Tag Archives: evidence that we are descended from chairs

Andrew Merton’s Poetry Collections

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Poet Andrew Merton answers questions about his Accents Publishing collections. 

 

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing books.

Early in 2011 Katerina published four of my poems in Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems. Emboldened, I sent her the manuscript of what would become my first book, Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs.  We corresponded for several months, she saying she liked the manuscript but was not sure she was in a position to publish it.  Then, on May 12, my 67th birthday, she called and said it was a go.  That remains the best birthday present I have ever received.  Accents has since published my second and third books of poems: Lost and Found (2016) and Final Exam (2019).

 

Do you still like them? Why or why not?

Yes, I like them all.  The first one retains a special place in my heart because 1) My colleague and mentor Charles Simic generously wrote the foreword and 2) although previously I had published poems in journals, I did not fully identify as a poet until Chairs was out there in the world.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for your published books?

The New Hampshire Writers’ Project named it their outstanding book of poetry for the years 2012-2013.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

Lots of really bad poems.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

 

Why I Left The Poetry Reading Early

 

I wanted to applaud

after the very first poem,

in which the famous poet

 

revealed the secrets of the universe

and the human soul

with no more effort than a shrug.

 

The second poem put the first to shame.

I was forced to restrain myself

by gripping the edges of my chair

 

and sitting on my thumbs.

Soon it took all my resolve

to keep from shouting “Bravo”

 

after nearly every line.

Five more minutes of this

and nothing would have stopped me

 

from rising, unbidden,

and burbling superlatives.

So I left.

 

As I tiptoed down the hall

I thought I heard the famous poet say:

“Now we can really begin.”

 

How did you arrive at the title?

Many years ago—just as I was getting serious about writing poetry—Mark Strand, then at the peak of his fame as a poet, gave reading at UNH, where I taught, that blew me away.  The idea for the poem occurred to me as I listened to him read.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

A Brief Natural History of an American Girl by Sarah Freligh.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

If Accents continues to evolve as it has over its first decade I’ll be very happy.

 

What are you working on now?

More poems. (Okay, my most recent book has a kind of elegiac title, Final Exam, but who knows, maybe I’ve got another one left in me.  Possible title: Post Doc.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

This one appeared in the American Journal of Nursing, September, 2019.

 

Transcendence

 

It comes every month or so

while I am shaving

 

or peeling a potato

or watching a woodpecker

 

hammer away at an old dead pine:

shimmering blues, greens, yellows,

 

a rainbow effect

suffusing whatever is before me

 

with an otherworldly aura.

Doctors say these episodes

 

are manifestations of migraine.

The bird and I know better.

“A Young Mother” by Andrew Merton

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click for more info

(1950)

To escape the tangle
she becomes her sewing needle

plunging through the fabric
of her sea blue blouse.

Again and again
she dives and surfaces,

a skipping stone,
a cormorant,

a marlin
at play in the frozen mists

of the North Atlantic.
Such is her joy

that for minutes, months,
whole seasons at a time,

she is able to forget
the line through her tale.

–Andrew Merton,
Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs
Accents Publishing

Andrew MertonAndrew Merton has been a political reporter and columnist for the Gloucester (Massachusetts) Times, The Boston Herald Traveler and the Boston Globe, and a contributing editor with Boston Magazine. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Yankee Magazine and The Boston Phoenix. His book Enemies of Choice was published by Beacon Press in 1980, and his anthology In Your Own Voice: A Writer’s Reader was published by Harper Collins in 1995. His poetry has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Powhatan Review, Paper Street, The Comstock Review, Silk Road, Third Wednesday, The American Journal of Nursing and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.

“Intuition” by Andrew Merton

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(featuring the late Burt Lancaster in a supporting role)

The six of them squeeze into a booth in a seedy diner just outside
.      Newark:

click for more infoa balding child dressed as a monk

a woman with eels for fingers

an ambulance driver munching a ladder

an alligator wrapped in a boa

the late Burt Lancaster

and a swarthy, mustachioed man
with ammunition belts crisscrossing his chest,
who gazes fearfully at his companions
before revealing himself
as the great-grandson of Pancho Villa
and muttering through clenched teeth:
One of you spent time as a violist.
I can just feel it.

–Andrew Merton,
Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs
Accents Publishing

Andrew MertonAndrew Merton has been a political reporter and columnist for the Gloucester (Massachusetts) Times, The Boston Herald Traveler and the Boston Globe, and a contributing editor with Boston Magazine. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Yankee Magazine and The Boston Phoenix. His book Enemies of Choice was published by Beacon Press in 1980, and his anthology In Your Own Voice: A Writer’s Reader was published by Harper Collins in 1995. His poetry has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Powhatan Review, Paper Street, The Comstock Review, Silk Road, Third Wednesday, The American Journal of Nursing and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.

“May 12, 1944” by Andrew Merton

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Evidence that We Are Descended from ChairsI arrived a week early
with eleven toes

but the Allies broke through in Italy,
women got the vote in Bermuda,

and a man in Louisville, Kentucky,
was granted a patent

for waterproof cigarette paper
treated with aluminum,

so none of the newspapers
took note of my birth.

As for my family,
my brother was at school,

my father at war.
My mother was in a scopolamine trance.

There was no one to greet me
but the black cocker spaniel

who later taught me to crawl.

–Andrew Merton,
Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs
Accents Publishing

More from Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs and Andrew Merton:

Andrew MertonAndrew Merton has been a political reporter and columnist for the Gloucester (Massachusetts) Times, The Boston Herald Traveler and the Boston Globe, and a contributing editor with Boston Magazine. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Yankee Magazine and The Boston Phoenix. His book Enemies of Choice was published by Beacon Press in 1980, and his anthology In Your Own Voice: A Writer’s Reader was published by Harper Collins in 1995. His poetry has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Powhatan Review, Paper Street, The Comstock Review, Silk Road, Third Wednesday, The American Journal of Nursing and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.

“Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs” by Andrew Merton

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Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs1.

A chair looks like a person sitting in a chair.

2.

A mother and child are two generations.
A mother and child in a rocking chair
are three.

3.

Astaire rarely danced with a table.

4.

Pity the candidate who debates his opponent’s empty chair.

5.

Even now,
power rests
in the one we call the chair.

–Andrew Merton,
Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs (2012)
Accents Publishing

More from Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs and Andrew Merton:

Andrew MertonAndrew Merton has been a political reporter and columnist for the Gloucester (Massachusetts) Times, The Boston Herald Traveler and the Boston Globe, and a contributing editor with Boston Magazine. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Yankee Magazine and The Boston Phoenix. His book Enemies of Choice was published by Beacon Press in 1980, and his anthology In Your Own Voice: A Writer’s Reader was published by Harper Collins in 1995. His poetry has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Powhatan Review, Paper Street, The Comstock Review, Silk Road, Third Wednesday, The American Journal of Nursing and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.