Anti-Ars Poetica
There is no poetry No simile flies from the aerial carpet bombings Mines laid like buried exclamation points Mini-interview with Jonathan Memmert HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)? JM: Reading. Reading as much as I can whenever I can. HFR: What are you reading? JM: frank:sonnets by Diane Seuss The Tradition by Jericho Brown In the Presence of Absence by Mahmoud Darwish Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Anti–Ars Poetica”? JM: I read the Mosab Abu Toha poetry collectionThings You May Find Hidden in My Earin 2022when it first was published by City Lights Books. In Fall 2023 I was in an MFA writing class at The City College of New York and our class prompt was to write an ars poetica poem. Coincidentally at the time of my poem writing I was reading in The New York Times about the capture of the Palestinian Gazan poet, Mosab Abu Toha during the Israel – Hamas war and his subsequent experiences during the time of his captivity. I decided to write a combination anti-war and ars poetica poem which I dedicated to Mosab Abu Toha. HFR: What’s next? What are you working on? JM: I continue to write poetry and I am working on a poetry collection to submit for publication. I am also on the editorial staff of the online poetry journal for emerging poets, The Marbled Sigh. HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share? JM: We are almost 25 years into the 1st quarter century of the 21st century and continue to live in archaic ways. Why can’t we get good new thinking, good new initiatives off the ground? Why are we screwing it up? When are we going to wake up? We have to break down power barriers, end war, address climate change head on, and embrace equality for all, if we hope to have any chance to make it to the end of the 21st century. Jonathan Memmert is a poet who resides in Manhattan and has an MFA from The City College of New York. He has read his poetry at WordshedNYC literary events in New York City, and at the annual New York Poetry Festival in New York City. He still seeks and finds many encounters with wonder in the midst of adversity. Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
in a shrapnel wound that refuses to heal …
No enjambment in a lifelong
amputation /
No metaphor inside the guns aimed
& trigger cocked
No alliteration as tank tracks cross borderlines
No allegory hidden in a drone’s surveillance
echo ceasefires,
like a comma before the ultimate question mark
elegies lead to the periods noted,
sentences cut short
in each side’s burial grounds.
Heavy Feather Review 