Rick Barot Reads Vievee Francis' "Given to Rust"

Welcome back, lovelies! Last week, Rick Barot blew our minds with his thoughts on how poetry connects to everything from Spanish paintings to runway models. This week, Rick reads us the poem "Given to Rust" by Vievee Francis, and we delight in how this poem invites us to think about lineation, survival, authorial intent v creation, and Emily Dickinson. 

RICK BAROT was born in the Philippines, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and attended Wesleyan University and The Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. He has published three books of poetry with Sarabande Books: The Darker Fall (2002); Want (2008); and Chord (2015), which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and received the 2016 UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. Barot is the poetry editor of New England Review. He lives in Tacoma, Washington and teaches at Pacific Lutheran University. He is also the director of The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at PLU. His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, will be published by Milkweed Editions in Spring 2020.

VIEVEE FRANCIS is the author of Forest Primeval (TriQuarterly Books, 2015), winner of the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award; Horse in the Dark (Northwestern University Press, 2012), winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize; and Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press, 2006). The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and the Kresge Foundation, Francis currently serves as an editor for Callaloo and teaches English and creative writing at Dartmouth College.

REFERENCES: "Give to Rust" by Vievee Francis (Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day), enjambment, "Crumbling is not an instance act, or 1010" by Emily Dickinson