Charles Jensen is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including Living Things, which won the 2006 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award;  the founding editor of the online poetry magazine LOCUSPOINT; and the director of The Writer’s Center, based in Bethesda, Maryland. His new book and first full-length collection of poetry is The First Risk, a marvelous work that features four extended sequences, each with its own focus and identity and yet each resonant with the others on a number of levels. The first section, “Safe,” revisits the murder of Matthew Shepard in October 1998 and juxtaposes that crime with an exploration of the myth of Venus and Adonis as depicted in a painting by Luca Cambiaso. The central sections — “City of the Sad Divas” and “The Double Bind: A Critical Text” — respond to the characters, plotlines and persistent themes in two films: Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, respectively. And the final section, “The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon” — previously published as a chapbook in its own right — explores the often chilling, ultimately heart-rending attempts by physicists Edward and Maribel Dixon to reach “The Ghost-World.”

Jensen read from the just-pubished collection in September at the Fall for the Book Festival and graciously agreed to a few questions here about how the book came together.

Art Taylor: Many of the poems in The First Risk respond to or are inspired by other stories, both real-life and fictional: the murder of Matthew Shepard, a Renaissance painting, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Pedro Almodovar’s All About My Mother. Does your work usually grow out of your “readings” of news stories or films or other arts? And to what extent do you anticipate that your own readers’ experiences will depend on knowledge of those sources?

Charles Jensen

Charles Jensen: While this book in particular is very ekphrastic in nature, I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily typical for me. I’ve been very interested in exploring voice in the last few years, trying on different guises. And I like blurring the lines between reality and fiction, which I think this book does extensively (the “real story” is murky with mythology, while the most invented story appears to be the most factual/documented). Since finishing The First Risk, I’ve been working on a sequence of poems in the voices of Dorothy Eady/Omm Sety, who was the most “reasonable” evidence for belief in reincarnation; Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon Church; and Dorothy Gale, the protagonist of The Wizard of Oz. As a whole, the three voices are negotiating the relationship between faith and love, faith and certainty, and faith and reality. For this sequence, because the voices are so enmeshed in those ideas, I’ve included “historical notes” with the poems to give them context, but doing so makes me wonder if somehow the poems haven’t failed. I’m still working that out. I think a lot about what my reader needs to know when encountering the poems, and I’ve been trying to determine, particularly in readings from The First Risk, how to fill them in. I hope that readers can still enjoy the individual pieces or sequences without having ALL the background information, but I think knowing the stories behind the poems gives them added dimension.

Thematic threads connect each of the sections of your book — and connect those outside stories (Hitchcock, Almodovar, etc.) as well: themes of love and obsession, for example, or of the body and changes to the body, or of death and grief. What concerns specifically drove you in composing these works? And why in these directions?

It’s strange, because I’d set out to write a book that examined hate crimes in America, beginning with Matthew Shepard and moving elsewhere. But I couldn’t leave Matthew. Then I thought the whole book would be about him. It had a lot of anger in it, and a good friend of mine, the poet Stephanie Lenox, suggested that the book was too one-dimensional, and that I needed to find some love in it. I really credit that comment with sparking the forward momentum of the other sections.

While the sections explore four means of coping with grief, the grief is always for a loved one. I like that you picked up on the relationship between love and the body, because the book begins with physical violence of the most atrocious kind and ends with a kind of transcendence of the physical body.

I think people who’ve read my earlier work, like Living Things, would conclude that The First Risk is a kind of sequel to those poems. That chapbook explored grief over a loved one’s suicide. And I’d say that is an extension of that work or those concerns because there’s a way that, even years later, some grief remains present and active, and I was curious about that, about how I was experiencing it myself. 

It was important to me that the book close with “Maribel Dixon” because I wanted it to be hopeful, optimistic, forgiving. I wanted the lovers to be united in the end, to have “no need for body,” which I think book implies is the only barrier separating two people.

The Vertigo section, “The Double Bind: A Critical Text,” and the final section, “The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon,” interweave several pieces that look suspiciously prose-like — critical commentary on Vertigo in the first place and fragments of manuscripts, diaries and interviews in the latter section. What prompted you toward this multi-textured approach?

