGE: Lana Del Rey by Neil Krug, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: : Sonya Gray Redi lives in a small apartment in San Francisco, California. She graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre and Literature Writing from UC San Diego. Her writing has been featured in Mania Magazine and other publications across the interwebs. She enjoys riding her bike, walking through redwood forests, and watching black and white films.

Reprocessing My Own Life, poem by Gary Glauber (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

REPROCESSING MY OWN LIFE
by Gary Glauber

Money would have been great
but they required suppression.
We felt that the original was good
so we stuck to our guns.
Finally we came to an agreement:
the payment is very small.
In the mainstream I am essentially a novice,
not known.

It may be that I’ve lost the ability to write.
It’s been over twenty years
and it’s very problematical.
This is definitely an unproven thing, an X factor.
I may find that I’ve wound up with nothing.
I don’t think my agent figures I’m going
to live much longer.

I’m more or less apathetic to the megabucks.
I live a rather ascetic life.
I don’t have material wants; I have no debts.
My condominium my car my stereo is paid off.
A person must always take his best shot at everything,
whether he repairs shoes, drives a bus,
writes novels, or sells fruit.
You do the best you can.
If you fail, well, blame it on your mother.

SOURCE: Phillip K. Dick’s Final Interview with John Boonstra, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine (Vol. 2, No. 3, June 1982, pp. 47-52).

IMAGE: Author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) by Philippe Hupp, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This found poem is from an interview with celebrated science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick. This was his final interview actually, and in it he discussed issues with rewriting his work for movies or novelizations of movies. Many of his works were made into successful films, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, A Scanner Darkly, and more. Unfortunately, he did not live to see many of these things happen. His work is amazing, and I’ve always been influenced by his works and ideas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gary Glauber is a poet, fiction writer, and teacher. His works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as “Best of the Net.” Recent poems are published or forthcoming in Fjords Review, JMWW, Stone Voices, Ginger Piglet, The Citron Review, 3 Elements Review, The Blue Hour, Stoneboat Journal, Stone Path Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, and Think Journal. He is a champion of the underdog who often composes to an obscure power pop soundtrack. His first collection, Small Consolations, is due out in 2015 from The Aldrich Press.

Shame, poem by Sue Hyon Bae (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

SHAME
by Sue Hyon Bae

Disconnect him from me—we’re scared of our own
History, biography—
We’re passionate people, and we’re sensitive
People and we care, you know?
You can’t go investigating with everybody like that.
That’s why I sit in the dark. We have flashlights we use
Every now and again
We keep it open and keep it unsure
I never knew what that was!
That seems reasonable enough.

SOURCE: Interview with Michael Fassbender by Scott Tobias featured at A.V. Club (Nov. 30, 2011).

IMAGE: Actor Michael Fassbender.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The poem is based on an A.V. Club interview with Michael Fassbender and Steve McQueen about their film, Shame (2011). I only used lines spoken by Fassbender.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sue Hyon Bae is a Korean-American poet currently working on her MFA at Arizona State University. Her work has been published in Spires.

My Body, poem by Peter Valentine (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

MY BODY
by Peter Valentine

Look out from my body and see people standing, talking, hanging out—from a window two women having a dream. Is it fantastic? Of course it is. It’s compulsory. When I was playing soccer at the age of 14, the first thing we’d do before going out onto the field would be to climb up on one another’s thighs and massage the legs. Now it’s 1970 and there are street guys, there are punks, gays, beach bums just lying around in the sun. My body is there too, hanging out, talking to women. I don’t look at women the same way I look at myself. I look at myself and I look at myself looking at women. I realize my body in the world, that there’s never been my body before. I probably should play the victim.

SOURCE: Conversation with Arnold Schwarzenegger by Peter Manso (Oui magazine, August 1977).

IMAGE: Arnold Schwarzenegger, bodybuilder (circa 1975).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Peter Valentine writes a daily poem from words found in the New York Times crossword puzzle. He posts them daily on Tumblr and on Facebook.

I Grew, poem by Erin Dorney (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

I GREW
by Erin Dorney

I grew
I related
I used
I met
I would
I wanted
I knew
I looked
I decided
I could
I told
I got
I was so in love
I needed
I don’t know
I can’t
I have
I did
I’ve got
immaculate cheekbones

SOURCE: Shia LaBeouf interview, Just Jared, September 2006.

IMAGE: Shia LaBeouf by Nathaniel Goldberg, GQ, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I am working on a series of erasure poems sourced from interviews with Shia LaBeouf (2006-present). I chose this celebrity due to his recent performances/statements regarding intellectual property stemming from the controversy over plagiarism in his own work. The pieces are explorations into ideas of ownership, remixing, and copyright in art and writing. Punctuation, capitalization, and line breaks have been altered but no words have been added.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Erin Dorney is a founding editor of The Triangle. Her work has been published in The Newer York, The Fox Chase Review, and Potluck Mag. She can be found on Twitter.

