“Magic Town,” “River Song,” “Heart-Shaped Hole,” and “Grace Kelly’s Color TV” by Steven Rea appeared in Issue 45 and can be found here.
We’ve love to hear more about this set of poetry.
The initial inspiration for “Heart-Shaped Hole” was just that: a tree with a big heart-shaped hole in its trunk that I passed by walking my dog through the woods one morning. How the poem got from those fairy tale nods (Hansel & Gretel, Little Riding Hood) to the shack on the hill looking out to the sea I cannot really say. But Warren Zevon’s “Splendid Isolation” is one of my go-to songs.
In “River Song” I tried to write a poem mirroring the rhythms and flow of a river. In “Magic Town” I was looking to capture both the exhilaration and anxiety associated with perambulating around an unfamiliar city, coated in a layer or two existential despair.
“Grace Kelly’s Color TV” is without doubt the most autobiographical piece I’ve ever written. I played around with the format quite a bit as well — first as a block-y prose poem, then as it reads now, then as a prose poem, then as it reads now. I hope it also reflects what a big part movies play in my life, and in my memory.
What was the most difficult part in completing this set?
The three shorter poems came fairly easily; I did do a fair amount of cutting and rewriting on “River Song.” “Grace Kelly’s Color TV” was harder, just because of its length, and because it toggles back and forth chronologically, so I had to make those time references as clear as possible. I’m a big fan of David Kirby’s longer, braided poems, and I think I was aspiring to something similar (structurally) here.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate (Ecco, 2024). There are 52 poems in this nifty little collection — read one a week, or read ’em all every week. Tate, who died in 2015, just 71, was a whimsical surrealist, but side-by-side with his humor there was a dark and desperate soulfulness to his poetry. I could read “Dream On,” which on one level is a celebration of the power of poetry and on another level is about pain and beauty and the magic of dreams, every darn day. I think I do, actually.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
The English poet Caroline Bird, methinks. Her work crackles with wit, and I read somewhere that she’s a big fan of James Tate (see above). I hope that’s true — we could commiserate over pints of Guinness.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I recently wrapped up a long, multi-part essay on film in the 1940s for a catalogue accompanying a show to open this spring at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Parts of the piece were tough going, involving a lot of research, but it was satisfying to write about the writer-director Preston Sturges, the ubiquity of Humphrey Bogart through the decade, dive into film noir a bit and highlight some favorite films and stars.
Next? More poems.
Our thanks to Steven for taking the time to answer a few questions and share these poems. Read “Magic Town,” “River Song,” “Heart-Shaped Hole,” and “Grace Kelly’s Color TV” here.
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Steven Rea is the author of the archival photography books “The Hollywood Book Club,” “Hollywood Cafe” and “Hollywood Rides a Bike.” He produces the website ridesabike.com. For many years he was the film critic at The Philadelphia Inquirer. His poems have appeared in New York Quarterly, The Paris Review, Rolling Stone, The Seneca Review and other publications. He lives in Maine.