TRP: Your poem in the Spring 2026 issue, “Take This,” builds around the verb “take.” The word has so many meanings and uses that my computer groaned while loading the Oxford English Dictionary entry — but it originated in the sense of seizing something, capturing through war.
The poem opens with the violence in that original meaning: “Take this rope and loop it over / that beam.” But it also commands softer conquests: “Take a sip,” and “Take this / medicine,” and “Take hold of my hair.”
Why did you choose the word “take”? Did the word’s etymology represent flexibility in your expression, or was it a constraint?
S.M. Stubbs: A lot of my poetry comes from listening to people. I sit in coffee shops and bars, and on the subway—wherever people exist in public spaces—and write down whatever sounds compelling. Often, I’ll get a great first line by listening to a conversation and recording sentences and phrases completely out of context and reimagining them. I think this is part of the work of being a poet: examining language and how we create meaning. I love examining the way we construct our lives with words, and within that, the way we build lies, truths, obfuscations—all of it. I write them down and then two months later one pops into my head and I run with it.
When you listen to people talk, certain constructions come up over and over again. “Take…” fill-in-the-blank is one I hear all the time and I had written several variations down before. The day I wrote this first draft I just let that phrase, “take this,” roll around in my head then dove into it. I try to write three rough drafts per session because one of them is simply me clearing out whatever I’m obsessing about and I have to get that stuff out of the way if I’m going to write anything worthwhile. “Take This” was my fifth draft that day. I kept adding and subtracting until what I had spoke to me.
I also happen to love constraints in the process of making art, and there are a thousand different ways to constructively constrain yourself, because it’s nice to have something to write against and around. Lars von Trier’s The Five Obstructions gets at this idea in the most spectacular visual and narrative ways. Plus, as you mentioned, there’s the flexibility of the word “take,” which has a shocking number of entries in the OED. It’s such a juicy set-up.
TRP: You have a book of poems out, Learning to Drown (Gunpowder Press). What is its central concern?
SMS: Learning to Drown is, at its core, about my experience of childhood sexual abuse by a male babysitter. He was the son of a family at church, a teenager, and I have no idea why my parents thought he was the right person for the job but these incidents took place over a couple of years and culminated in a horrific night that involved a third person. I tried to tell my parents what happened but couldn’t explain clearly and they didn’t know what to do so they basically ignored it (though he never did babysit me again). A lot of the book is about me coming to terms with what happened, my role in it, my guilt and shame and self-harm. Some of the poems are blunt and direct, others are more oblique. I didn’t necessarily want that to be the subject of my first book, but when I came back to poetry after a fifteen-year hiatus, the writing itself told me what the book was going to be about. I couldn’t help it. Then I overlapped those poems with poems about negotiating masculinity and the end of the world.
I still write about the abuse because that trauma runs deep and you’re never over any of it. You figure out how to move on and exist with that knowledge, that experience, and how to not be trapped by it. The poems I wrote (there were many, many more) for Learning to Drown helped me do that. The poems I’m writing and sending out now are trying to move forward and work out what else there is to write about, without the intense navel-gazing a book like that requires. I still write a lot about the apocalypse, too, and sadly these days that’s just current events.
TRP: What does the process of writing a poem look like for you?
SMS: Most of the time I make sure I have a couple of hours, either at home or out in the world, and write multiple rough drafts, each one unrelated to the previous one. I try to tap into my subconscious as much as possible; that’s where the true bangers live, and they’re hard to get to, so I have to trick myself. If I don’t want to play with any of the phrases I’ve overheard and I’m stumped, I’ll pick three to six random words then write a poem that must have those words in it. Focusing on the words and how to work them into a poem distracts my conscious brain and gets my subconscious into the action. Both techniques have produced poems I consider among my best. I’ll throw in other restrictions, too, like no more than twenty lines or number of syllables per line, or there’s a subject I have in mind but I can never mention it explicitly, and so on. If I’m really stumped or haven’t written in a while, I’ll try a complicated form that requires a lot of math and precision. That works for me too.
TRP: What writers, artists, or places shaped you as a poet?
SMS: My parents loved to travel, and they almost always took us with them. There’s no doubt that had the biggest influence on me. In particular, I’m thinking of the time we got to live for three months in Paris and London. I was only eight, but it really stuck with me, along with trips to the Florida Keys, Maine, and out west. As for teachers, I would start in third grade, when Mrs. Vantrease had us memorize poems for class. We went through classics like “Casey at the Bat” and “Chicago.” But my favorite was and always has been “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service. The story is warped and hilarious, and that appealed in a big way, while the rhyme made it stick. I still recite that one.
After that, it wasn’t until college that I began to get into poetry. I studied with Robert Hedin, a poet from Minnesota. He had us read 20th Century poetry: Bishop, Moore, Roethke, William Carlos Williams, Etheridge Knight, Michael Harper, Olds, Forché, Kinnell, Louise Bogan, Levine and so on. I got hooked. I didn’t discover Berryman until grad school and that knocked me sideways. I studied with Yusef Komunyakaa and met Gerald Stern at a summer conference, and they are still my biggest influences, along with Mary Ruefle and Kim Addonizio, who I discovered much later.
TRP: What drew you to submit work to Tar River Poetry?
SMS: When I was in grad school, Tar River was one of the magazines everyone hoped to get published in. The history and legacy of this magazine is indisputable and I wanted to be a part of it. And the fact that I finally made it is still a wonderful surprise.
TRP: We love the poem and we’re very glad you sent it to us. And, finally, what are you reading right now?
SMS: My wife and I went to AWP a couple of months ago. It’s hard to stay disciplined in the face of so much fantastic literature, so I focused on catching up with poets I’d met at various writers’ conferences, many of whom had their own first or second books come out recently. Annie Woodford’s Peasant, Donovan McAbee’s Holy the Body, Ryan Vine’s The Cave, Leona Sevick’s The Bamboo Wife, Matthew Minicucci’s Dual, Jen Sperry Steinorth’s Boys Behind Glass—which is just a spectacular project, as massive as her book of erasure, Her Read, which I keep on my desk, Brook McClurg’s A Dictionary of Modern Consternation, Phil Saintdennissanchez’s before & after our bodies, Sebastian Paramo’s Portrait of Us Burning, Megan Pinto’s Saints of Little Faith, Angela Siew’s Coming Home. Plus: Keetje Kuipers, Keith Wilson, Terrance Hayes, Bernadette Mayer …. There is so much high-quality work in the world right now. We are truly spoiled.
Ben Humphries worked on this interview.