“In The Overnight Dark I Eat A Banana,” “If A Rhino Charges,” “This Could Be The Night,” and “Ghosts” by John Minczeski appeared in Issue 41 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about “This Could Be The Night.”
Due to chronic insomnia, I’m frequently up around midnight for a cup of tea and my notebook or computer. Having been a fan of Neruda’s odes for most of my life, many of my poems become ode-like creatures, focusing on what’s near at hand, like the night.
The poem derives from a residency I had at a Southeastern Minnesota high school. On my final day there, the class president asked me to speak at the pre-prom banquet. As an added perk, I’d get to take my wife to the prom. The prom committee decorated the gym, families of prom-goers watched from the bleachers, leaving after the grand march. The prom motto was “This could be the night.” Most if not all the prom-goers also left after the grand march for night-long after-prom parties. It could have been the night, indeed.
What was the most difficult part in completing that poem?
Ellen Bryant Voigt, one of my mentors at the Warren Wilson MFA Program, said it doesn’t get any easier, and she’s right. After the first draft, the real work begins revising subsequent drafts. In a way, each poem is the work of ages. One of the difficulties in this poem was my uncertainty about including that high school prom. And yet it became central.
Could you recommend a book for us? And if you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Traci Brimhall (“Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod”), Megan Privitello (“One God at a time”), Diannely Antigua (“Ugly Music”), Mary Biddinger (“Partial Genius”), and Diane Seuss (“Frank: Sonnets”) are among the highly inventive poets who have helped inform my poetry. I’d love to have a drink with any or all of them, so long as they don’t mind my taking notes as they speak.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
Poetry is a daily practice in which I frequently must lower my expectations, per William Stafford. I belong to The Grind, which matches groups of ten or so poets together each month, who then send poems to each other every day. It’s hard work, to say the least. Poems by my poet-companions are that part of my in-box fill I look forward to every day. I’m currently shopping a poetry collection to various publishers, and am gradually assembling work for the next one.
Our thanks to John for taking the time to answer a few questions and share these poems. Read “In The Overnight Dark I Eat A Banana,” “If A Rhino Charges,” “This Could Be The Night,” and “Ghosts” here.
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John Minczeski is the author of five previous collections and two chapbooks. Poems appear or are forthcoming in Cider Press Review, Louisville Review, Harvard Review The New Yorker, and Bear Review. He has taught in poets in the schools and in colleges around the Twin Cities. Minczeski holds an MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson.