I suppose it's some kind of creative lack, but I have always found it difficult to write about my own poems. However, when rob kindly invited me to do so I agreed, if only out of gratitude and for the sake of good practice. Surely I have something else to say about these poems, besides the poems themselves? I mean, other poets seem easily able to do this. Well, here I go, to give it a try.
I wrote most of these poems while living on Blakely Island, a private island among the San Juans, in the far northwest of the US. It's a beautiful spot, and I woke to a magnificent view of the water each morning. The heron often occupied the redwood tree just outside that big window, and would announce his flight with a tremendous squawk. So I would call back to him, "Squamadoo! Squamadoo!" and this in my mind became his name.
New Year's Eve & Some Noises
Noodles and butter for supper.
A cough and a bark from
the bank down below.
Loud boom disturbs the heron
who flies over squawking,
I reply "Squamadoo, squamadoo."
No, I don't know what that means,
but that's okay, neither does the heron.
~~~
In a similar vein, every word in these poems is true. I write from a place where the dark of the world is fully present along with humor and an extremely stubborn hope. What often develops are pieces that begin as amusing or tongue-in-cheek as a way to deliver what in my experience is a fundamental reality of life force.
That humor doesn't sustain throughout the work, though, and in a natural rhythm within it, poems will arrive that are more serious in tone, such as One Frog, or ploy, or Missing the Trick:
Missing the Trick
let me defend you
said the mirror
in the sea,
then vanished.
all of them
singing so kindly,
the gunslingers,
slinging their
guns in harmony.
we know you can't
live
in a world so
sweet without
training so watch
how I do this
she sang
and then
vanished.
~~~
That poem came directly from the view of the water, its mysterious face, its conveyance of that combination of clarity and mystery, that opacity of meaning.
I never know when I undertake to write a poem which of these two directions it will take: wry humor or a kind of tender seriousness. I like not knowing that in advance. Sometimes that direction will change mid-stream, during revision.
For the most part the poem is in charge. I experience the poem as a kind of sensation upon which a few words ride; my job is to flesh out those words so that the sensation is still alive on the page and can be felt by others.
“You Can’t Make This Up” says all that, more succinctly:
You Can't Make This Up
I'm not going to make this up.
The words are too heavy for that,
sitting there like rocks on
the windowsill.
They let no light through, only between
They may serve as reminders
but only of themselves and of
opacity.
Opa City
a town in
the sourceland of
Awakening.
Kyla Houbolt has been writing poems all her life, and began publishing in 2019. Her first chapbook, Dawn's Fool, was published by Ice Floe press and is sold out; her second, Tuned, was published by CCCP Chapbooks + Subpress. Surviving Death, from Broken Spine, is her third. But Then I Thought is her fourth. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Sublunary Review, Barren, Janus, Juke Joint, Moist, Neologism, Ghost City Review, and Saginaw. Most of her online work can be found on her Linktree: @luaz_poet | Linktree Her current social media presence is on BlueSky Social (still in beta as of this writing), here: @luaz.bsky.social, facebook.com/kyla.houbolt/ and on Instagram @kyla_luaz. https://kylahoubolt.us/