Rick Barot - Want

Author Asks

1. The opening poem in any book of poems often signals the themes which will be explored in the subsequent poems. What are the themes that you can identify in “Echo,” and how do those themes play out in the balance of the book?

2. As I wrote the poems for the book, I thought of Echo—from the story of Echo and Narcissus—as my muse. Why would her plight be an appropriate archetype for the stories being told in the poems in Want?

3. In “Two Video Installations,” two different videos are described. Describe what each video is about, and what each seems to represent. And how do the two videos seem to be related? What theme unifies them?

4. Some of the poems in the collection, like “Magnolia” and “Many Are Called,” have a breathless, catch-as-catch-can quality. What is the effect of this breathlessness on the reader? And how effective is it in relation to the content of each poem?

5. How would you describe the role of place in the poems? Identify poems in which location seems to have a distinct contribution as background setting or as foregrounded focus of meditation. Is there anything that unifies these various places?

6. Describe the role of stanzas in the poems of Want. For the most part, the poems have a polished, orderly look, which is something I was quite conscious of as I wrote the poems. What effect does this orderliness seem to have?

7. What are the predominant images that seem to repeat through the book? I was recently told that water imagery seems to come up a lot, which is something I hadn’t noticed myself. Any other images that seem to obsessively appear?

8. The repetitions in “Echo” are one obvious use of musical patterning in a particular poem. Identify other poems which have a clear musical component and describe that music. What effect does that musical aspect have on the poem?

9. The final poem in the book, “Iowa,” has a dead, frozen seagull as its central image. What role does death have in the book? And can you identify other poems in which death seems to figure prominently?

10. The longest poem in the book is “Like a Fire That Consumes All Before It.” What are the various narrative strands which comprise the poem? And what seems to be the poem’s unifying theme?