Ron Koertge: California Poets Part 2, Three Poems

Ron Koertge

February 23rd, 2021

California Poets: Part II

Ron Koertge

Three Poems

“People Leave L.A. at a Record Pace

as Others Arrive with Hopes and Dreams”

In the parking lot of a truck stop

near Victorville,

a story about someone going

on a journey meets

a story about a stranger

coming to town.

“What’s it like down there?”

a blonde asks pointing west.

“The air’s like arsenic,” says

the handsome stranger.

Love is Strange

A hundred of my closest friends and I are working

on Earth Day. Shopping carts, Big Gulp cups,

tons of plastic, more than one mattress.

I’ve got graffiti duty. Gloves, safety glasses,

TSP in a five-gallon bucket.

All over the walls of the L.A. River :

MICKEY LOVES SYLVIA.

“Love is Strange” plays in my head,

the great Mickey & Sylvia hit from the 50s.

Come here, lover boy.

They’re gone now, but this new kid has stepped

up to tell the world

about spray can love, clean sheets love, blast

furnace love under a swollen moon.

Mickey out here at night. Scrawling a valentine

Sylvia can’t help but see on her way to school.

No matter how hard I scrub, the letters show

a little. They’ll be here after Sylvia graduates,

after Mickey goes in the Army or doesn’t.

After they forget each other and a couple

in a red canoe enjoy the refurbished river,

him with a paddle, her thinking of last night,

one hand trailing in the cool water.

from The Secret Diaries of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Christmas eve 1817. I wonder about my father.

How big a fool have I been? I rarely feel well

and Percy is relentless. There are bats every night.

I am twenty years old and not unattractive.

An infant, the prospect of which frightened us both,

is buried in England. Percy sports about

with Claire Clairmont. Her name sticks in my throat.

Thomas Jefferson Hogg is attentive and relieves

my depression a little. His name disgusts me. I forgive

Percy. I do not want to be with me, either.

Byron limps about spouting poetry. The rain

is unrelenting. Everybody smells. Ghost stories

at night and in the morning Lake Geneva smooth

as a child’s forehead. Tonight Percy wants a sonnet

competition. Claire claps her hands like a ninny

in a book about ninnies. Horace Smith will compete

with Shelley. A gnat meets an eagle. A damp match

and a bolt of lightning. I am ordered to bring

paper and quills and plenty of wine. I am wary

of telling Percy my dream. He’s a poacher and a thief.

I fetch and carry. I bend low enough for the Hogg

to see more of my breasts. There in the fire

is a scene from my novel: terrified peasants

brandishing torches, a castle in flames.

Interview II

January 22nd, 2026

California Poets Interview Series:

Ron Koertge, Poet, Writer

interviewed by David Garyan

DG: It’s been almost five years since your work appeared in California Poets. Would you like to share some new poems here?

RK:  Sure. Here’s a sort-of elegy. 

Everything All the Time

for Stephen

Once I put your parents in a cab, somebody cleared

off the glass table where we used to do coke and  laid out

a dozen small, zip-lock bags.

I took one because I remembered when you and I and  two

strippers who lived in your building took the ferry across 

the harbor to see the Statue of Liberty.

You were just out of rehab. Sober and full of B vitamins. A clean 

polo shirt  showed your favorite tattoo: Todo todo el tiempo. 

Cleo and Krystle, you and I four-abreast like sailors in a movie.

Halfway there, you pointed at the Statue, said she was 305 feet tall

and weighed 225 tons. “Made by a Frenchman named Bartholdi.”

Cleo made a face. “Frenchmen,” she said. “They’re the worst.”

We ate hot dogs and threw popcorn to the gulls. We bought post

cards and planned more outings together. Krystle dozed beside

me. You ate one ice cream sandwich after another.

When we docked at Whitehall Street, you were on the phone to your

sponsor. Krystle had a date  at four o’clock. Cleo put her arms around

you and said, “Stop being stupid.” 

