![]() ![]() Though, to wiggle out from under that self-criticism, I do think Mood Swing was more it was a book that came out of realizing links between my mental, emotional, and spiritual unease and the larger culture. Sometimes I condemn my own writing by that paradigm because everything artists spend their time doing is cast in a much more urgent light these days. How does that make you feel about your own work? And in America, everything is permitted and nothing is important.” to teach, “In the Soviet Union, nothing was permitted and everything was important. Someone, I can’t remember who, once told me that the poet Joseph Brodsky observed upon coming to the U.S. But, I think, in some iterations, that kind of inward-gazing is getting tired. Not to demean my chapbook or the very serious reality of mental illness - artists are meant to articulate personal and collective malaise. Yeah, I think many American poets, especially poets with white privilege like me, are able to find an audience for poems that ostensibly probe their mental health. Do you think poetry today is still about mental health? In many ways I thought Mood Swing was thought-provoking about the multiple identities the self can occupy-both in its physical and mental form-and how they are constantly in strife with each other. ![]() Monica, when we first met your chapbook Mood Swing had just been published, and I was immediately a fanboy.ĭamn, that was a long time ago. She is unyielding with her convictions, and fearless when discussing mental health, family, and fashion.ĭescribed as “the poster girl for a new generation of poets,” by NPR’s Craig Teicher, I recently sat down with Monica to discuss her upcoming chapbook from GRAMMA, writing poetry in a post-Trump world, and which iconic literary figure she would selfie with. #Monica mcclure word writer full#When I envision Monica in my head, I see a bespectacled nomad navigating an apocalyptic tundra full of static televisions, outlet malls and Starbucks-her writing has the uncanny ability of awakening hopeless consumers from their iPhones and pumpkin spice lattes. In the years that have followed, Monica has become a dear friend and her book Tender Data, published in 2015, has lines that still haunt me till this day: “I want to be so skinny people ask if I’m dying.” Her chapbook Mood Swing had just published and I drunkenly raced home to read it. We were introduced by a mutual friend, and we spent the evening sipping red wine, discussing poetry, and contemplating the value of an MFA. I first met Monica McClure back in 2013 in Greenwich Village when I was an MFA candidate at The New School. ![]()
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