Old Roads, New Stories: A Literary Series
April was “National Poetry Month,” which was nice. I mean, I wish we didn’t need a special carve out—wish poets were read and remembered the whole year ’round—but I’m not complaining, not at all. I know that people prefer musicians.
Take Salt Lake City, for instance: when April rolls into May, it means it’s time for the Kilby Block Party, this giant three-day festival with more than 60 bands. My wife made sure we had tickets again, and our kids had tickets. And if any of their out-of-state friends come back for Kilby, she always lets them know that they can crash at our place if they want to. She loves live shows.
Or take me, for instance: I can’t play an instrument, and I can’t write songs, so hallelujah that so many others can. The La’s did it. The Strokes do it. The Ramones did it. Wreckless Eric did it. Modest Mouse does it. Tom Petty did it. And of course Tom Waits about a jillion times. AC/DC did it. The Kinks did it. Big Thief does it. And don’t forget the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. That’s 13 kick-ass songs from a list that’s probably as long as a river; meaning, music is a natural environment, and we’re lucky that we get to live in it. Or anyway, it seems that way to me, which is what this psalm is about:
Six Verses in Search of a Church
For fingers came first, before grubbing after money,
and our fingers speak the language of Guitar;
for our minds weren’t ignited by gunpowder or factory assembled
but remember like the ocean, think like the wind;
for whatever made out hearts made them rhythmic
and our eyes two melodies,
but our hearts are unpredictable
and our eyes are unpredictable;
and men have feet, and women have feet, and these can dance;
and the belly of a woman is a drum,
so it was and always will be that our lives arrive from music.
Living in our bodies and loving is our song.
Rob Carney is the author of nine books of poems, including The Book of Drought (Texas Review Press, 2024), winner of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, and Call and Response (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), and his collection of creative nonfiction, Accidental Gardens: New & Revised (Wakefield Press, 2026). His work has appeared in Cave Wall, The Dark Mountain Project, Sugar House Review, and many other journals, as well as the Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward (2006). In 2013 he won the Terrain.org Poetry Award and in 2014 he received the Robinson Jeffers/Tor House Prize for Poetry. He is a Professor of English at Utah Valley University and lives in Salt Lake City. Follow his Terrain.org series Old Roads, New Stories.
Read an interview with Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: “The Ocean is Full of Questions.”
Read Rob Carney’s Letter to America in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published by Terrain.org and Trinity University Press.
Read poetry by Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: 6th Annual Contest Finalist, 4th Annual Contest Winner, and Issue 30. And listen to an interview on Montana Public Radio about The Book of Sharks.
Header photo of Modest Mouse in concert at the Rialto Theatre in Tucson, Arizona on September 20, 2021, by Simmons Buntin.