I’m really interested in innovative narrative work, especially work that blurs genres. When I read Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, it totally changed the way I thought about storytelling. I used prose because I think when people look at poetry, they see “art.” But prose, because it wears so many disguises, doesn’t always look like fiction. I wanted to include prose that was “true” (the essay about the film that people would recognize as believable) and then follow it with prose that pretended to be true, and hope that it was believably so. A couple people who read “The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon” asked me how I heard about the story of Maribel, or said they didn’t find anything but my book when they Googled the names. It was then I thought I might have succeeded.

You’ve mentioned elsewhere that you once wanted to be a filmmaker. How have your interest in filmmaking and your study of films influenced your approach to writing — your style or your structuring of your own works?

Well, there’s the surface connection of using films as subjects, for one. But deeper than that, I like to approach poem construction in a cinematic way. Concepts of montage are deeply important to me, and you can see this in the way the work is ordered (and, in Maribel’s case, disordered) in The First Risk. Lyric storytelling is another thing I think cinema does very, very well — films like Memento (told backwards) or 21 Grams (told out of sequence) were very influential on me. And, of course, there’s always the relationship of image to narrative in both cinema and poetry.

Back to “The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon.” That final section of this collection was originally published as a chapbook in its own right. How has placing that chapbook within this larger context changed your sense of those poems?

Maribel was always part of The First Risk, actually, and her story always served, for me, to be the climax of the book’s arcs. I think all of the sections in this book could stand alone as chapbooks, but there’s something about Maribel’s story that is so much more self-contained, that creates a tangible universe with its own laws and conventions, and that creates and abides by its own logic. Plus, I think all of the omissions in the narrative encourage the reader to fill in the gaps themselves because they want to believe.

Okay — the secret? The structure of The First Risk was really inspired by the Todd Haynes film Poison. I wanted there to be rooms, discrete worlds, in which the reader could sit and spend time if they wanted to, but for those rooms to be linked by hallways, for there to be a way in and a way out. Maribel was just always the best way out of the book — because where else do we want to end up but completely enmeshed with the one we love? I think the book grants us that.

Matt and Ted Lee aren’t just a southern sensation; they’re a national one, thanks to regular appearances in Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, GQ, The New York Times, and Martha Stewart Living and on the Food Network too. Their latest book, The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern: Knockout Dishes with Down-Home Flavor, offers possibilities for “the easy, weeknight meal” and promise to be “super approachable for the non-cook,” according to a recent article in the Charleston City Paper down in their own hometown. Today (Thursday, November 5), they’re coming to our neck of the woods with an appearance at 7 p.m. at Durham’s Regulator Bookshop — surely one of the highlights of upcoming events on the book-lover’s calendar (and the foodie’sn calendar too; I’ll admit I’m hungry just thinking about it). The new cookbook was just published earlier this week, and Durham marks the first Southern stop on a tour that runs through mid-December. Needless to say, a great Christmas present (hint, hint).

I’ve already mentioned Roy Williams‘ new memoir, Hard Work, and his tour continues with a stop at the Bull’s Head this afternoon and then elsewhere over the next couple of weeks. Additionally, the Bull’s Head will host author Art Chanskey on Saturday, November 7, with another book on UNC’s basketball program: Light Blue Reign: How a City Slicker, a Quiet Kansan, and a Mountain Man Built College Basketball’s Longest-Lasting Dynasty.

• Annette Dunlap, Frank: The Story of Frances Folsom Cleveland, America’s Youngest First Lady, on Friday, November 6 at the Fayetteville Barnes & Noble
• Mary Akers, Women Up On Blocks: Stories, and Clifford Garstang, In an Uncharted Country, on Friday, November 6, at McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village and again on Saturday, November 7, at Shakespeare and Company Books in Kernersville
• And short story writers Anne Barnhill, What You Long For, and Maureen Sherbondy, The Slow Vanishing, on Sunday, November 8, at McIntyre’s Books.

For a more comprehensive listing of author events and links to individual bookstore’s websites, check out the MetroBooks Calendar here.

The North Carolina Writers’ Network’s annual Fall Conference remains the one must-attend event for writers — especially aspiring writers — throughout the state. And the good news is that there’s still time to register for this year’s conference, which takes place November 20-22 in Wrightsville Beach.

