This is Melissa Ford Lockin, Rosalie Petrouske, Susan Serafin-Jess, editors for the Washington Square Review. Washington Square On-Air showcases the poetry and fiction of the latest edition of LCC's literary journal, The Washington Square Review, read by the poets, authors, and editors themselves. Expect the unexpected as our contributors express experience and fantasy with humor, imagination, poetic license, irony, and passion. If you love language at its most original, please join us in our audio Town Square to celebrate a community of writers spanning from around the world to Lansing.

Hello. This is Susan Serafin-Jess, poetry editor of Washington Square Review. Today I am joined by one of our contributors. His name is Beau Brockett. Beau has spent his life in small Michigan towns before moving to Lansing two summers ago. He works for a nonprofit by day and occasionally writes by night. We chose, happily, three of his poems for our latest volume, 2022 Summer Edition. And he's here today to read those poems. So I'd like to introduce you to Beau Brockett. Welcome. Beautiful.

Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

It's a pleasure. Let me ask you a little bit about that brief bio. You spent your life in small Michigan towns before moving to Lansing. Tell me which small Michigan towns you lived in, please.

Yeah, so I spent most of my life kind of like on the cusp between metro Detroit and the thumb of Michigan, kind of in this in betweener zone in a city called Richmond, Michigan. It's where my mom grew up. It's where her grandpa grew up. So very generational. It's about a city of 6,000 people. And then during college I went to Albion College in Albion, Michigan and moved on to a larger city of 8,000 people. And then I moved on to Niles right afterward to be a reporter. And Niles is a city in southwest Michigan, about 10 to 12,000 people there. So it's been a series of small towns up until my move to Lansing. It definitely feels like a big city journey for me right now.

So with each successive town, you moved up a couple of thousand people in population and now you're in Lansing. I forget the population of Lansing, but I know it's several hundred thousand. I believe I might have that wrong.

I believe in the metro area, a couple hundred thousand people. I think of the city proper, it's about 112, 115 if I remember right.

So was it culture shock for you?

In some ways, yes. It was shocking in positive ways. Cities like Niles, Albion, Richmond, they all have larger cities, larger metro areas close by, but. But to be in the center of one was really nice. I was able to enjoy so much more food, different types of food than I had before, different stores, different people than I ever had before. And that was really fun. But also just a bit of culture shock with the job that I had as a reporter. And then beforehand, just being in very, very small towns, you kind of get to know everyone quickly. And in Lansing, it takes a little bit longer to find, kind of find your crew, find the people that you enjoy being around with. And you're always meeting new people, too. So culture shocks in both good and maybe not bad ways, but ways that just take a little while to adapt to.

I see. Yes. So it also says in your brief bio that you work for a nonprofit. Could you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah. So for the past three years, I've worked for the Michigan Environmental Council. We're a nonprofit that really focuses on environmental advocacy at the Capitol, so to speak. So we work on educating and advocating with lawmakers, with different departments at the state, with the governor's office, to make sure that the people of Michigan and the places that they love are properly protected. And so my role is kind of conveying all the things that my organization is doing to the public and making sure that the public and their voice is heard in the decisions that we were advocating for.

You also say that you occasionally write by night. And I'm wondering, how occasionally do you manage to write even though you have a day job?

Yeah, it comes in waves. It's a bit of a struggle, I think, especially being a communications worker where I spend all day staring at a screen, usually writing to then kind of transition at night and have the energy and motivation to then, you know, like, write creatively. I think the writing process for me from like a poetry standpoint definitely comes in waves. I'll kind of hit my streak and maybe write for three or four nights in a row. And whereas, you know, at other times, I'm kind of taking like a week or two break from it because I just need time to watch my TV shows, to do my chores, you know, at night.

So this all sounds very familiar to me. I teach comp one, so I spend most of my days reading essays. And I have usually about 90 students every semester, and they write three 1,000 word essays. So anyway, you can do the math. I spend a lot of time reading other people's writing, and sometimes I'm too tired to tend to my own. But I'm like you. I prefer to immerse myself in it. You could call it waves. I call it immersion. I know some People swear by writing every day. But I just. I don't know. I have to be able to see some many, many hours, if not days, where I'm free to write. Well, the three poems that appear in Washington Square Review are Perishables. And the second one is called Imagining Lying Next to Someone. And the third is Minecraft Bohemia. And I wonder if you would start by reading the first poem, Perishables.