Martin Amis on Martin Amis in the words of…, poem by Stephen James (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

Martin Amis on Martin Amis
in the words of Martin Amis (for a change)
by Stephen James

Lack of fame is almost seen as a violation of your civil rights
It’ll look like a parting V sign to England
They wish that you were so influenced by them
It must be to do with my father
reduced to writing about writers.
you have unpleasant women in your novels so you’re a misogynist
extra-literary, not literary at all
how long are you going to last?

Not all of me will die
the old will outnumber the young by two-to-one
The old will flood the cities like a tsunami of hideous refugees, stinking up all the restaurants and using up all the hospital space
the egotism of the human race

we are not naturally an altruistic animal
I defend my right to say that kind of thing
No-one has the right not to be offended
You shouldn’t be singled out

The qualities we enjoy in a fictional character have nothing to do with what we value in life
It’s the hardest thing in fiction to write enjoyably about goodness and happiness
Fiction is freedom.

erect these no-entry signs
no serious person ever thinks about anything else
a mirror that will show you not what you look like, but who you really are
Are you a Sadist? Do you have courage?
the constantly cherished sense of your own innocence
the feeling of mortality
Yeah.

SOURCE: Martin Amis interview on ABC-TV in Australia (2/26/14).

IMAGE: Author Martin Amis (BBC photo).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I tried to pick out lines that not only sounded poetic and had some atmosphere to them but also related to things that I, and I’m sure sure quite a lot of other people, associate with our Martin. Things like the strange kind of fame that can only be achieved by a cult author, his father, narcissism, wanting to “beat” mortality, sexism, whether or not people have the right to complain or be offended by literature or art (even if it’s misogynistic) and fiction vs. reality as an entire concept. I have added nothing to these lines, I have not even changed the order. This is all Martin, baby.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Twenty-three years old and hailing from Manchester, UK, Stephen James has been writing for a long time and has a blog but is relatively new to doing so publicly and performing his work. Over the last six months or so, however, he has jumped right in there. He has self-published a book of poems and several pamphlets containing short fiction(ish) and has guested at several events and made himself a regular at numerous open mic nights. He even ranked last in a poetry slam. He also hosts his own Spoken Word Showcase, which is definitely not a competition. He is a strong believer in poetry as self-expression, and self-expression is something that you cannot do wrong or better or worse than somebody else. He urges everybody to put pen to paper. It is immensely satisfying.

I am the Bride, poem by Trish Hopkinson (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

I am the Bride
by Trish Hopkinson

When I really like a girl
I call her ”kiddo.”
I am a loner,
the way I talk with my hands [laughing]
like Elvis Presley on crack, all right?
You get comfortable with your own company—
read, listen to music . . .
It’s like, no worries.
But you can get bored with it.
That can happen.
A little bit of—yeah, okay, exactly—
It’s a mixed bag.
I am able to truly, in this town, live
the life of an artist,
create something—
one big book about comic books,
spaghetti Westerns, and Hong Kong kung fu films—
a cool little story and everyone liked it.
I am the Bride.
The characters are also me
with little feminine tendencies.
Sometimes I want to look handsome,
dress in nice stuff . . .
More of an old sexy lion,
style is cranked up,
you know, la-di-da!
Johnny Depp,
Daniel Day-Lewis,
they got it going on.
It’s a total fantasy,
a snide side in real life.
A decade ain’t enough.
This little journey?
Too much of a left turn.
It’s a look at the world.
It completely and utterly is.

SOURCE: “Total Tarantino” by Mary Kaye Schilling,  Entertainment Weekly (4/9/2004).

IMAGE: Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I have a thing for Tarantino films and have followed him since he first graced Sundance with Reservoir Dogs back in 1992. He’s got a vivid personality and a quirky way of expressing himself, which I thought would be fun to capture in a found piece. The phrases I used are mostly verbatim from the article and I just reordered to create the poem.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Trish Hopkinson loves words and digs poetry slams. Her mother tells everyone that she was born with a pen in her hand. She has been published in several journals, including The Found Poetry Review, Chagrin River Review, and Verse-Virtual. She recently received awards in the Utah Arts Festival’s IronPen competition and from the League of Utah Writers for her poetry anthology, Emissions. She is a project manager by profession and resides in Utah with her handsome husband and two outstanding children. Visit her at trishhopkinson.com.