Now I’m on the ferry again. Ashes in my backpack. Tourists flock

to the bow, I drift to the stern. The ocean opens its mouth. I don’t

know what to say, so I don’t say anything .  

****

Late in 2025, I was writing a lot of list poems. Most didn’t work out but this one did.

When someone asked me what it was really about I said, “Uh, read the title, maybe?”

                                10  Things I’ve Been Thinking About

Aphrodite is my neighbor’s dog. Persephone her cat. Orpheus

the canary. And her husband, Bob.

Character is shy but not mousy. Small chest OK. Apply in person. 

Bring head shots. No nudity to speak of. Non-union.

Eve says she didn’t do it. God shows her footage from the security

camera. “That’s not you?” He says, “With the apple in your hand?”

Kissing my father who’s too weak to resist. Not soul kisses

or anything like that. Just kisses on his forehead and nose sometimes.  

 Mothra: one of the most bad ass kaiju monsters. At a theatre

in Little Tokyo every time Godzilla shows up girls scream, “Kill him!”

Olivia dresses like a boy when she goes to the bank so she can flirt

with Sue the attractive teller.

Phantom body. I wouldn’t mind having one of those if I could have

a phantom doctor on call.

Rhonda the atheist keeps a spritz bottle in her bedroom. It’s for Jesus

whom Rhonda considers a nuisance.

Veronica. Patron saint of laundry workers and photographers.

Also Betty’s friend in the Archie comics. Dark and sultry. 

Supermarket for books. Frozen books. Books in a can. Hot ‘N Ready

books at the deli counter.    

****                                                              

I’m a restless writer with a six-word motto: Shut up. Sit down. Write something. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I can wish I were writing better. But I never just wish like a kid who wants a pony. I write something. I can pray for guidance but I don’t just pray; I write something. Anything. Every day. The following prose poem turned out okay after lots of revising and tinkering and maybe a little cuddle.

                                                            Without Sin

Stoning was  popular in the Bible, and it’s coming back. These are not like Biblical days with plenty of stones lying around for blasphemers and betrothed virgins who show their white feet to  strangers.  That’s why a local entrepreneur opened Just A Stone’s Throw Away and is doing steady business. He has a wide selections of stones—some jagged, others smooth as eggs. Dads bring sons in for their first stones. Divorced moms  shop together then have coffee after, their new stones warming in the sun beside steaming lattes and a squeezable honey bear.

****

And finally one that started out funny, stalled, then responded to some CPR.

Urgent Care

You’ve seen me on TV in my lab coat and stethoscope. 

I have a smile that says, “You can trust me.” 

If I go straight from the studio to Starbuck’s,

people can’t wait to tell me where it hurts.

The line in front of me is longer than the one

                     for holiday lattes. I’m glad to see the last patient

and head home.

Today among the bills there’s a fresh copy

of Romeo & Juliet, a gift from the monkeys

who type Shakespeare’s plays

and suffer from carpel tunnel which I treat successfully

just by holding their small, dark, neglected hands. 

DG: How much has your writing routine changed in these past five years?

RK: I’m a blue collar guy who just goes to work every morning; I’ve always been that way. If I’m writing prose, it’s four pages a day. If poems, a few hours in the morning before a movie or the races. For prose, I take what I can get, and it’s rarely good but usually workable. First drafts of poems are laughably poor. I’m the Torquemada of poetry. Throw ‘em out a window. Burn ’em up! 

DG: Humor has always played a large role in your work. The most fascinating part about it is the range—from political, absurd, satiric, self-deprecating, dark, to parodying “The Raven,” you’ve explored basically every style. Which do you find most interesting?

RK: They’re all interesting, but my job is not to choose satire over political or dark over light but to sit down and be patient. Poems usually wander by and are curious. Some just want to sniff around then move on. Some bite me on the ankle then run away. Usually a few hang around because there’s a place they can lie down by the fireplace.

DG: A fantasy novel, Styx & Stones, co-written with Gary D. Schmidt, is set to be released in the spring. Given how important humor has been for you, how much can readers expect to find it here and how does it complement your partner’s writing?

