Saturday, June 22, 2013

June 9, 2013 Rodney Koeneke Part 2

After tackling some technically difficulties, it was our pleasure to play the second half of our interview with poet Rodney Koeneke. He shared how he constructed his upcoming book Etruria (Wave Books, 2014), and the diverse array of source material that finds its way into his work. Rodney thinks of his poems as 'complete thoughts/songs;' he works in singularity as opposed to series. In discussing his editing process, he talked about how the bulk of his poem is a way of investigating or 'puzzle over the why' of how he came to find something interesting. At the top of the hour, in the studio, we wondered how much collage plays a part in Rodney's work, and even where writing from a place of possessing diverse and expansive knowledge that just finds its way into the work ends and collage begins. Rodney's poems have 'time signatures,' that is, references to technology and contemporary phenomena. Poetry that includes these references is new to us in both reading and writing. We considered how Flarf strays from the lyrical tradition. How liberating! When we returned to Rodney's interview, he talked about how he took part in the Bay Area writing community. He read some newer work that will be published in a chapbook by Hook Press. We ended by talking about Rodney's online presence; check him out on Goodreads! After the interview, Jay read a Amazon review by Bay Area's own Kevin Killian.
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Sunday, June 2, 2013

June 2, 2013 Rodney Koeneke

This Sunday, we played part 1 of our April interview with Rodney Koeneke. Rodney, who, while living in the Bay Area, had been involved with the Flarf Collective, now lives in Portland, where he works as a history professor. His expertise in history is evident in his work, which is chock-full of literary, historical and social references; we follow him as he leaps from obscure factoid to pop-culture gem throughout the poem. Rodney was generous enough to share his forthcoming Etruria (Wave Books, 2014) with us and we hear quite a bit of it during our interview. Just as Napoleon created the territory Etruria, poets create a world within their writing. His work is both complex and conversational.  Rodney is the first poet to discuss Flarf poetry on our show and it was great to hear the social context of this movement. He introduced Urdu writing through reading his 'ghazal.' In closing today, we touched on meaning within poetry and what types of content we allow into our work to communicate meaning.
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