Feller by Denton Loving
Mercer University Press, 2025
Michael Garrigan: Denton, it is so good to speak with you about your incredible collection Feller. I fell in love with this book before opening it; the cover is absolutely stunning. It’s such an interesting and captivating choice.
This collection starts with a prologue, a set of poems from a bluebird’s perspective that explores their relationship with a fox. The bluebird knows the fox, its “fatal fox magic,” and “death-kiss-is-beautiful kind of allure.” What fantastic lines! I’m curious, where or how did this relationship reveal itself to you, and why did you choose to start this collection with a prologue of distinct, unique voices?
Denton Loving: Eastern bluebirds have always been important to me. There are a lot where I live in East Tennessee, especially near my house. I’m not sure when it started, but over time they have grown to feel like some kind of protective spirits or maybe as totems. I’m blessed with a lot of wildlife on the farm where I live, and so, there are definitely foxes too. Foxes have such interesting mythology. Various cultures see them as crafty and not to be trusted. But there are also those legends about how foxes charm people into falling in love with them. And there are biological behaviors that suggest they charm or play with their prey. Somehow, all of those ideas mixed together to create this series of poems.
Fast forward several years later when it came time for me to find an order for the poems in Feller. I can’t tell you how many times I almost pulled those bluebird/fox poems from the manuscript. One reason was that they felt so different from most of the other poems. They were more like a fable than most of my other work. The other reason was that I just couldn’t figure out where they belonged. But I knew that they were important to the overall theme. I tried placing them at the beginning of the manuscript, and suddenly I could see them working as a prologue. A prologue is supposed to frame the rest of the book for the reader. It’s supposed to set the stage. So starting there began to feel more and more right.
MG: Birds seem to inhabit many of the poems in this collection: chimney birds, an eagle attacking a drone, bluebirds. How do you choose which animals to carry your poems?
DL: I don’t think I can say that I ever have much agency in those decisions. Most of my poems are the result of observing the world around me. And the subjects I chose to write about are based on the observations that linger for whatever reason. Sometimes, an observation or interaction with the natural world becomes the perfect metaphor for something else in my life that I’m trying to express. And sometimes, those interactions just lead to questions. What is that bird that I hear singing? What is that bird that I don’t remember seeing before? Why is that bird in that particular space performing that exact action? The more questions I have and the more I’m called to research and investigate, the more my brain refuses to let it go. And I’m like most other writers in that I write about whatever it is that I feel obsessed about at the moment.
MG:I love how you thread certain objects throughout these poems, especially men’s shoes. In “Love is Slippery,” a stranger’s “Volunteer-orange tennis shoes” pull us to the beautiful last line. In “I Can’t Quit Looking at Other Men’s Shoes,” you list various types of shoes you notice as you anticipate one day being called out for it, “My eyes are up here, dude.” Was this intentional, something you purposely worked towards as you built this collection? Did the object shape the poems, or did the book demand the object?
DL: If I had to pick, I would say that the objects shaped the poems and the book. But it’s difficult for me to know. What I would say is that my previous collection, Tamp, was about my dad and my grief after his passing. It was necessarily heavy in its way. So after Tamp, I was actively looking for ways to be more lighthearted in my poems. I always admire the way Ross Gay writes about joy. But I’m also keenly aware that poetry is the language for grief. I think Nathaniel Popkin was the first person to say that, and it definitely rings true to me. The poems you reference are some of the poems where I was trying to at least move towards joy.
MG: I absolutely love “Rituals for Calling Fish.” It’s a poem I keep coming back to. Can you tell me about how this poem came to be? As an angler, I love the advice it gives, almost like it’s what my grandfather would have told me had I remembered how he taught me to fish.
DL: Well, fishing is another area where there’s a lot of mythology worth exploring. I seem to recall that particular poem coming out of a prompt. I was supposed to write a poem that included instructions. At the same time, my friend Rosemary Royston had taught a great workshop about the ghazal form, which is where the last line of every couplet ends with the same or similar word or phrase. I love to think about structure, both in my poetry and prose, and I wrote a bunch of ghazals around that time, thanks to Rosemary. I don’t write a lot of formal poetry, but it can be so useful, especially in keeping me from getting into a rut. It’s also fun to push back against the form, so I altered the ending phrase in the final couplet.
MG: In “Letter to Jeremy Wade” you write that you wish he’d tell you about “magical beasts” and ask him if he wonders about his soul as he dives “into mysterious rivers.” These magical beasts seem to show up throughout this book, and I wonder if you could speak about their presence and how they function throughout these poems.
DL: You’re zeroing in on another of my obsessions. I’ve always been fascinated by mythology. When I was really young, I always carried around a copy of D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, and I would read those stories over and over. I think part of my interest in this area is that I’ve always felt that most mythology comes out of some kind of deeper truth, or that our myths were created to impart some kind of deeper truth. Yes, there’s a lot that’s fantastical or even implausible. So are a lot of the river monsters that Jeremy Wade was always searching for. And that’s interesting to me too—that we humans are still creating myths all the time.
Going back to my previous collection, Tamp, I was especially interested in the kind of very personal mythology that is created within a family. Specifically, I wanted to try to capture some of the mythology about my dad and our family stories. And I suppose I was also trying to add to that mythology as a way to keep him alive. The poems in Feller explore longing and desire—in terms of personal relationships as well as our relationships to place. Those poems repeatedly question whether we can trust our own feelings and desires. They seek to make some sort of meaning from the past. I think the magical beasts within the poems are an extension of all those questions that are central to the collection.
MG: In closing, is there a poem, or an excerpt of a poem, from Feller that you’d like to share?
DL: Absolutely! One of my personal favorite poems from Feller is also the shortest poem in the collection. I don’t write many very short poems, but I wrote this as a challenge. Looking back at it now, I see how it speaks to the major themes of the book, even in only a few lines.
When the One You Want Won’t Love You Back
Plant fields of California poppies and cosmic orange cosmos.
Remember the heart deceives.
Think how the goldfinch, nuthatch and chickadee feast
on blue thistle, eating around prickly leaves.
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Denton Loving lives on a farm near the historic Cumberland Gap. He is the author of three poetry collections: Feller, Crimes Against Birds, and Tamp, which received the inaugural Tennessee Book Award for Poetry. He is a co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf. His fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including The Kenyon Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Ecotone.
Michael Garrigan writes and teaches along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. He is the author of three poetry collections: Ghost Hunting Glaciers (winner of the Grayson Books Poetry Prize), River, Amen (winner of the Weatherford Award for Poetry), and Robbing the Pillars. His writing has appeared in Orion, Talking River Review, and North American Review, among others. Michael was the Artist in Residence for The Bob Marshall Wilderness Area.