RK: Styx & Stones is a fantasy novel for Middle Grade readers. Simon escapes from Hades, turns up in a middle school bathroom naked, and is befriended by Zeke. In the early chapters, their dialogue is hilarious. Gary has a strong sense of plot and character arc. I tend to write fast and outrun the inner critic. I wrote for TV a couple of decades ago. Hill Street Blues. The showrunner was David Milch. I met him at Santa Anita race track, wrote a single episode toward the end of the very popular series plus some script doctoring. I’d tell anybody who wants to write the leanest kind of every-word-counts dialogue to read scripts and plays.  

DG: In Styx & Stones  you’ve also worked with Gary D. Schmidt on another book, A Day at the Beach. Could you describe, in general, how the actual collaborative endeavor works? Do you exchange ideas in person? And most importantly, how did you decide to work together in the first place? 

RK: I taught with Gary in a low-rez MFA program for people who wanted to write for kids. That gig ended for me; Gary stayed on for a while. We were close friends despite being very different. Gary is conservative and I’m not. One day Gary wrote me and asked if I wanted to collaborate with him; he had an idea for a Middle Grade book: twenty-five kids, a short sketch for each one, all in one day at an East Coast beach. He’d take half of the characters; I’d take half and then we’d see what we had. A few months later when we shuffled the sketches around what we had was A Day at the Beach, a novel that is fast-moving, sometimes touching and sometimes funny and sometimes both.

DG: Any collaboration involves creative disagreements. To what extent do they happen and how do you resolve them?

RK: We almost never flat out argued. Let’s say he wrote a scene that I revised and sent back. When it came to me again and was almost like the original, that meant he disagreed. At that point, I’d leave it alone. We didn’t do much defending our work or explaining why we did what we did. Here’s an example. I had a Middle School girl talking to a friend about the prudishness in some KidLit. She said, “It’s a tampon, not a missile aimed at the White House.” I thought that was a funny line but Gary took it out. When I put it back, he took it out again and it stayed out. There really are gatekeepers in KidLit and a discouraging word from them can put the kibosh on sales. Clearly those folks do not have homes on the range  where discouraging words are never heard.

DG: There’s an epistolary novel in the works. Is it already complete and what details can you share about it?

RK: For a school project, twenty kids—ten from California and ten from Maine—become old-fashioned pen pals. They have to write to each other  by hand. They can’t use computers or typewriters. And then they mail their letter! Snail mail. I had one of the kids write some snarky lines about oxen and covered wagons. Gary and I are pretty good at having a lot of narrators. As we wrote, the middle grade kids came to life as they got to know each other and Gary and I got to know them. In A Day at the Beach we were mostly in charge of our creations; in Between You and Me it was a lot more collaborative. If Gary had Tomas say something to Rachel about Tip, I might see how that would add to what I was about to write in the next letter to Colin. At the moment, our agent is deciding which publishers he wants to send the manuscript to. 

DG: Participating in readings is a good way to bring greater attention to your work and you’ve done plenty of that. Do you also read excerpts from your novels or do you find that only poetry works well in that respect? 

RK: Apples and Oranges. Both tasty, but different. People who come to readings for a new book of mine want to hear poems from that book. They might bring friends, while parents show up with their kids for a new Middle Grade book. I read to both audiences, but almost never mix-and-match. 

DG: For over 25 years you taught at Pasadena City College, and in other contexts as well. What do you miss about teaching?

RK: I taught the Poetry Writing workshop for more than two decades, and what I miss about that kind of teaching is hanging out with folks who want to write poetry. One of the prerequisites for that class was memorizing at least twenty-five lines of poetry and reciting them during Final Week. Really shy students could ask to do this one-on-one, but most students weren’t shy, so the last meetings of the workshop were more like Spoken Word

.   

