Redemptive Forces: A Conversation with Keith Flynn
“. . . with the wrinkles of original meaning that he has never outgrown.”
From the moment I read it, this line of poetry sat heavy on my mind, encapsulating, for me, the root of identity and the acknowledgement of its inescapability. It churned up personal queries about my own self and my own wrinkles. Yet before I had spoken with Keith Flynn, the author who catalyzed my introspection, I had quickly filed him under “poet” and “musician” in my mind. After an hour of conversation that ranged from Spanish surrealism to the “treason weasel” of modern politics to a lifelong love of boxing, though, I realized that you can’t pigeonhole who Keith Flynn is or what he does. And that’s exactly how he likes it.
Keith, who will be visiting MTSU for In Process on October 22nd, is most passionate about poetry, but his path to the bard’s life was no straight shot. He started college on a basketball scholarship, and it wasn’t until William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell fell into his lap that his future began to take shape. From that day onward, he’s written every day. Upon graduation, he packed up his life in North Carolina and headed for Nashville, where he spent nearly fifteen years with his band, the Crystal Zoo. Most of those years were logged on the road, he noted, making the hard-earned living of a touring musician.
Once he left Nashville, there was more space for music and poetry to coexist. After all, he says, they’re kissing cousins, and who’s to say one could be without the other? In recent years, he’s released books of poetry, played with Keith Flynn and the Holy Men reworking old material, and begun LIVE at White Rock Hall. An arts showcase that he says operates like a poetry laboratory to pair poets with various musicians, LIVE is housed in what was once a Presbyterian Church that Keith bought and moved to the top of a mountain. He described to me the dedication with which the last occupants of the church, a few senior women and the pastor they paid to visit them every week, clung to their place of worship.
“Well, you see, Protestants are like amoebas,” he explained, saying that churchgoers kept splitting up and going different ways, eventually leaving the church a hollow shell of its former sanctitude. This same scenario happens to many artists who veer from their artistic pursuits in favor of different lifestyles, but Keith is a creator first and foremost, whose other passions weave themselves throughout his work, just like at White Rock Hall.
For Keith Flynn, poetry is his religion, and, like it was for those senior women, that place is a sanctuary. He spoke with admiration of the history of that singular building, the way that embracing a space is embracing its past. That’s something he’s good about, too. He speaks proudly of the life he has built and the art he has given the world, and he holds constant excitement of what’s to come.
Of course, like it has to all of us, this pandemic has changed Keith’s plans. He spoke to me briefly about the eighty-eight shows that were wiped off the books through the end of September and the unique hurdles that come with being a writer in these times. Lately, he’s been trying to write more about the natural world, though he says, slightly ruefully, that his words begin to seem like a goodbye letter to the landscapes and climate that are so rapidly changing.
Still, what isn’t changing is Keith’s constant immersion in the writing process, as he reminds me to “compose in a flood but edit in a trickle.” It’s a mindset that clearly serves him well, considering he has a new album that’s nearly finished and a fresh book of poetry, The Skin of Meaning, that was released this past April. In an age where life feels increasingly inconsistent, he seems to be as constant as they come. When I think of Keith Flynn, I am reminded of all the ways he embraces meaning from early years in the music industry to abandoned churches to abandoned plans. If we’re still talking identity and inescapability, then this is a man who isn’t looking to erase any aspect of himself. He embraces it all.
As our call was winding down, Keith said to me, “Poetry filled the religious void in my life. It was the redemptive force of my imagination.” And for our sakes, how lucky we are that he found redemption.
Keith Flynn is the award-winning author of seven books, including six collections of poetry: most recently Colony Collapse Disorder (Wings Press, 2013) and forthcoming The Skin of Meaning (Red Hen Press, 2020), and a collection of essays, entitled The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing (Writer’s Digest Books, 2007). From 1984 to 1999, he was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band, The Crystal Zoo, which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992), Pouch (1996), and the spoken-word and music compilation, Nervous Splendor (2003). He is currently touring with a supporting combo, The Holy Men, whose album, LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre, was released in 2011. He is the Executive Director and producer of the TV show, “LIVE at White Rock Hall,” and Animal Sounds Productions, both of which create collaborations between writers and musicians in video and audio formats. His award-winning poetry and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies around the world, including The American Literary Review, The Colorado Review, Poetry Wales, Five Points, Poetry East, The Southern Poetry Anthology, The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, Writer’s Chronicle. The Cimarron Review, Rattle, Shenandoah, Word and Witness: 100 Years of NC Poetry, Crazyhorse, and many others. He has been awarded the Sandburg Prize for poetry, a 2013 NC Literary Fellowship, the ASCAP Emerging Songwriter Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award, and was twice named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for NC. Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, which began publishing in 1994.
Kelsey Keith is a student at MTSU.
