Darrell Epp : part five

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Demo by Charlie Smith. Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith. Seeing the Body by Rachel Eliza Griffiths. The Sonnets by Sandra Simonds. Galaxy Love by Gerald Stern. Isaiah. Collected Poems of Hopkins, always...

Darrell Epp : part four

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t? 

Poetry can slow down time. It’s obvious that we are obsessed with speed. We want what we want, when we want it—we don’t want to hear there’s a delay. No matter how fat we get, we still want our food FAST. We want faster downloads, faster satisfaction. We want our pizza in 30 minutes or it had better be free. But it’s getting hard to ignore that, in our ever-faster race to the finish line, some things are being neglected and lost along the way…Reading a poem can provide a shocking reminder of what we have lost. In cinema, the ratio of narrated time to time of narration is 1:1. This means, it takes as long for you to watch the cowboy say “Let’s go that way” as it takes him to say it. This is part of what makes cinema so popular and thrilling, that immediacy, that headlong rush of time. It is also what makes cinema pretty lousy at delivering moments of transcendence, or spiritual truth, all exceptions, such as the films of Robert Bresson, duly noted. On the other hand, in a poem the ratio between narrated time and time of narration can be wildly skewed, until time dilates, and, if you’re lucky, stops. Simply put, you write a poem about a moment. You reader spends more than a moment reading it, more moments re-reading it, digesting it, pondering it, until this one moment that would otherwise have vanished, grows in stature and becomes powerful enough to haunt. Read or write enough poems, and a powerful message is sent. The message is: all these moments that make up the ligaments of your day, don’t let them flow past you without paying attention, they are worth savouring, giving thanks for, and being baffled by…

Darrell Epp : part three

How do you know when a poem is finished?

W. H. Auden said, "A poem is never finished, it is only abandoned." I agree.

Darrell Epp : part two

How did you first engage with poetry? 

The first poem that knocked me out was 'Alone' by Edgar Allan Poe. I still love it. Killers lines, startling images, a great surprising ending, hypnotic rhythm--it's got it all. And, some lines in the Richmond Lattimore translation of Aeschylus hit me so hard, that I did think, 'Wouldn't it be great to write something that thrilled a reader the way this thrilled me...?" Still working at it!

Darrell Epp : part one

Darrell Epp’s poetry has appeared in over 100 magazines on 6 continents. His poems have been collected in the books Imaginary Maps, After Hours, and Sinners Dance.

What are you working on? 

Putting together my fourth poetry collection, 'Mechanical Monkeys' which will be published by Mosaic Press late next year.