Author: Shyla Shehan

Matt Mason served as the Nebraska State Poet from 2019-2024 and has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times, and Matt has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found in Rattle, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, and in hundreds of other publications. Mason’s 5th book, Rock Stars, was published by Button Poetry in 2023.

Matt’s Poem, 8 Beautiful Things (About this Last Year), is available in Issue #22.

These first few questions are about the piece that was published in the latest issue…

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the origin, revision process, and/or final version of 8 Beautiful Things?

8 Beautiful Things (About This Last Year) was sort of an act of desperation to focus on something positive after so much time in lockdown. I have diabetes, my wife has asthma, so Covid precautions weren’t theoretically about helping others stay alive, they literally hit home. I did originally plan it as 12 Beautiful Things but felt these 8 did a better job, less cluttered, less forced.

The poem does wonderful work infusing light into what was otherwise a very dismal time for people in the United States and the world. Tell us more about that act of reflection and counterbalance.  

Thanks. That was the goal, writing in spring of 2021, to find positives, to remind myself that the previous year had been about more than just surviving, that there was beauty in it, too.

Knowing that it was about a very specific time period, what can you tell us about the choice not to provide the context of the year? 

I hope that works. I think it’s obvious but, well, I think a lot of things are obvious which clearly aren’t in the world today so who knows. And though the details are specific to the Pandemic, I think it’s important to also lead a reader to reflect on their past year right now and find some beauty as times are always complicated.

What do you hope readers who encounter the poem take from it, especially now, given the current volatile and polarizing climate in our country? 

I hope what they take is just a minute in someone else’s perspective. That’s what poetry is about for me and that’s why I really believe if there was more poetry in our daily lives we’d have a more connecting us to one another. I read poetry not just for enjoyment but to also get to take a few steps in another’s shoes and see a world that’s different from the one my own experiences bring me. 

Switching topics to your recent transition away from being the Nebraska State Poet. In your tenure, you set a goal to visit every county in Nebraska, speaking, teaching, or both, which was a great success. Congratulations!

Now that that is squarely in the rearview, have you set your sights on a new goal or goals? 

Yes! I want to do it again… or keep doing it… or, well, just keep going. I started a new nonprofit, Poetry Forward (poetryforward.org) and am also working through Humanities Nebraska, the Nebraska Arts Council and others to keep doing poetry talks, readings, workshops and more. This is my job now, I see the value it brings into schools and communities as well as to me, so I want to do this forever. But, well, “Professional Poet” isn’t a well-broken-in career path, so it’s a bit of work but, so far, worth it to keep doing what I love and what I’m best at and what I see making a positive difference in the places I present to.

What can you tell us about your time as state poet that not a lot of people might know?

What surprised me the most is how hard it can be sometimes to get a response for a poetry event. Not always, but I think teachers are so busy, many librarians are time-crunched volunteers, and when someone you’re not familiar with calls or emails saying they’re a poet and want to come through, it can get weird. So, yeah, sometimes it got weird. I didn’t get hung up on ever until one county where three different libraries hung up on me when I phoned. 

How do you feel your writing changed through the experience of representing Nebraska as the State Poet? 

I felt I needed to show myself and my writing more value. I prefer being humble and taking more of a backseat, but I found I needed to show poetry as something valuable and you can’t be too humble when you have a title like State Poet unless you want people to think poetry isn’t important.

More about your writing… I seem to recall hearing you speak about writing a poem a week. Is that still something you continue to do? If so, where do you come up with new ideas to keep things fresh?

Yes, I have a deadline of Monday night at midnight and need to start at least one new poem each week. This started due to a poetry writing class I took in college, 1986 or ’87, where the teacher said we’d turn in a poem each week, 10 poems in 10 weeks, and I didn’t think I could do that. And then I wrote 15 poems in those 10 weeks. With a deadline, a serious deadline, you are looking for poems and not waiting for them, and when you look for poems they are all over the place. Mainly, they come in the things you find yourself involuntarily reacting to with a physical reaction: a double-take when you see something beautiful out your car window, a sigh at something ridiculous a friend says, a clenched jaw at some stupidity in the news. These are all things we forget 5 minutes later but, if we’re looking for a poem, we might at least write a note about it for later. In every day, there’s at least 5 or 6 poems for everyone to write if we’re looking for them.