Yeah, happy to. Perishables. Mom and dad wiped down bananas with Clorox. Remember that? And I swear they'd carry the bunches in like a biologist holds a wounded bird. Grocery stores were sites of terror, and so many of us were armed like surgeons. Bananas were scrubbed, banana pudding quarantined in the trunk for three days, anesthetized produce awoke to masked people carting them. And remember one year later when a maskless woman blew on the library desk, plexiglass, drew a heart in her spit and kissed it. So many of us were dead. We had entered the new new normal then, the same as it ever was, but vehemently patriotic, broke open and hot like a melting rocket. Pop. Remember when that stranger said he wanted all Muslims dead to Grandpa. And how just prior it's so hard to remember. Order. The grocery store was shot up in Boulder, I keep thinking, before the remaining frontline workers days later carted the food out of that mausoleum, were the bananas background checked for the virus bullets? There is a way a banana's musk haunts. Not quite a memory, no, a memory, just unformed. A future memory, a portent of death. In Boulder, people weaved flowers onto grocery store gates. I want to destroy bananas. I want to bash bananas against the countertop corner until their skins break, to mash them into oblivion, to freeze them scentless. I want to make banana bread out of all this. Then I want to slouch like a tea bag inside a cup, look up at its precipice and wait to be steeped, watered down, a deconcentrate.

I sent you an email and said that I think of this poem as an artifact. It's an artifact of a time in history. And I know that when the pandemic first started, one of the first things I did was I started reading about the 1918 influenza and ended up reading a very short novel called Pale Horse, Pale Rider. And I think that it's important for people to write poems about a big catastrophic historic moment like this. And you have, although you also weave in a couple of other. Mass shooting is referred to in this poem. And Also, I believe, nine, 11 or at least a response of Islamophobia. So please tell me about the genesis of this poem.

Yeah. You know, I never thought I would be the sort of poet to write in response to, like, big events or big, like, societal shifts. Not because I don't enjoy those poems. I really do. I just didn't feel like I was the right person or had that inspiration to respond. But during the pandemic, I lived at home with my family. We were very, very cautious, so we were very much cooped up, just very aware of the virus that was happening. And then just layered on top of these. All these precautions that we were taking were also just these things that our neighbors were saying that people in our community were saying that were just so violent and just so absurd in how aggressive they were. And of course, you know, there was mass shootings that were happening in tandem, and just a lot of hatred going around. And so all of these different societal impacts were just kind of fomenting in my mind, I guess. And I just felt the need to. To just put it all down on paper. And so I did. And when I look back at this poem now, it feels a bit, like, jumbled in some ways, because I feel like I'm referring to so much at once. But I feel like now that I have that retrospect after writing the poem, it feels like that was just my mind at the time. There was just so much happening all at once from this grand national scale that trying to piece it together was tough.

It's disorienting, and it was terrifying at first because we really didn't know what. That's why we were spraying our groceries with. I remember doing the same thing with bleach on all of my groceries. And then it didn't take too long before they said, you really don't need to do that. But we didn't know. My sister lives in New York City, and it was, of course, far worse there than it was here. And she had. In April of that year, she had a student who lost 10 family members. So we were all just doing whatever we could to keep ourselves safe. And now looking back, yes, it does seem absurd. So I like the blend of the tragic and the absurd here, and I think the absurdity comes in with the bananas. And I noted that bananas, that's a slang for crazy. And I wondered if that played a part in your choosing bananas as opposed to some other produce or food stuff.

Yes. Yeah, I think it did. I think bananas, in all honesty, was just the initial image I had, like, looking back, like, A year into the pandemic of, like, the foods that we washed down. For some reason, the image of the banana was in my head. And then I wanted to kind of write a response to that or use that as the starting point for my poem. And. Yeah. And then, like, the connotation for the word bananas is like a word for crazy or nuts came into play. So I thought, well, this is a perfect thing to kind of cling onto in the poem.

Sure. And then the title also has a double meaning, Perishables. Because we became perishables at that time, too. The word perish. We were confronted with our mortality. One of the things I did with the first stimulus check that we received was I bought a headstone and made those arrangements. Because before that I never really thought about my mortality very much. Well, all right. I'm glad you did decide to write a topical poem. But your next two poems are more. Well, I think they're both love poems. And they're less topical, they're more universal. So the shift in tone is very interesting to me. I admire the range.

Thank you.

So could you please read Imagination? Imagining lying next to someone.

Sure. Imagining lying next to someone. Silence would fall like night snow. The end of the bed's plateau. A comfortable lining between sheets and strange gray shadows. And along the open window a congregation of snow. An ephemeral stacking that brings in the world to this room, this moment. The bed creaking while you sleeping turn toward me.

