Vince Gotera: “I play bass in the band Deja Blue and also guitar in the duo Groovy News. I’ve played in bands for several decades. Music has been a crucial theme in many of my poems, focusing most often on guitars and guitarists as well as on the act and feeling of performance.” (web)
Thomas Dorsett: “One afternoon, over 40 years ago, I got on the subway on my way to the New School in New York City. I had signed up for a course in poetry taught by the great Jose Garcia Villa. My brother had warned me that he often severely criticized student work. I was very nervous. A little while later, he read some student poems and, true to form, demolished them. Then he came to mine. After reading it, he looked up, and asked Thomas Dorsett to identify himself. I stood up—Here it comes, I thought; my poem must be especially bad. ‘You will become a poet,’ he said. I just stared in amazement until he told me to sit down. That night I thought that I must do something on the side so I can afford to eat. So I became a physician, too. After 60, I added a third ‘p’ and have become an avid amateur pianist.”
Mark Fishbein: “I am known as PoetwithGuitar (email, website, and social media). After playing at folk clubs in the ’60s and rock bands in Paris in the early ’70s, I joined the Musician Union Local 802 in New York and played in various venues for a year. My last gig was at a Hawaiian restaurant for several months in a small tiki band. Realizing my music talents were average at best, I took a business opportunity, and stuck to poetry. However, I later took up classical and Brazil style playing, and now perform in a ‘piano bar’ format at art and poetry events, private parties and banquets, and to accompany my readings. I have four published books. This poem is part of a collection of fifty poems, Poems in the Key of Music, currently seeking publication. I currently live in Chicago.” (web)
Lynne Knight: “I walk by this ravine almost every morning. Years ago, it was overrun with brambles. Then one year, whoever lived in the house by the ravine slowly cleared the brambles and planted wildflowers. I walk at dawn, so I never saw anyone at work. But it was easy to imagine a source for all the energy it must have taken to reclaim the ravine, the way it was easy to turn the brambles into metaphor.”
R.G. Evans: “I’ve played music in bands and solo almost all my life, but since retiring from teaching I’ve spent much more time than before playing at wineries, country clubs, and listening rooms all over New Jersey. I’ve dedicated myself to songwriting, too, with two albums already released and a third I’m in the process of recording now. How has music impacted my poetry? I believe the transaction is the other way around. My work as a poet has helped me write lyrics that are tight, image-driven, and (I’m told) very original. I don’t allow myself the easy out of ‘moon/June’ rhymes or other cliched conventions of popular music, and that rises from my belief that a poet—and a songwriter—has a duty to write something that’s never been written before, not something that’s already familiar. Take for example the opening lines of my ‘love’ song ‘Hearts and Minds’: ‘We go together like a weapon and a wound.’ I like to think that my favorite songwriter, the late great Warren Zevon, would approve.” (web)
Joshua St. Claire: “I was born during the Cold War. I remember talking about nuclear war with my mom when I was a tiny child. I lived through Desert Storm, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Endless unrest in the Middle East. Escalation with China. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I’m tired of it. What reasonable, normal person wants war? It’s the worst thing we humans do. Now, we have this latest, indelible image of my governor signing munitions—killing machines to keep the war raging. Will we ever have peace?”
Olivia Sung: “I love the flexibility of being free from grammatical rules. Poetry allows me to manipulate words in the way that I see fit while still granting me the freedom to express myself in a unique way that all other mediums cannot. I also love the beauty in poetry, in that it is able to capture the charm of both the little and large things in life.”