{"id":447,"date":"2018-09-24T13:53:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T20:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=447"},"modified":"2025-02-27T10:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T18:43:13","slug":"rob-carney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/rob-carney\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 82: Rob Carney"},"content":{"rendered":"
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About Rob Carney<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Rob Carney is originally from Washington state. He is the author of five collections, most recently The Book of Sharks (Black Lawrence Press, 2018) and 88 Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2015), which was named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. His work has appeared in Cave Wall, Columbia Journal, Sugar House Review, Terrain: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments, and dozens of others, as well as the Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward (2006). In 2014 he received the Robinson Jeffers\/Tor House Foundation Award for Poetry. He is a Professor of English and Literature at Utah Valley University and lives in Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can find more of his work online at:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.terrain.org\/tag\/rob-carney\/http:\/\/www.escapeintolife.com\/poetry\/rob-carney<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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A Profile of the Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Notes on “When’s My Luck Gonna Change”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s funny you ask about how this poem arose, developed, etc., and if there were any surprises involved, because I\u2019ve written two essays for Terrain: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments<\/em> about just that (well, about other poems that followed the same method I used for \u201cWhen\u2019s My Luck Gonna Change?\u201d)\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.terrain.org\/2017\/old-roads-new-stories\/wine-is-rain-in-translation\/<\/a>
https:\/\/www.terrain.org\/2017\/old-roads-new-stories\/poetry-as-collage\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d say this is Magn\u00fas Siggur\u00f0sson\u2019s doing, or else the Icelandic language\u2019s doing, because I found his poems in Terrain.org<\/em> (also collected in a book called Cold Moons<\/em>) so damn interesting. I don\u2019t mean the English translations, though those are good too; I mean the originals. Since I don\u2019t speak Icelandic, seeing words on the page like \u201caf myrkri,\u201d and \u201cpv\u00ed upp,\u201d and \u201cbila\u00f0ur m\u00f3tor,\u201d and \u201cbl\u00e1sv\u00f6rtum\u201d was pretty strange. But also familiar. I mean, they looked a bit like \u201cenough miracles,\u201d and \u201cdivvy up,\u201d and \u201cbuild a motor,\u201d and \u201cstormblast,\u201d so I used those things the way you\u2019d cross a river by stepping from stone to stone, resulting not in a true translation of Siggur\u00f0sson\u2019s poem \u201cBlek\u201d (trans.: \u201cInk\u201d) but in this surprising literary zydeco or gumbo or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key\u2014at least for me\u2014was letting my Guesswork Brain do the steering while telling my Everything Else Brain to just shut up and quit grabbing at the wheel. Who needs to know where they\u2019re headed all the time? Well, most of us, probably, but not poems. They\u2019re luckier than we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Lately I\u2019ve been listening to Camper Van Beethoven\u2019s Key Lime Pie<\/em>, The La\u2019s: BBC In Session<\/em>, and of course Tom Waits\u2014especially Rain Dogs<\/em> and Frank\u2019s Wild Years<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The La\u2019s were this hugely popular live act in the \u201980s, but they never had an album because the front man hated every sound engineer and kept replacing who was in the band. Then, when their album finally did come out, he didn\u2019t like it and disowned it immediately. Luckily the BBC recorded four live studio performances over the years, and hearing the different band members and the different approaches to the songs is really cool. This is the band that wrote \u201cThere She Goes.\u201d Yes, that song The Boo Radleys covered, the one on the soundtrack to So I Married an Axe Murderer<\/em>. Guess who\u2019s version is better?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eating and drinking? Pizza too often and whiskey not enough . . . one in particular: The Green Spot from Midleton Distillery (that\u2019s spelled right; there\u2019s just one \u201cd\u201d). It\u2019s only distributed in a handful of states, and Utah isn\u2019t one of them, so if you want to send me a present, many thank-yous. Of course, you\u2019ll have to disguise it since wine and liquor can\u2019t be mailed here (lunacy!). Rob Carney, 2309 South 800 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84106.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And animals? Still the same bad-ass cat. He\u2019s 16 now, a Maine Coon; his name is Gruden. And also this acrobat squirrel who eats from the bird feeder by hooking a back claw in the tree trunk for balance\u2014one claw for all that gravity-defiance!\u2014while stretching out Superman-style and going face first into the seeds.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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\"Issue<\/figure>\n\n\n

“When’s My Luck Gonna Change?” by Rob Carney<\/a><\/h2>\n\n

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