These Are Not My Words

 

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.”

read 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 Donovan Hufnagle:

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.

Website: http://www.donovanhufnagle.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donovanhufnagle

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dhufnaglepoetry

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/These-Are-Not-My-Words/dp/B0DBMN46M4/ref=sr_1_1

more personal stuff about Donovan Hufnagle:

What is something you’ve lied about?

Let me count the ways…. I’m a writer, so I could argue that lying is part of my job. However, when I write something fictitious, my intentions are to capture an authentic and truthful voice that expresses a genuine emotion, which resonates with my readers. The lie, then, may be an extension or exaggeration of the truth and maybe even an omission, but the core emotion evoked from the poem is the absolute truth.

The last lie I told is probably a lie I told myself. My own memories lie to me. For example, the poem “First Loves” in my current book These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them) highlights some of my neighborhood friends I grew up with. The poem has snippets of these people and showcases a certain connection I had with them. And while theses narratives that thread throughout the poem are true, they may not tell all the story. And as you probably already know, our memories are not that reliable, so am I remembering correctly? Do I even care? My memories could be as it states in the poem, “carnival mirror perspectives.”

Who is the last person you hugged?

My wife. Or maybe my daughter. Every morning before my wife leaves for work, taking our youngest to high school as well, we express our love for each other and kiss, hug, or both. Despite our busy lives wearing us thin daily, we always take the time and make a quick effort to express our love to each other. I don’t want to ramble on about my family and our relationship, but from a writer’s perspective, my family has truly helped evolve my writing. For instance, I ask my wife to read every poem I write. Her background is in science, and her viewpoint is crucial in determining readability and broadening my intended audience. If she has questions after reading a poem, I know I need to revise it.

What are you reading now?

I am currently working on an introduction to humanities textbook that focuses on monsters and myths, so most of my (re)reading revolves around this textbook right now. I just finished rereading Noel Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror or The Paradoxes of the Heart, which analyzes the horror genre. My rereading was primarily looking at the monster and how the monster functions within different cultures, especially in literature and pop culture. I also just finished writing the chapter over Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster, so I reread the novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. It's nice to read something again that you haven’t read in a while; it uncovers so many aspects that you might have missed in the first reading.

How do you come up with the titles to your books?

The title of my current book These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them) has various meanings, personal and universal. The title came from the documentary miniseries The Staircase. The series was about Michael Peterson and his wife’s murder. In the scene when the defense is questioning the sister of the murder victim about the statement she previously gave to police, the defense lawyer reiterates her statement and asks, “Those were your words?” and her response was, “They weren’t my words, it is what I wrote.” I could not stop laughing and for several reasons. Prior to this, I would lightheartedly criticize how my wife would repeat what I just said but switch the language around to fit her needs. Anyway, after the staircase episode, I labeled this action “These are not my words, I just wrote them.” And I like to think my poetry does a similar thing—take a reality and translate it into both authenticity and art. I appreciate the art of documentary poetry, which may include found histories such as the poems in my book that use the WPA narratives from the 1930s. In the case of these poems, mostly, they aren’t my words, I just arranged and directed them, trying to highlight the emotional energy.

I am not inventing any words, at least, I don’t remember making up any new words or using any lost words in this book, so from a practical stance, I’m using someone else’s words in, hopefully, stimulating ways.

My previous book titles—The Sunshine Special, Shoebox, 30 Days of 19, and Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Documenting Of all have a connection to the content and typically reveal something about the poetry guts. The Sunshine Special is the name of the train my great uncle, who was a grandfather to me, took from Fort Worth to Los Angeles in 1920. The book is a travel log, journalistic telling of his trip. Shoebox is a collection of letters kept in a shoebox that tell the story of a woman adopted from Russia as a baby and who now struggles with mental and physical disorders. 30 Days of 19 is a collection of inverted haikus (19 syllables) that were written the first 30 days of the covid shutdown. Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Documenting Of is a scrapbook of tattooed people and the stories those tattoos tell.

Share your dream response for your book.

With all authors that publish or intend to publish their work, I assume they want as many readers as possible. Some authors even strive for fame. I don’t want to be famous; I just want, one day, to be walking somewhere and see someone reading one of my books. To know that there is someone out there that appreciates my writing at some level would be the cherry on top of my writing ice cream Sunday.

Receiving awards or selling a lot of copies of my book are all secondary to the dream of seeing my book in the hands of a stranger.  

a Rafflecopter giveaway