“Even After the Boy’s Palms Were Empty”: An Interview with Nathan McClain

An interview with alumnus Nathan McClain (poetry, ’13) appears at The Collagist:

Can you tell me a little bit about the origins of “Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi”?

Well, the cause of the poem (if we’re considering the poem itself as an effect) was an excursion to the Huntington Botanical Gardens in Pasadena, CA. I’d met an attractive woman, who also seemed attracted to me, and we took this trip together—as friends. As you might imagine, there was good amount of tension and anxiety between us as we moved through the gardens. As a result, my early drafts of this poem, originally a triptych, attempted to explore the sense of anxiety between two people who could potentially become lovers.

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