Keith S. Wilson

FIELDNOTES ON ORDINARY LOVE Copper Canyon Press

You bankrupt the sun, underwater statue. Dark galaxy of faults, our bed

a garden of the littlest sighs of our waking. Our room, abstract. —from “Aubade to Collapsed Star”

HOW IT BEGAN: At Callaloo, Gregory Pardlo challenged us to write the hardest poem we could write. So I started writing about love, which became heartbreak. And because of what’s happening on the news, that also became heartbreak for the world. I wanted to write through it.

INSPIRATION: I’ve always been indiscriminate about art: I would read either The Invisible Man by Wells or Invisible Man by Ellison. Comic books or video games or modernist art—nothing is more inspiring to me than someone who loves something so much that they can’t help but sing with it.

WRITER’S BLOCK REMEDY: Time. They say time heals all wounds, which is a lie, but it is true that no wound healed without time. I hope that given enough time, I will come to an epiphany, or someone will happen to teach me just the right something, or I’ll learn to let go. It used to be harder.

ADVICE: Being published is a call someone else makes. It’s hard to know what to do to please others, and it’s maybe contrary to the place your poetry comes from. But someone’s first book changed you. Know that there are people waiting for yours.

AGE: 36. RESIDENCE: Chicago. JOB: Adjunct professor at Spalding University and writing and design contract work in video games. TIME SPENT

WRITING THE BOOK: The earliest publication in the book, “The Lost Quatrain of the Ballad of a Red Field,” was published in Tidal Basin Review in 2010.

TIME SPENT FINDING A HOME FOR IT: I’ve been trying since I was sixteen, but I got real serious about it ten years ago. I was so used to getting generic rejection letters! A week after I had decided to scrap the entire book again, I got a voice mail from Michael Wiegers. As I was calling him back I remember thinking, “They definitely already rejected me, didn’t they?”