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Profiles in Poetry: Frank Matagrano

© Kay Day

Moving Platform is Frank Matagrano's first chapbook, picked up by one of the most respected publishers in the business. Mr. Matagrano's poetry has appeared in literary publications like Melic Review, Pudding Magazine, Stirring, Apparent Depth, Adirondack Review, and at PoetrySuperhighway.com.

I asked Frank how, exactly, did his collection go from manuscript to chapbook. I wanted to know if the poems seemed to collect themselves into a theme, or if he wrote the poetry with a theme in mind. "In Moving Platform," Frank explains, "there's the obvious theme of watching death, and several smaller, minor themes embodied in the images. A theme was never in mind. I can't think about theme--it's too much pressure on the poems, and the process by which the poems are written. I'm edgy enough as it is. I'd rather not put myself through that sort of stress. I have a train of thought, a kind of seeming which is followed one poem at a time."

When you read some of the poems from Moving Platform, the poet's talent at painting a verbal scenario is apparent. All his poetry is very visual, and very detailed. Consider these lines from, "Asking Her Son for a Glass of Milk."

Wearing an angel green sweater
to make her gut seem smaller,
she asked for another glass
of milk, then shifted a heavy left
on the couch...

Although he's not southern, Frank Matagrano's poems often embody stories in the tradition of some of the great southern poets like Dickey and Jarrell. He likens the writing process to a "shooting gallery---going through clip after clip, round after round, bullet after bullet, into the same target, until there's a gaping hole through which one can see clearly." He adds, "It's tedious to understate the process. I blame several of my gray hairs on some of the poems in my chapbook."

For instance, he says one poem, "Watching Grandma Die," took "literally years to work and re-work." As he gathered his poems for submission, he says that one evening he was sitting on the couch, and he decided to "put all the bodies in a row. That evening stretched into several days."

Frank works in the corporate world to earn a living, yet his output is prolific. When asked how he juggles a day job with all that poetry, he says, "I just do." "There's very little choice," he muses, "and subsequently, very little sleep. It took me a bit to adjust and learn to compromise between corporate and personal disposition, but it really boils down to necessity. I need to eat, I need to pay rent, I need to pay Con Edison."

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