I also taught remedial writing—a basic, nuts-and-bolts class that met three times a week. I could actually see students get better fast. Use details, put the commas where they belong, write a short essay that stuck to the subject and made sense. Use some of the same words that I use to write poetry and appreciate the heft and savor of them.

I’m not sentimental about teaching. Some days or even weeks were a long walk through waist-deep snow. But there was always a house in the distance with smoke coming out of a chimney and many—though not all of us—made it there.

DG: You read widely and are familiar with what’s going on in contemporary poetry. Is there a book you’ve picked up recently that you really enjoyed?

RK: I read poems every day, so I don’t buy all the books from poets I am partial to. I like to get acquainted with people different than I, so here are the names of poets I’ve visited recently: Franny Choi, Natalie Shapero, Patricia Lockwood, Barbara Hamby. I miss Tony Hoagland and Charles Simic.

DG: Apart from the epistolary novel, is there another writing project you’d like to complete this year?

RK: Gary and I are tinkering with an idea for a book of short stories, all set in or around a museum. I’m collecting poems for a 2028 book from Red Hen. I’m not gloomy about getting older,  but life is finite. I don’t waste a lot of time. This interview has been fun, but it’s time for me Shut up, Sit Down, and Write something else.

Interview

September 26th, 2021

California Poets Interview Series:

Ron Koertge, Poet, Writer

interviewed by David Garyan

DG: In your work, you emphasize humor, directness, and the beauty of everyday experience—all things that make us human, and, yet, these are qualities which, paradoxically, so many academics who write poetry deem to be inferior to the grandeur of drama, elusiveness, and that dreaded mess called “complexity.” How do you respond to these challenges?

RK: What you’re referring to are only challenges if you look at them that way. I rarely if ever feel provoked to respond in any way except to write the poems that step up and say, “Me now, please.” Sometimes those poems are easy-going, sometimes mysterious, sometimes both. I’m not against complex until it turns to convoluted which morphs into impenetrable. I don’t mind something elusive but give up when the hunt takes me deep into the forest and suddenly there’s a witch’s house. And complex has its place but not for me if it calls for toil. I don’t do toil. People do find layers of meaning in some of my poems, but I would hope they are layers like Neapolitan ice cream: different flavors but all tasty.

DG: Along with a prolific and successful career as a poet, you’ve also written award-winning fiction for young adults. In what way are these genres similar and in what way are they different—does one directly influence the other or do you prefer to keep the thought-process separate?

RK: Fiction and Poetry usually get along, like pets that have grown up together. If I’m writing fiction, I do four pages a day, every day. Usually after those pages are done, and I’m back from the races about 4:30, I’ll pick up a rough draft of a poem and see if it wants to have a little chat. I was on sabbatical once from my teaching job. In the mornings, I labored at a novel; in the afternoons, I’d relax and hang out with some poems. I’ll bet you can guess which turned out to amount to something. There’s a story about W.H. Auden who had one place left in his workshop and two eager students. One said, “Pick me, please. I have things on my mind that could make a difference to nearly everybody.” The other guy said, “Gee, choose him. I just want to fool around with words.”

DG: Being a prolific writer who has written over twenty books, it would make sense to assume that inspiration, for you, comes as a result of dedication to the craft, rather than through the futile processes of awaiting the right moment. Has anything changed over the years, or do you basically follow the same schedule?

RK: I’m a blue-collar guy who just goes to work every day of the year and puts in the time. I don’t believe in writer’s block because I’m willing to write badly knowing I’ll either throw that stuff away or call my inner EMT guys to resuscitate it. Thus every moment is the right moment. I’ve had students who say they have to be somewhere special to write, usually in a cabin near a waterfall and a deer. Or they have to be in the mood. Or feel particularly well. Or be in love. None of those things matter to me. I remember listening to a young writer go on and on about his job and his parents and his girlfriends (note the plural) and when he finally took a breath and asked for some guidance I said, “Quit whining and go the fuck to work.” He was stunned. Did he think my advice would be in lilting iambic pentameter?

