Steve Abbott: “The Rust Belt encompasses, depending on how you look at it, the northernmost Southern states or the easternmost Plains states. Right now, particularly in Ohio where I’ve lived my life, it’s a swath of nostalgia, resentment, and disorientation polluted by political opportunism and corporate venality. Some see the struggle here as rural vs. urban, but it’s actually conflict between those who want to keep living with people just like themselves and those who are accustomed or open to interacting with people of different races, cultures, religions, ideas, and appearances. The proximity of the two groups provides a high-resolution lens a poet can use to view contemporary American life—sometimes appalling, sometimes inspiring, but always deeply human.”
Steve Abbott: “I know that poetry has the power to move us in ways that never get above the neck to where we create ‘meaning,’ and that is how the best poetry works. But I often view it and those of us who write it the way John Stewart described The Daily Show’s approach to the news: ‘We only honor the distinction between real and absurdly fake. And we are absurdly fake.’ So I just keep writing down what comes to me—real or fake—as I move through the world.”