I think that's a lovely poem. And something I admire about it is the effect of silence. You know, poets, we try to find the right words to achieve a certain effect. And it might be a musical effect, it might be an aural A U R A L effect. And here you have achieved the effect of silence, which begins with the word silence would fall like light snow. And then it seems to me that silence falls upon the poem until we get down to almost the end. This is 14 lines. The 12th line. Then the bed creaks. And because the lover is turning towards you sleeping. However, I noticed that the first word in the poem is imagining. And so I wondered if this was a poem more of yearning or desire rather than a photograph of a moment.

I think that's spot on right there. Yes. I think when I initially wrote this poem, I might have had a person in mind. But this is, of course, an imagination. Something that came up. It wasn't a real event that happened. I think that came from a sense of kind of yearning to be in love, like being in love with the idea of being in love but not having someone to attach that to. And part of that was just the reality of where I was at at the moment. But I think it also. This poem, I think, also speaks to, I think, just some struggles that I've had, and I'm sure other folks have had too, where, you know, it's a little bit scary sometimes to go into a relationship or to start dating someone, and sometimes it's better just to have an ideal image of what that could be in your head. Making that jump or making that commitment can be a little scary. So this poem was kind of meant to be, like, I guess a response to that to say, here's this wonderful world that I can create for myself and live in it, both as something maybe that's a positive thing to do, but also maybe a negative thing to do, too.

I agree that relationships are terrifying. I don't think anybody would argue with that. Well, there might be some lucky people. Since I, too, am a poet. I noticed how you repeated the sound O, Shadow, snow, plateau, window. And Edgar Allan Poe said that there were two vowel sounds that poets should repeat in their poetry. One was oo and one was o. So whether you knew it or not, you were following Mr. Poe's advice.

There we go. I did notice as I read this out loud that it definitely slowed me down when I was reading, and I think that allowed the musical effect to kind of build out a little bit.

Yes. All right, so I think the next poem is a love poem as well, although it's a little more complicated than imagining lying next to someone. This one is called Minecraft Bohemia, and when I saw the title, at first I thought, am I going to feel like I'm in an arcade when I read this? But it turns out not to be about the game Minecraft. Or, I don't know, maybe. Why don't you read it and then we'll talk about the title when you're done.

That sounds great. Minecraft Bohemia. I chop wood, I shear wool, I grow wheat, and I make bread. I've built small homes around this world I'm mapping step by cautious step. My homes are simple, tucked among oak, sand, and mesa. Each has enough room for two beds. Each has a small crop, a flower patch, a bookshelf. It's strange. I woke up unable to place anything near me as familiar. But I learned so much. I would touch a bone or a web and know what to make of it. I tried to show the villagers this in the town I spent my first night in. They sighed and stared and moved around. They already had crops, swords, families, inner peace. I can't understand them. I'm alone and I don't know if there are others. Water, food, shelter, hard work, pretty flowers. It's a good life. But there are many moments when despair and yearning spill like ink from a squid, where I want to share this world, to share this life with someone else. But I don't know the right recipe. There's nothing to touch and understand. But I have this book I write to you in on each home's shelf. Please, if you want companionship, light the jack o' lantern at the front door. I'll answer.

Thank you. Tell me about the title, please.

Yeah, so this poem came about from my time in Niles, Michigan, far southwest corner, again, population of about 10,000 people. And came there right after college and just struggled to kind of find my place in the community, to find friends, people to hang out with. And so it took me to moving back into my family's house in Richmond once the pandemic set in to realize that one reason why I was feeling a little burned out, feeling a little sad, I think, in Niles was because I just was feeling a little bit lonely. And so this poem kind of came in response. And then the theme of Minecraft came about because my brother and I would play Minecraft during the pandemic. And in the video game, if you play it in a certain mode, you start off with absolutely nothing. You're like in the middle of a vast wilderness and you have to find your way around, find a way to survive by building tools, by building shelter. So it's a very lonely experience to start out in. And you come across other creatures, you come across other people, but they don't speak your language, they don't interact too much with you. So unless you're playing with other people, it's kind of a lonely game if you really start to think about it.

Aha. Well, this is where my video game illiteracy may have caused me to misinterpret the poem. But, you know, once your poem is out in the world, people will interpret it because I'm reading, I chop wood, I shear wool, I grow wheat, and I make bread. And I'm thinking Thoreau at Walden Pond. I'm thinking of somebody who is self sufficient, kind of living off the grid, perhaps has all these survival skills. But now I'm hearing you tell me that that's part of playing Minecraft is you're also doing those things in Minecraft.

Yeah. And really, now that you've Mentioned it. Maybe there are some throw influences in the Minecraft game itself, so.

Golly, who knew?

Yeah.

