Ask The Author: Mary Kovaleski Byrnes

Do you remember December? Remember December by reading these poems from Mary Kovaleski Byrnes and then reading this interview.

1. What does it take to rattle your world?

That weird, alien sound pond ice makes when it’s warming up.Tomatoes that don’t taste like anything. The repetition of the numbers 926 I have been seeing everywhere since I was about 16 (I should really play the lottery). A thunderstorm in winter (and that’s a good rattling).

2. How is a bed groggy?

I don’t know about you, but I usually wake up and do a few can-can kicks and yell “hello, world!” In seriousness, bed is where things are always half-way reality and half-way dream-world. That foggy, groggy place.

3. What would your bi-plane look like?

1940’s retro flamingo pink please, and with those things that let it land on water, too.

4. Was the cassava the size of adult limbs or baby limbs?

Incredible Hulk-sized limbs. You should really check out the produce in New Zealand. Not sure what’s in the soil down there but it’s other-worldly.

5. Do you want an open or closed casket?

Don’t want to jinx this one by joking around. Open, because closed often (but not always) can imply a way in which I might not prefer to go.

6. How much non-fiction is in your poems?

Every one of my poems contains an element of non-fiction,but these elements of truth are always manipulated to whatever extent I need to make the poem better. The sensibility, the humanity of the poem is the part I must keep true, and often an image, or memory, or place, or person from my life is what helps me create that on the page. I like to set poems in places I’ve been and revisit places and recreate them in sometimes more fantastical ways.  However, I will create a speaker in a poem who does things I’ve never done (or wish I had done, or would never do). Skydiving, on the other hand, is something I’ve done once and would love to do again.