Brennan Bestwick speaks about his poem “Surname NASA” in the December issue – infinite love, tethering space, and the anatomy of the universe.

1. I think there is a lot to say in this poem about ancestry, about what our forebears have built and left for us. Can you explain this at all? What’s one important or valuable piece of inheritance in your life, galactic or otherwise?

I’m very blessed to have entered a world surrounded by the family I have. Both my grandparents, the subjects of the poem, and parents, built a world for me full of endless encouragement and support.  I’m from a Midwest do-all-that-you-can-to-help-anyone-who-needs-it kind of family. I’ve inherited their humor, I hope to master its way of tackling the most trying times as gracefully as they do. A nature as good as theirs has a special gravity to it. I try to spin as brightly.

2. I see this theme, of older figures (here, grandparents, but I imagine it would serve any character with accumulated age and wisdom), painted as interstellar, as mingling and one with the hugest mechanisms of the universe. Tell me about this myth.

All the things my grandparents have seen and done are too big for this world, too big for them to understand just how powerful they’ve become from it.  I’m sure they’ve built some stars up there, filled some black holes I wasn’t ready for, but they’d never tell me if they did, they wouldn’t want to worry anyone. Continue reading →