Letters To Guns represents a collection of poems that examine the para-physical natures of love and history, at times re-imagining both. As the poems progress, eight letters arrive written by non-human addressees (a nightgown, a grove of trees, a wooden spoon, others) at random points over the last 2,200 years. They are messages from home and pleas for understanding, warnings and promises of change. These in turn ignite other poems and themes which anticipate the next arrival. Taken together, the letters form an armature, a living skeleton fleshed by real and metaphenomenal experience. Throughout, a variety of styles appear and no single approach to poetry pervades. Singly, these poems should challenge and entertain. As a group they must transform and evolve our experience of sitting down with a book of poems.
Brendan Constantine was born in Los Angeles and grew up there, the second child of two working actors. His parents placed great value on the arts, going so far as to name him for Irish playwright Brendan Behan. Before pursuing his MFA degree at Vermont college Constantine had already toured the US and Europe, published extensively, and been finalist for three major poetry awards.
His work has appeared in numerous journals, most notably Ploughshares, The Los Angeles Review, Artlife, The Cortland Review, The Cider Press Review, Directions, RUNES, StellaZine and LA Times Best-seller The Underground Guide To Los Angeles. His first official book-length collection, Letters To Guns, is due out this Spring from RedHen Press.
He is the creator of Industrial Poetry, a workshop for adults and teens struggling withwriter's block, and is currently poet in residence at both the Windward School in westLos Angeles and the Idyllwild Arts Summer Youth Writing program in IdyllwildCalifornia.
A regular participant in both the Los Angeles and Orange County Poetry Festivals, Brendan has enjoyed an active role in southern California's poetry communities. He is athree time finalist for the National Poetry Series and in 2002 was nominated by thePoetry Super Highway for poet laureate of the state of California.
There is no single approach to poetry in Constantine's view, no school of style. In arecent interview with G. Murray Thomas of Next Magazine, Constantine says, "Everypoem is different. Every poem requires something different from its poet. When I thinkof it, I imagine that the poem exists as a complete but invisible impulse, an entity justoutside our heads, spinning slowly or quickly in the air, until it is translated into somephysical arrangement. If we get it right, it allows itself to be unspooled onto the page.Every poet is thus a translator charged with re-expressing what the phenomenal world hasalready expressed to us."
For Constantine there are no set means for this translation and there cannot be so long as our language continues to change. A poem may require that you carefully count out its rhythms and break its lines after six beats. Or it may need you to let it move everywhere and run on for pages regardless of meter. It may be whispered or shouted or only read silently in one place at one time. It may stack itself like a list or lay down in a paragraph. "When we argue the legitimacy of one form before another we have likely hit a wall creatively and begun to discriminate out of fear."
