Bruce Lowry, a native Southerner, is also a journalist. He received an MFA in Poetry from Drew University. His fiction and poetry have appeared widely, most recently in Valley Voices, JuxtaProse and december. He resides in Union County, New Jersey.
Bruce’s poem “Salvage” appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Carve. Order your copy here.
This piece so beautifully weaves in the relationship between father and son. Are relationships a central theme in most of your work or is this a departure?
Yes, relationships have been important, especially that one concerning my father, which is rife with complication, and friction, but also at times laughter and love. He was an alcoholic and a printer, and he died fairly young. He was also a storyteller in his own right and a bit of a searcher, as I am. I think this poem is representative of my writing more and more, where I want to shift away from the strict narrative. I could indeed tell a hundred stories about my father, but I think this sort of approaches catching his essence, and reading again, the essence of our relationship.
I have also written poems that touch on my mother, the problem there being the constant fight against a tendency toward worship and the sentimental. I just finished a new poem, or maybe nearly finished, that speaks to the days I remember, as a boy of 8 or 9 or 11, going with her to the cemetery, to change out the flowers and to brush away the rubbish from the grave of my sister who died when I was very young. She sort of haunts every word that I write. I've wanted to include her in poems, but it has been difficult to find the right pace and tone.
Then, of course, there have been relationships with those whom I've shared intimate experiences, whether emotional and/or physical. These can be the most tricky of all, and I have tended to wade into that territory with more and more caution.
The language in this poem is so brief and so sparse, while at the same time the imagery in it feels so vivid and clear. How do you winnow down a poem to just the necessary elements?
Yes, “Salvage” is one of those poems that kept getting more and more spartan over time. I think the original title was something like "My Father and I work the salvage yard, 1967,” or some such, and at one point in an early version, I just decided to chop it down to 'Salvage," and it sort of came together more easily.
Jean Valentine, one of my great north stars of poetry, once wrote something, and I'm paraphrasing, about revision, where she said she kept working to clear out everything she didn't need. Growing up in Louisiana, I took this to mean "clearing out dead wood," which I think is what happened here.
I don't recall all the precise revision here, but it was never like a really long poem to begin with; it always sort of screamed at me to be shorter and more lyrical. I wanted, I think looking back, for it to be especially a reaction against other poems about my father, him, including one called "Bayou," that's in my chapbook, that are more emotionally fraught.
I think poetry to me, or the poems I love to read, can tell a story but don't have to—I think the silences / absences, I think maybe Frank Bidart said something like this, can speak as loudly as the words on the page.
What do you hope the reader experiences with your work?
That's kind of a hard one. I don't really think about my work in that way, though perhaps I should, until maybe toward the very end of the process, when it is finished. I do remember, though, a professor I once had, maybe quoting Frost or somebody, saying that if there were "no tears for the writer, there are no tears for the reader."
I take that to mean there has to be something at stake in a poem, tragic or not so tragic love or death, or poverty or violence, or relationships, as you mentioned before. I think if there is a connection, it would be derived from all that. I think that's why people, ultimately, come back to poetry.
"Those Winter Sundays," Hayden's famous poem about a father and son, I think captures that connection, at least for me it does, though we share nothing in common in regard to age, geography or culture. I heard a poet read that once at the New School in NYC and by the end tears were running down my face. I had heard it read, many times before, had read it myself, and even taught it to my freshman comp students.
Yet I think that maybe there was something, about where I was that particular day, what was going on in my life, maybe, and how she read the poem, her tone, and pacing, and Hayden's blend of harshness and tenderness that just tore me up.
If even one of my readers or those who listen when I read could feel something close to that, I would see that as rewarding
Who are some writers you find yourself regularly turning to for inspiration?
Well, in addition to Jean Valentine, whom I had the chance to study with at Drew University, I would have to say James Wright, Bishop, and Dean Young. And of course Merwin. Lately, I have also been reading Adam Zagajewski. All these, I believe, have a knack for getting to the heart of things, writing truthful, if often elusive poems where stakes are high, and the language holds sway.
I also still fall in love, from time to time, with the blood in the vein lines of Gerald Stern, one of our under-appreciated American 20th Century poets who continues, into his 90s, to do great work.
Looking back, that list sounds dated. I also appreciate and applaud poets like Ross Gay and Araclis Girmay, who continue to push the form, and I also keep turning back younger poets I've discovered by happenstance, including Erika Meitner, Cynthia Cruz, and Gretchen Marquette—all for for many of the same reasons.
Moreover, though, I just pick up inspiration wherever it comes, often while reading a novel, or even a story in a newspaper, or hearing a snippet of conversation. I think you just have to be open to the call of the "muse" or "voice," or whatever you want to call it, when it comes, and "strike," as Berryman said, while the iron is hot.