A Yummy Death, poem by Eileen Wesson (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

A Yummy Death
by Eileen Wesson

I refuse to lie to children
To cater to the bullshit of innocence
I don’t like the city
I’m afraid
I’m here looking for a yummy death
All my friends are dying
Fearful phone calls
Publishing books was fun
Now its stupid
I’ve turned old
I was young minutes ago
The passion I felt
truest part of my life
Falling in love
I’m going back in time
To live in silence
Not get involved in the world
Parents don’t like kids
They’re maladjusted
I’m concentrating on people I love
Understanding teachers
Everything was hard
Everything was a problem
Everything was scolding
Everything was wrong
Total wreckage
That’s my mother from shtetls
I’m crazy it makes my work good
An artist should not have children
Have a daughter they’re kinder
The vicious pain
Can only be astonished
Don’t dare tell the truth
It’s a famous theme of mine
Get rid of the parents
Get them out of the book
I was abandoned he died
I’m so old
not supposed to be caring about love affairs
It doesn’t stop
Working napping reading
I’m in the idiot role
A kiddie-book person
I can’t complain
I’m a lucky buck

SOURCE: Maurice Sendak interview, Believer (Nov./Dec. 2012).

IMAGE: Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) with an illustration from his book Where the Wild Things Are (1963).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I am in the process of publishing a series of adventure stories for little kids. I look to Maurice Sendak for inspiration of a child’s journey that shapes his/her future. He said he answered the children’s letters sent to him first, rather than letters from adults. He wanted more than anything for children to feel safe enough to tell “their” truth. His life and imagination are inspiring to me. When I read the article in Believer, I could feel the loss and horrific pain he went through. I am amazed at how he was able to fall in love with nature and not give in to commercial exploitation. His illustrations are full of emotions that most storytellers gloss over. I wish I could have made him dinner and listened to his stories.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eileen Wesson is a writer/actress whose poetry will appear in the fall edition of FRE&D.

I will write past the page that occasions my end, poem by J.R. McConvey (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

I will write past the page that occasions my end
by J.R. McConvey

age happened
speculative, fiction
more than half human

improved in some ways
backwards in look
and then state by state

things are more open
clamping down on anything
overall

just a person
a year and a half ago
nobody would believe

this specific story
keeping clean problems
despite many books

I couldn’t face
their waterfront still
for young people

untenable questions
running, threatened
a deluge of

communications
in the north, in nature
at the end of survival

fluff under the bed
stretches out, a novel
three or four years

I’m not going to talk
about things
I’m not finished

SOURCE: Interview with Margaret Atwood, Toronto Star (September 5, 2014).

PHOTO: Margaret Atwood by Marta Iwanek, Toronto Star, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:  For Canadian writers, Margaret Atwood has attained the status of a deity. The process of her physical aging has been inversely proportional to the sense that she has attained a kind of unparalleled techno-literary immortality: she has mastered Twitter, invented a robotic arm to remotely autograph copies of her books, and recently signed on as the first author to have work archived in the Future Library. Much of the media attention given to the release of her new collection of stories, Stone Mattress, has centered on her age. (Atwood will turn 75 in November.) I find it interesting to ponder what mortality means to a writer whose legacy and spirit are certain to endure for at least 100 years, probably more. Does Atwood fear death? Does she experience age as an indignity, as many seem to, or does her acknowledged literary mastery contribute to a sense that she has mastered life itself, and is therefore more prepared to meet its end? Will she concede to death—or will she tell Thanatos himself to go stuff it as he meekly asks her to sign his copy of The Handmaid’s Tale?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: J.R. McConvey is a writer based in Toronto. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Joyland, The Puritan, The Danforth Review, The Found Poetry Review, The Pulitzer Remix, The Broken City, and Paragon, and his journalism has been published in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The National Post, and other outlets. His stories have been shortlisted for the Matrix LitPOP award and the Thomas Morton Prize, and his novella, The Last Ham, was published as an e-book by House of Anansi in 2013. He is also a Genie and Gemini-winning writer and producer of documentaries, including the cross-platform National Parks Project. He is on Twitter @jrmcconvey and online at jrmcconvey.wordpress.com.

Writing Grace, poem by Susan Beem (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

WRITING GRACE
by Susan Beem

I came upon a story
that bothered me,
so I used gaps,
things suggested
to invent names,
confessions.
People set down
a version of events,
leave out things you
most like to know.
It’s difficult to discover
the beginning
the steamy ―
Tom, a mistress,
Grace.

I went looking for her grave ―
my English point of view
that going to Canada
is the same as death,
that it was scandal
to be murdered.
What you get now
is rumor in place of unknown,
reform for victims, digression
about immigrants.
Always a story behind the story,
partial knowledge, a shape,
a crime.

SOURCE: Margaret Atwood interview by Deborah Rozen (1997) posted on a Random House Blog  <bold type>.

IMAGE: Author Margaret Atwood.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Susan Beem is a retired family physician who lives in Long Beach, California, and has been writing poetry for about 10 years with the help of local workshops. Her poems have been published by Verdad, Ekphrasis, Turtle Quarterly, Song of the San Joaquin, Bank Heavy Press, Medusa’s Laugh, and included in several themed anthologies.