So this poem also to me seems to pivot at a certain point where seems self sufficiency. The speaker is very busy and has many abilities and yet wakes up unable to place anything near him as familiar. And then he tries to communicate with the villagers, but they don't communicate at all. They just sigh and stare and they already have everything anyway, so they don't need you, but they do have something you don't have, which is inner peace. It almost seems dreamlike to me. Like, you know, sometimes in a dream you can't talk or other people can't talk, but you still have this strong emotional feeling of being shunned or rejected. So tell me a little bit about the villagers, what they represent to you.

Yeah, yeah. I think the villagers and like the village that they're in represents. Putting it into the context of my life at that moment. Just like the city of Niles itself. Right. There was definitely no animosity toward me whatsoever. As a reporter, I had a great experience talking with everyone. But in a city like Niles, in a small town, your community is kind of already set up and built. And when you come in as a young guy into that city, which is, you know, like very family oriented, there's not a lot of people my age in that area. It's tough to like, to fit in and understand how like all the dynamics of making friends and finding people to be with works out. Yeah. And the villagers, I really tried to make, to the best of my ability, a replica of how they are in the game. They're not really speaking in full words. They have these full villages with lots of crops and big buildings already set up, which was kind of meant to reflect the community already being built up that I went into.

I should have done my Minecraft homework. No, no, I'm learning, I'm learning. It's good to learn about video games, but because my students play video games.

Oh, there you go. Yeah.

In fact, we have a reading in our anthology called Taliban, which is written by Benjamin Bush, who is somebody who. I didn't realize he's an actor. He had been in the Wire, which impressed me, but he's also a warrior and he fought in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and now he has volunteered and is fighting in Ukraine. Anyway, the essay is about a game called Medal of Honor, which really angered him because the game came out when the war, Afghanistan was ongoing and you could play the Taliban for a while. Then the company changed it. And also he felt it was disrespectful that people could just win medals of honor when over the whole war in Afghanistan, only eight people were awarded a Medal of Honor, seven of them posthumously. Anyway, so it's always good for me to learn more about video games. Also, to me, this again seemed to bring in some of that yearning that I saw in the previous poem. But it's interesting because although the poem is a bit of an invitation to love or friendship, I mean, after all, these houses do have two beds. Just like a good old 1950s sitcom. There are two beds, but at the end you say, please, if you want companionship, light the Jack o' Lantern at the front door. I'll answer. So you're wanting an invitation?

Yeah, I think so. And yes, And I think in the context of the game, again, I was thinking about, well, if I'm a person that appears with not much knowledge in the middle of nowhere, there's got to be someone else in a similar boat to me. And so they must want that too. So it's a bit of a. You're right. It's a bit of a weird situation where I want the invitation, but I also want to invite people at the same time.

Yes. Well, it's always nice if they make the first move. Then you're sure that you're wanted.

Yes.

Yes. Well, thank you for reading these poems.

Yeah. And thank you for the perspectives on. Especially on the Minecraft Bohemia poem.

I'm sure it's all wrong, but anyway. Well, in the interest of full disclosure, I even wrote down Frankenstein. Christ. Because of the villagers and the person being misunderstood. So you can see my mind likes to free associate.

Well, I am glad you saw a lot of value. And really everything we talked about was what I was hoping to convey in the poem too. You just came at it in a different way. So it's very nice for me to hear, knowing that folks who don't play Minecraft can still make some sense out of it.

It's fascinating, isn't it, what people will read into your poems? All right, well, I guess we can wrap this conversation up. And thank you so much, so much for sharing your poems. Do you have any future plans for your poetry?

You know, it's at a stage right now where I'm trying to figure that out. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with some more poems. I have a pretty decent repertoire of poems that I feel like are ready to go out into the world. It's just a matter of what I want to do with them. I think the one thing I do want to do is I don't want to try to publish willy nilly across like all the different sorts of journals out there. I kind of want to do what I did with Washington Square Review. Like I submitted at a time when I was really loving my time in Lansing. I still do. I chose this publication to submit to because it meant a lot to me to see that there was a local publication out there. So I think in whatever form my writing takes me, I want to keep up that sort of like spirit or ethos.

That's good. Well, you know, a book is usually about 45 poems. So if you've got 45, you might think about putting a book together too.

That's true. Not quite there yet, but getting close. Yeah, getting close.

All right. Well, Bo Brockett, thank you so much for speaking with us today.

Yeah, thank you again for having me. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for listening to our talented poets and authors. Until next time, this has been Washington Square On-Air, where we showcase selections from Lansing Community College's literary journal, The Washington Square Review, a publication featuring writers from the Great Lakes State, across the nation and around the world. To find out more about The Washington Square Review, visit lcc.edu/wsr. We hope you enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed sharing.