For several years I served on the NCWN’s board and worked twice as the conference chairperson, so I know the kind of work that goes into planning these events. But more importantly, I’ve also been an attendee at the conference, so I can also attest to the myriad benefits and pleasures of the program: the chance to learn from established masters in the field; the opportunity to meet, mingle and network with other writers; a weekend immersed in ideas about craft; and — heck — a beach getaway in the off-season ain’t bad either!

Cassandra King

Friday night’s keynote speaker is bestselling novelist Cassandra King, author of Queen of Broken Hearts, The Same Sweet Girls, and the forthcoming Bridal Falls. Other headliners include Marianne Gingher (interviewed here) leading a Saturday lunch reading by contributors to Long Story Short —  Anthony Abbott, Wendy Brenner, Philip Gerard, and Peter Makuck — and then Gerard again with a musical performance on Saturday evening. Click here for a full list of conference faculty and presenters.

The registration deadline is November 12, so don’t miss out!

Can’t wait for basketball season to begin? Well, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill has good news in store for you: Hard Work: A Life On and Off the Court, a just-released memoir by Tar Heels coach Roy Williams, co-written by former Sports Illustrated writer Tim Crothers. The book features a foreword by John Grisham and a nice front-cover blurb by Michael Jordan. Bring out the big guns, why don’t you?

At this point, I’ve only been able to sample sections of the book, but I gotta tell you, I’m already drawn in. While the memoir stretches back to Williams’ difficult childhood — an abusive, alcoholic father, a mother struggling to make ends meet — the book itself is framed by the 2009 basketball season. The opening pages find Williams walking down the middle of the road at 4 a.m., worrying about star player Tyler Hansbrough’s injuries and about the demands of the season ahead — how the prospects and expectations were raising the stakes for the entire team. Even knowing about the NCAA tournament win that ultimately ended the season doesn’t lessen the conflict of that nighttime walk or the sense of suspense about the longer path ahead. By the end of the book, when he reflects back on that season as the sweetest because of all the adversity, you really get a sense of what this book is about. The title doesn’t draw solely from that team cheer at the end of each huddle.

As anyone who’s followed his career knows, Williams has made some controversial and much-publicized  decisions in his lifetime, not the least of which were his decisions to stay in Kansas and then to leave Kansas. In the book, he reflects on these decisions and offers some behind-the-scenes reasons for them, much of it related to his family and his past: his mother, his father, his sister, each depicted in gripping, poignant scenes and with often surprising candor.

In advance of the season ahead, Williams will be touring several North Carolina bookstores to discuss the book — surely a must for Tar Heels fans everywhere. Catch him on Tuesday, November 3, at McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village; on Thursday, November 5, at the Bull’s Head Bookshop in Chapel Hill; on Tuesday, November 10, at Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books; and on Friday, November 13, at Durham’s Regulator Bookshop.

Mysteries take the mainstage at Triangle-area bookstores this weekend, with two appearances by The Deadly Divas, “nice woman who write about murder.” Marcia Talley, newly elected president of Sisters in Crime, leads the group’s outing with her new book, Without a Grave, and she’s joined by Elizabeth Lynn Casey, author of Sew Deadly; Denise Swanson, author of Murder of a Royal Pain; Heather Webber, author of Weeding Out Murder (and of the Lucy Valentine romance series); and Sara Rosett, author of Magnolias, Moonlight and Murder. The group has just begun their swing through North Carolina, and here’s where you can catch them over the next few days:

Friday, October 23

• 10:30 a.m., Coffee with the Divas, The Cary Library, Cary
• 2 p.m., Tea at the Eva Perry Library, Apex
• 7 p.m., The Regulator Bookshop, Durham

Saturday, October 24

• 11 a.m., McIntyre’s at Fearrington Village, Pittsboro
• 2 p.m., West Regional Library, Cary

Sunday, October 25

• 3 p.m., Friendly Center Barnes & Noble, Greensboro

Additionally, don’t miss another bright new name on the mystery scene, Derek Nikitas, with his second novel The Long Division. A graduate of UNC-Wilmington’s MFA program, he’ll be appearing at Wilmington’s Pomegranate Books on Monday, October 26, at 7 p.m.