Poem of the Week | April 20, 2015
Anders Carlson-Wee: "Listening to a Rail in Mandan"
This week we’re featuring another poem from our new spring Editors’ Prize issue, 38.1. Anders Carlson-Wee is a 2015 NEA Fellow. He is the winner of Ninth Letter‘s 2014 Poetry Award and New Delta Review‘s 2014 Editors’ Choice Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, West Branch, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, Best New Poets 2012 & 2014, and elsewhere. A recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Residency Fellowship, Anders is currently an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University.
Author’s note:
This poem was inspired by a series of train-hopping trips I made across North America. On one ride I got busted by bulls in Alberta and was almost banished from Canada forever. Another time I was with my brother Kai on a 4-day overlander from Minneapolis to Seattle and got caught when a second train searched the train we were hiding on. But most of the time not much happens. You sit around in the bushes waiting, eating peanut-butter-and-jellies, trying to stay awake. You second-guess your plans, you reconvince. It’s easy to get a little paranoid. The noises of the railyard take on shapes in your imagination. This poem inhabits that space. If you like it, you might want to check out the train-hopping poetry film my brother Kai and I are releasing soon, called RIDING THE HIGHLINE. Watch the trailer here.
https://vimeo.com/123807054
Listening to a Rail in Mandan
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