Tommye Blount : part one

A Cave Canem alum, Tommye Blount is the author of Fantasia for the Man in Blue (Four Way Books, 2020) and What Are We Not For (Bull City Press, 2016). A graduate from Warren Wilson College, he has been the recipient of a fellowship from Kresge Arts in Detroit and the John Atherton scholarship from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His work has been featured in Magma, New England Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Ecotone, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Detroit, Tommye now lives in Novi, Michigan.

How do you know when a poem is finished?

“Finished” is a word I try not to use when it comes to revising drafts. I’m hardly the first poet to say this—I remember Cornelius Eady at a Cave Canem retreat speaking of poems as attempts—but poems are abandoned and never finished. At least that is the visceral sensation I am after when I am in the act of drafting, because I am suspicious of my body’s circuitry and its lust for neat closure. A mentor once told me, “Have you ever noticed how your poems sort of snap close at the end? It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is something to pay attention to.” Uneasiness is the final sensation I look for when drafting. A better word is discomfort. Discomfort as nervy as the top of a head coming off—that old nutshell from Dickinson. This is how I know that I have arrived at a place I was never expecting to find. A momentary respite? Yes, because there is always the next poem in which I can attempt, but splendidly fail at, getting to some sense of comfort—read finality. A continuum that, I hope, will never meet its end until I die.