Interview with poet Donovan Hufnagle

Today’s special guest is poet Donovan Hufnagle to chat about his new collection, These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them).

During his virtual book tour, Donovan will be giving away a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn participant. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
Donovan Hufnagle is a husband, a father of three, and a professor of English and Humanities. He moved from Southern California to Prescott, Arizona to Fort Worth, Texas. He has five poetry collections: These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them), Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Documenting Of, The Sunshine Special, Shoebox, and 30 Days of 19. Other recent writings have appeared in Tempered Runes Press, Solum Literary Press, Poetry Box, Beyond Words, Wingless Dreamer, Subprimal Poetry Art, Americana Popular Culture Magazine, Shufpoetry, Kitty Litter Press, Carbon Culture, Amarillo Bay, Borderlands, Tattoo Highway, The New York Quarterly, Rougarou, and others.

Welcome, Donovan. Please tell us about your new release.
Echoing Chuck Palahniuk’s statement. “Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known,” this collection explores identity. These poems drift down rivers of old, using histories private and public and visit people that I love and loathe. Through heroes and villains, music and cartoons, literature and comics, science and wonder, and shadow and light, each poem canals the various channels of self and invention. As in the poem, “Credentials,” “I am a collage of memories and unicorn stickers…[by] those that have witnessed and been witnessed.”

Please tell us something about your newest release that is NOT in the blurb.
My current book These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them) probably contain some of my most revealing and personal poems. Some truths I didn’t think I would ever write. I also traverse the personal to a more public arena. I have a selection of villanelles sprinkled throughout the book that use the WPA narratives from the 1930s. Some poems venture into the political and, perhaps, controversial. The last poem, for instance, “Blind Spots” documents some of the major, maybe forgotten, moments in our history dealing with woman’s rights. I believe that all these poems help define me as a person and will resonate with those that read my book. Whether I am using He-Man or She-Ra to explore sexual identity or family relationships to explore connections, these poems move from an intimate identity to a public identity.

Excerpt from These Are Not My Words:
[Big Tony] or Those Girls

Those girls up at Reliable’s were funny as hell.
Ask them, darn near any one of them, where’d they work.
They didn’t want anybody to know; they didn’t tell.

“Oh, I’m the switchboard operator,” they’d say. “I dwell
 in the office.” Ashamed, see. Fibbed like clockwork.
Those girls up at Reliable’s were funny as hell.

Say, they’d even ring their boyfriends the sound of that bell.
All those dumb dames putting on an act, shoveling that murk.
They didn’t want anybody to know; they didn’t tell.

When the girls come out, Big Tony wisecracked about the swell
switchboard operators. They put their foot in it, so they just smirked.
Those girls up at Reliable’s were funny as hell.

He hung around with his gang; they were in on it as well.      
When the girls come out, they talked real loud like fireworks.
They didn’t want anybody to know; they didn’t tell.

Tony laid it on thick! How he laid it on well!
He pretending he didn’t know the girls was lurking.     
Those girls up at Reliable’s were funny as hell.
Why they didn’t want anybody to know, they wouldn’t tell.

How long have you been writing?
I have been writing for over, holly cow, 34 years. I remember being 16, a junior in high school, and my English teacher asked us to write a poem. I wish I could remember her name, but I remember that she was a student teacher for that semester. Anyway, for some reason she read my poem out loud in front of the class. The poem was a typical teenage tragic, dark poem that if I still had would be embarrassed by. But this was the moment I started to enjoy writing. Though it wasn’t until college that I found my heart totally invested into poetry and writing, my junior English high school class marked the very moment I started to love language and poetry.

I have five collections of poetry: The Sunshine Special, Shoebox, 30 Days of 19, Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Documenting Of, and my current book These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them). I’m proud of them all. And though I have published many individual poems with different journals and magazines, the full collections remind me most of my path.

What advice would you give a new writer just starting out?
From a broad viewpoint, I would say, recognize that failure and imperfections are part of the path toward success. And to be honest, some of what you might consider to be limitations or deficiencies might just be your greatest strengths. From a more practical view, read. Seriously, I know it sounds cliché, but read and read everything. Don’t just read fiction or poetry. Read histories. Read about social, life and physical sciences. Read about the humanities.

Do you have any tattoos?  Where? When did you get it/them? Where are they on your body?
I’m passionate about tattoos. There is no other art like tattoo art. What other art form requires the negotiation between canvas and artist where the canvas has the power to influence the art? Tattoos express both a personal narrative as well as a public narrative. At the very least, tattoos document the moment of interaction and collaboration between canvas and artist. But I digress.

I have two sleeves: my left arm harbors different ocean life such as an octopus, a puffer fish, a devil fish, and so on. Also, each one represents a blues musician. For example, the angler fish is holding a 12-string guitar and a pitchfork, which represents the musician Leadbelly. My right arm is a comic bookish mural of my family as superheroes. Also, a memorial for my best friend Ehren (Lunk) who passed away several years ago from cancer. Each superhero is a custom design to feature their unique identities.

My right leg has a combination of classic monsters and superheroes. I have Count Orlok from the film Nosferatu and Frankenstein’s Monster. The classic wolfman is next in line. I also have a vampire batman and the Incredible Hulk holding fire as if he were Prometheus. Half of my lower left leg is covered by Little Red Riding Hood wearing the Wolf as a headdress. I also have various tattoos on my back such as a protective gargoyle.

I started my tattoo journey at the ripe age of eighteen in Laguna Beach, California. It was after hours, and the shop was above a club. The zzzzz from the tattoo gun was in rhythm with the bumping beat from the club below. At least, that’s how I like to remember it. By the way, my last book Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Documenting Of is a collection of poems all about tattoos and the stories they tell.

Is your life anything like it was two years ago?
I think two years in the span of 50 doesn’t truly convey the change one undergoes, but I like the mindset that this question solicits. It is forcing me have a “poetic mindset,” meaning, I must think about specifics, details on a micro, more concrete level rather than viewing my life on a grander scheme. From the outside, my life, career, family, and such for the last two years are pretty much the same. I have three kids, two in college and one starting high school. My wife has been a high school assistant principle for the last two years. I’m currently on sabbatical. So, from that perspective things have changed a bit but, again, mostly the same. From the inside, though, my relationship with my family has changed quite a bit. For instance, my youngest is now 14, and she is blossoming into a creative thinker, and her insights and our exchanges have deepened greatly. My bond with my son has evolved from just father and son to something with more complexity. And my oldest is becoming a more assured adult. Overall, the bonds in my family have become profounder.

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