Do you write in genres other than poetry? 

I really don’t. I have published a couple essays but really just love and focus on writing poetry. And emails. And answering lists of questions for literary magazines.

Give us some insight into your revision process? That’s a huge topic, so feel free to pick a specific aspect of craft or revision and speak to that. 

Revision is crucial. I don’t consider myself a great writer but I DO consider myself a great editor, so it’s in revision where my poems come together. I write by hand in a notebook, then scratch things out, change things up, often end up with a page that’s hard to read with all the additions and arrows and codes to insert a stanza from another page somewhere. I read the poem out loud over and over as it’s different in the air than on the page, showing me changes. Then when I type it up, the poem is completely fresh again, looks completely different, and I can work more on the shape of it (the stanzas, more with the line breaks, indentations, etc.). I enjoy revision because, for me, its takes the ideas which inspired me to write and helps them take a shape which does them more justice than my first drafts.

And finally, a few very TGLR questions…

In 2023, we asked you what the first thing is that you think of when you hear the phrase ‘the good life’. You responded that you “think of living with peace in your heart, living a life with integrity and value, truth and beauty.” What is the second thing you think of?

Life with less anxiety.

Many of the people we publish are early in their journey as writers. What advice would you give them about the road ahead? 

Enjoy it. Reinvent your genre: don’t write what you’ve been told a poem or a story is, write in the way and about the things you wish you saw more of in the writing world.

Do you think Lucia would share that cookie recipe if we ask nicely?

No. She’ll always be changing it.

Thank you, Matt, for being a big part of our literary community and for your involvement and support in helping TGLR grow and thrive. We also appreciate you for spending extra time with us on this Q&A and wish you the best with the Poetry Forward project, writing, and all of life’s endeavors!

Frank Gaughan is a fiction writer and educator based in New York. His short fiction appears in Arcturus, and he is completing a collection of contemporary short stories. His academic writing on composition pedagogy has appeared in College Composition and Communication and Inside Higher Ed. He teaches composition and ESL at Hofstra University. His short fiction, The Grieving Scar, is available in Issue #22.

Tell us about yourself.

I live with my wife and daughter in New York. I teach English composition at Hofstra University. I’ve worked there for over twenty years now. I appreciate the opportunity to continuously work with young people. Among other advantages, doing so helps you to see how reading and writing practices evolve.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the origin, revision process, and/or final version of The Grieving Scar?

I’m happy with the ending, and I’m rarely happy with the way my stories end. I wanted Susan and Carson to meet again, and I wanted AZZO and Bennington to have a legitimate story arc.

What did you learn (about yourself, craft, or life in general) through writing and revising it?

There’s an element of humor and absurdity to life. It’s hard (at least for me) to render those elements in fiction, but I was able to do it in this case by paying attention to Carson, by allowing him to be insistent on his feelings.

What do you hope readers take from the piece?

You mean a lesson? The piece was fun to write, and I hope readers take some joy from reading it. I didn’t have a specific moral that I was trying to convey, but Carson is interesting to me because he refuses to be indifferent about his breakup. I doubt he would think of things that way, but that’s how I see him. When Susan and Carson meet at the end, they have another kind of conversation about indifference.

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)?

It’s fun to write creatively. Where there was nothing before there is something now. I enjoy the process of making things. In this respect, I don’t see a huge difference between writing fiction and writing a course design or a lesson plan for class. Both are creative processes where I’m in charge of the direction and where I have to live with the outcomes.

What has drawn you to writing fiction? What other genres do you write?

We understand through story. In good stories, we also empathize. If I can create a story where there was nothing before and also have that story that help someone understand and empathize, I’ve done my job. I write poetry too, but I don’t think I’m especially good at it.

