These Are Not My Words: I Just Wrote Them : Poetry by Donovan Hufnagle ➱ Book Tour with Guest Post & Giveaway

 

THESE ARE NOT MY WORDS (I JUST WROTE THEM)

Donovan Hufnagle

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GENRE:  Poetry

 

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BLURB:

 

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.”

 

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EXCERPT

 [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.

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Guest Post:

Ispiration for Book

These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them) has various meanings, personal and universal. The title came from the documentary miniseries The Staircase. The series was about Michael Peterson and his wife’s murder. In the scene when the defense is questioning the sister of the murder victim about the statement she previously gave to police, the defense lawyer reiterates her statement and asks, “Those were your words?” and her response was, “They weren’t my words, it is what I wrote.” I could not stop laughing and for several reasons. Prior to this, I would lightheartedly criticize how my wife would repeat what I just said but switch the language around to fit her needs. Anyway, after the staircase episode, I labeled this action “These are not my words, I just wrote them.” And I like to think my poetry does a similar thing—take a reality and translate it into both authenticity and art.

Additionally, I appreciate the art of documentary poetry, which may include found histories such as the poems in my book that use the Works Progress Administration (WPA) narratives from the 1930s. In this regard, I am literally using words and language from another place. Those are not my words. The poem comes to be from three distinct voices and minds: the original WPA writer who recorded the narrative, the person being recorded, and me. By taking the two original voices and manipulating into my own subjective archive and art, I am retelling and reminding readers of our history as well as creating something new, a new creative and poetic way to think about identity. An archive that has become a new archive and, simultaneously, art, which triggers new and unique emotional responses.

Moreover, unlike the poem “Jabberwocky” I don’t invent new words in this book. I use the tools that already exist. I manipulate and rethink language to produce perspectives that are interesting—new and familiar.

For this book, I try to use private and public experiences, memories, and observations to illustrate identity. In hopes that these personal moments as well as the public ones resonate with all readers. My hope is to have readers reflect on how specific people, moments and the like have made them who they are…how important and significant that their family and friends have been on them—negative and/or positive…how the little things may have had huge impressions in shaping their personality. For instance, many poems use toys, superheroes, and villains. Before this book, I didn’t realize the overall impact that these cartoons and toys had on my thinking, on my mindset. As the book’s blurb states, using a quote from Chuck Palahniuk, “Nothing if me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

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.

 

Website: http://www.donovanhufnagle.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donovanhufnagle

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dhufnaglepoetry

 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/These-Are-Not-My-Words/dp/B0DBMN46M4/ref=sr_1_1

 

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GIVEAWAY  

 One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $25 Amazon/BN.com gift card.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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