“Monster Theory”
Collaborators Q&A: Poet W. Todd Kaneko: I think monsters are something that captures the imagination of a lot of artists, but the monster in the broadside is way scarier than the monster in my head when I was writing the poem. Artist Jennifer Moses: The poem precipitated a dive into my own relationship with my father yet again. He is a heroic, formative, and comforting person to me but also quite mysterious, with many secrets of his own. Someone real whom I know well but a specter at the same time. When I read the poem with the image beside it, perhaps the motif of “presence and absence” was foregrounded.
Poet W. Todd Kaneko is the author of This is How the Bone Sings and The Dead Wrestler Elegies. A Kundiman fellow, he teaches creative writing at Grand Valley State University. Artist Jennifer Moses lives and paints in Boston. She has been included in exhibitions across the country and throughout New England and is currently represented by the Kingston Gallery in Boston.