What have been the biggest influences in your writing?

My parents and my wife—excellent readers, all. My daughter, who has an intuitive sense of humor and narrative structure. My students, who as a group have a low tolerance threshold for boring stories.

How do you make expression a part of your daily life, or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

You have to write even when you don’t want to, and even in suboptimal conditions. If you only have 30 minutes that day, then write for 30 minutes so that you’re in a position to do better the next day.

Are there any special projects, other pieces, or books you’d like to promote?

I came across Jan Kerouac’s Baby Driver recently, even though it’s been out in the world for 40-plus years. She was firing on all cylinders there. Beautiful stuff. 

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

People being good to one another, regularly and reliably.

Thank you, Frank, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We wish you the best with writing and all life’s endeavors.

Jake Bienvenue holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana, where he was the Editor-in-Chief of CutBank. His work has appeared in The Offing, The Baltimore Review, EcoTheo, and others. He is at work on a novel about the Oregon wine country. He lives in Brooklyn. His short fiction, Palimpsest, is available in Issue #22.

Tell us about yourself.

Sure. I’m young, handsome, and I’m getting crazy money. I’m overeducated and restless and by this point practically feral. I live in a windowless room. I have with me about a dozen items. The rest, mostly books and wine, is stuffed in a closet in my father’s basement in Folsom, California. I write ridiculous poems and stories at a desk which would be too small for a third grader. When I pass people on the street I pretend I have no face.

Palimpsest is such a uniquely funny and dark story that reveals a lot about our society. Can you tell us where the idea for this story came from? What other details would you like to share about the revision process and/or final version of this piece?

All my writing comes out of my hatred of work. All of it. In this case, my previous job was as a rentals manager at an arts center in rural Oregon, a role I actually kind of liked. So during the day, when I needed a break from sending emails, I’d wander the halls of this big building, daydreaming. I wrote some of these little fictions down. I kept daydreaming. I realized these daydreams had a perspective, a dreamer who was not me. From there it was a matter of shaping.

What did you learn (about yourself, craft, or life in general) through writing and revising it?

Nothing I’ve published is even remotely like this. It’s mostly been straightforward realism. But I think with “Palimpsest” I got more comfortable with weirdness, with just saying shit I think is striking or funny, and not worrying about how it’s going to cohere. It’s a trust thing, I think.

What has drawn you to writing fiction? What other genres do you write?

I just love stories, honestly. I love making things up. Like wouldn’t it be goofy if this happened? But with fiction, instead of wondering, you construct then inhabit a narrative perspective, you say, “Something very goofy did happen, and I was there, I saw it.” I also love poetry and that’s what I’ve been writing lately. I’ve published creative nonfiction and criticism too.

What have been the biggest influences in your writing?

Walt Whitman, the Bible, anime. In no particular order.

How do you make expression a part of your daily life, or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

If art is the negative of productivity, and I think it is, then my writing consists of moments I’ve stolen back from my life, whether that’s work or leisure or laundry. Maybe I’m not explaining myself well. That’s okay too.

Are there any special projects, other pieces, or books you’d like to promote?

I think if you have any interest in me or my work, which you should not, I’d encourage you to read a very short nonfiction piece I wrote for The Baltimore Review, called “Gold Country.” It’s very different from “Palimpsest” but I think with both you get a sense of where my work is right now. Or where it was about a year ago, really.

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

I think of a huge pile of mulch I have to spread on a Saturday morning. I think of rows of white houses with two-car garages. I think of sapling poplars attached to growth stilts. I think of Traeger grills and cold pools. Heat, summer, Yeti coolers. Things I’m a visitor in. Probably this is not the answer you were looking for. Now I’ll think of an excellent literary magazine in Nebraska!

“Gold Country” is a fabulous piece, Jake! Thanks for sharing. Thank you, also, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We wish you the best with writing and all life’s endeavors, except maybe work, since your distaste for it seems to be particularly fruitful.