DG: The late Australian writer, James McAuley, once made a joke along these lines: “the good thing about America is that you can’t go to jail for your poetry; the bad thing about America is that you can’t go to jail for your poetry.” Is our country really that indifferent to the craft or is it simply the fact that a lot of it is just badly written and doesn’t capture the greater public’s interest?

RK: That’s a good joke and I know a variation. Question: What happens to someone who writes a poem advocating overthrowing the government? Answer: The poem gets published in a literary magazine. (Rim shot.) There was a fiery Salvadoran poet named Roque Dalton who when he was arrested hoped it was because of his poetry and very disappointed when he found out it wasn’t! I don’t think amateurish poems (aka badly written) turn the public away from poetry. On the contrary: easy-going poems that rhyme aren’t intimidating; they may be dewy-eyed with enough sweetness to make a diabetic pass out but they don’t make Readers feel bamboozled.

DG: It seems that the pandemic hasn’t made life easier for poets, especially those with a performative bent. Aside from doing fewer readings, which is certainly a negative, how can poets take advantage of this time in a positive way to offer both healing and entertainment, but also bring poetry to those who may have yet to discover its uplifting qualities? Are there such opportunities today, do you think, and what might they look like?

RK: You lost me at “uplifting qualities.” I don’t think it’s my job to bring poetry to anybody, much less uplift them like a bra with some serious steel underwiring. I write. There it is. Take it or leave it. I’m a kind of open door between the finite and the infinite. Remember how in Shakespeare there’s usually a loyal nurse who carries messages between the main characters? I’m that nurse. The go-between and liaison. I carry the message, usually a love note to my Readers. One of the reasons some people like my poems is because I’m a foe of hebetude. I’m the enemy of every stuffed shirt and poetic fathead. Not everyone likes a smarty pants, but those who do, know where to look. As far as my friends with a performativity bent go, they (and me, too) miss live readings. But in the past months I’ve read more often using Zoom than I did driving to bookstores in Larchmont and Santa Monica. My wife is on the board of Red Hen Press and the powers that be are selling nearly as many books with half the expense and rigmarole. The last Zoom reading I did had viewers from the UK and France, from New York and Montana.

DG: Your poem “Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?” offers a humorous yet refreshing take on how to begin writing poetry: “Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write. / And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle / where a child a year or two old is playing as his / mother browses the ranks of the dead.” Much has changed, in the sense that COVID hasn’t helped libraries stay open, but many things have also remained the same, mainly because libraries were never that popular to begin with. Hence, would you rather be starting out today, when the opportunities to publish are both endless and yet also practically non-existent due to competition, or do you find it a fortune to have begun when you did, and why?

RK: I’m most likely lucky to start when I did, which is about half a century ago. Los Angeles was home to so many poets in the late 60s and early 70s! Locklin, Bukowski, Laurel Ann Bogen, Suzanne Lummis. Charles Webb, Dennis Cooper, Amy Gerstler, Wanda Coleman. The list goes on and on. Those years were catnip for me, a wise guy who liked to make people laugh and break their hearts, too.

DG: Who are some of the living writers you read with great pleasure today—are the qualities you look for in other people’s writing similar to your own, or do you look for something different?

RK: I read all over the place, and I’ll give anybody the benefit of the doubt for a poem or two. I’ll go back to Edward Field whom I read forty years ago. He was writing about movies and sex and quotidian stuff with such a light and modest touch, always gimlet-eyed and playful. Then I’ll read some car crash Language poets like Lyn Hejinian followed by Fatima Asghar who sometimes writes like she’s plugged directly into a wall socket.

DG: What are you working on at the moment?

I’m writing a lot of poems. A new book comes out from Red Hen Press in 2022, and I’m on the roster for another in 2025. All I have to do is stay alive. Fingers crossed, right?

Author Bio:

Ron Koertge is the current poet laureate of South Pasadena, California. Widely published and anthologized, he is a recent Pushcart Prize winner. His most recent book of poems is from the University of Pittsburgh Press: Yellow Moving Van.