About the Poems - YH
About the Poems
by Yona Harvey But what? Turns out "The Antelope As Document" came first—written during an insanely busy year spent mostly with my library and information science friends—people who love reading and researching the subtle and the grand. During that period, I read all the Children's and Young Adult lit, popular fiction, blogs, archival theory I wanted. No pressure. No apologies. Just pure intake and pleasure. That year, I also invented and exchanged poetry exercises + co-created MuckWorks with the brilliant and indefatigable poet Douglas Kearney. The poems following "Antelope" are the clear result of a very important shift in my writing. They are disjointed, interrupted, and disruptive. They're written in different voices. They remix some of the constant obsessions of my life: music, family, Internet, text/ing, and the evening news. Maybe these are my anxieties and preoccupations, too? Anyway, "The Antelope As Document" and its title come from the musings of a French librarian. The other poems also take larger events or people and scale them down—kind of how disturbing ideas (sounds, images) make room for themselves inside the head. I think I got all that right. I'm not completely sure.