Skip to main content

Spotlight on Jason McCall

I just discovered the poet Jason McCall. I was looking at literary magazines, and I stumbled upon his poem Roll Call for Michael Brown in the magazine Rattle. The poem sets up the theoretical scenario of one of Michael Brown's college professors accidentally calling his name while taking attendance. I instantly fell in love with the idea behind this poem. It's entirely plausible. We are all so busy, so focused on our own concerns, we can forget Michael Brown's death, even though it only occurred a short time ago. Of course, the poem is also incredibly well-written. I think my favorite line from the poem is, "Someone will / read his name like the next item on a list / of groceries". Mm! It hurts!

 So I decided to read some more poetry by Jason McCall, and I found We Love Throwback Thursday in The Rappahannock Review. The title suggested whimsy, but I was fooled. This poem knocked me on my ass before the first comma. He says we like to pretend that the past is far behind us, but we live with our personal histories everyday, in the lines on our skin and the lines we won't cross. Ain't that the truth?

 Anyway, kudos Jason McCall. Your poetry made me feel something.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Like a Python

Five 2 One Magazine has published my poem Like a Python !  Check it Out! I submitted the poem to them in January and received an enthusiastic response about 5 1/2 months later. Not bad timing. I'm honored to be a contributor to a magazine that publishes such interesting, unusual works. Thanks Five 2 One!
Post a Comment
Read more

Literary Provocation

Literary critic Juan Vidal wrote a  piece  for NPR Books entitled Where Have All The Poets Gone? In it he   says, " The Beat Generation is dead, and literary provocation in America, I submit, is at a low." He hungers for a time when poets were at the forefront of marches and rallies, speaking out against injustice.  I don't know what the world used to be like. I don't know if poetry used to have a broader audience than it does now.  Allen Ginsberg died when I was six years old. I've never marched for any cause. But maybe that's because when people in my generation support a cause or are enraged by an injustice, we don't take to the streets. We go to social media. We raise awareness by sharing youtube videos. We try to change minds by blogging.  All the great poets aren't dead and gone. They're online. After Michael Brown's death,  Sarah Kay  shared the poem  not an elegy for Mike Brown  by  Danez Smith  on facebook. Poets a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pilot

I'm enjoying my first small successes as a poet. A poem of mine has been published by The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly  , and it resonated with Bill Cameron ( a writer whom I have never personally met) so much that he wrote a very nice blog post about it. Thanks kind stranger! I've had other small successes as well. I wrote my first spoken word poem and performed it for a group of close friends. They were all speechless. One of them said, "I would listen to that on repeat." This same friend keeps a poem that I wrote for her on all her electronic devices. A friend of hers (a stranger to me) saw the poem about her and said, "I'm stealing this and reciting it to my girlfriend." How crazy is that! Strangers want to recite my poetry to their girlfriends! Needless to say, these little victory moments have renewed my excitement for writing. I have two main goals in writing this particular blog. The first is to pay it forward. It made me so happy to see that Bi...
Post a Comment
Read more