{"id":774,"date":"2020-01-24T08:44:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T16:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=774"},"modified":"2025-02-25T10:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T18:49:10","slug":"roy-bentley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/roy-bentley\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 85: Roy Bentley"},"content":{"rendered":"
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About Roy Bentley<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

oy Bentley was a finalist for the Miller Williams prize for Walking with Eve in the Loved City, is the author of eight books; including American Loneliness from Lost Horse Press, who is bringing out a new & selected in 2021. He is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and the Ohio Arts Council. Poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Shenandoah, and Prairie Schooner among others. Hillbilly Guilt, his latest, won the 2019 Hidden River Arts \/ Willow Run Poetry Book Award.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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A Profile of the Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Notes on \u201cA Human Heart, Left Aboard, Sends Airplane Back to Where it Started\u201d and \u201cFallout, or the Mother Tongue of Pinocchio Was the Wind Through the Trees\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA Human Heart, Left Aboard, Sends Airplane Back to Where It Started\u201d was a headline in The New York Times that struck me. Over the years, I\u2019ve flown more than a few times, many times experiencing delays. Which is where I elected to start: with the pilot\u2019s uber-authoritative voice blossoming into an explanation for turning the plane around. The heart that\u2019s \u201cin with the luggage\u201d is the turn of the poem\u2014where the poem coalesced. After I finished, it occurred to me that I was giddy-glad that an airline would behave in this way, regardless of inconvenience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFallout, or The Mother Tongue of Pinocchio Was the Wind through the Trees\u201d wrestles with the events I lived through as a small boy around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis\u2014I\u2019d have been 8 years old that October. I\u2019ve tried to recreate what we had to contend with, and to recreate discovering what it is to be a boy at the moment the narrator\u2019s life is threatened by the events of those days, aided by the odd detail of the bomb shelter model\u2014which actually opened business and took orders that autumn. Gepetto has always fascinated me. Inspired me\u2014I mean, all he wanted was a child. I love that, whatever else, he represents the creative impulse in males.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I have a tiger-descending tattoo the size of a big man\u2019s hand above (and on) my left breast. Why did I get a tattoo? I wanted a tattoo somewhere on the body that many tattoo artists tend to avoid because of the pain. (I\u2019d left a relationship that ended badly; I was numb and hoped the tattooing would jolt my consciousness into something approaching awareness\u2014it took about 4 hours to get it done. And it worked.) The experience changed how I viewed my body. Twenty years later, the tiger has held up well enough that it often occurs to me that one backfoot is just wrong!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently finished a Michael Connelly novel. Haven\u2019t jumped into anything else, as I\u2019ve been readying copy for the catalogue promotion of a new & selected called My Mother\u2019s Red Ford, which Lost Horse Press is bringing out next year. (Trying to stay sane in these insane times.)<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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If the Physics of Falling Is an Allegory for Existence by Roy Bentley<\/a><\/h2>\n\n

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“A Human Heart, Left Aboard, Sends Airplane Back to Where It Started” and \u201cFallout, or the Mother Tongue of Pinocchio Was the Wind Through the Trees\u201d by Roy Bentley<\/a><\/h2>\n\n

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