We recently spoke with author John Poch about his new Slant book, Future of Love.
The Future of Love is your eighth collection of poems. How is it different than your other collections?
My last collection, a selected poems that came out as a facing-page translation only in Italy, was translated by the wonderful Italian poet Pietro Federico. As I was putting that book together, I thought a lot about how through my first six collections I have altered styles, matured, explored different kinds of subject matter, etc. Also, I can say that while each of my collections has a small number of love poems, this book is primarily composed of love poems that I have been writing for over twenty years for my wife. They are all free verse poems, except for the title poem, made of lines of only three syllables each. Of all the poems I’ve written, probably half my work is in strict forms and half free verse. But this collection, for some reason, has pushed the regular meters/structures away in favor of wilder rhythms and lines. Lastly, this book is almost entirely set in Spain, where we spent a good amount of time in the first fifteen years of our marriage.
Your poems have a wide range of influences. Your poems have been compared to Lowell, Glück, Bishop, Wilbur, Plath, Merwin, Wiman, Stallings, and other poets. What do you think of the tradition of poetry and where you might fit?
I think about it a lot. A poet is always flattered to be in the company of any other good poets. Dante, in Limbo, makes a big deal of it. It’s good to rub elbows with other recognized artists. Something rubs off, right? Hopefully? One of my primary complaints about the poetry of this century is that poets don’t know much of what existed before 1990. I want to connect with Dante, Milton, with Eliot and Auden, with Bishop and Plath and Walcott. But I’m not so thick to overlook that here we are in 2025. I love all the “contemporary” poets mentioned above in the question, but I’m also trying to imitate some of my favorite free verse poets writing now, some popular, some not so much: Chad Davidson, Natalie Shapero, Ishion Hutchinson, Michael Bazzett, Kevin Prufer, Victoria Chang. All these poets bleed into my work. It should be obvious, though, that the primary poets in my ear and eye for this collection are Neruda, Lorca, and (maybe less obvious) Hart Crane. I’d love to write a poem that sounds like Hart Crane. Not The Bridge; rather the lyric beauty of White Buildings. “Chaplinesque” is one of the best poems of the twentieth century.
What attracts you to the love poem?
It’s maybe half the tradition in all of the poetry written since the Renaissance, no? So it shouldn’t be unusual to write a love poem or a slew of love poems; yet you don’t find much of it in contemporary poetry. Sure, you find tired emotional Instagram verse all over the internet, but actual poets are after a unique way of saying things. Eros is one of the great mysteries of life. Probably one of the only ways to really get at this human love, to think about it in language honestly, is through the art of poetry. Even though we’re still in a Romantic age, I think most poets avoid the love poem because we’re also in a skeptical age. And we’re in a self-conscious age. Serious poets don’t want to be seen as vulnerable or emotional, and we don’t want to get mixed up with the self-publishing crowd of novices. Of course, I’m not worried about that. I want to take the emotional risks and write the poems no one else is writing. And more than anything else I’ve said here, I want to please my wife with a poem that she has inspired. She worked at an art residency program for many years, and she has a keen eye. For one thing, she’s beautiful. Two, she is wise. Three, she has great taste, so it’s a high bar for me to get over. She isn’t pleased with just anything. Her critical eye benefits me, because this kind of pressure makes me more creative and more effective in my work.
Your original title for this collection was Dark Cathedral. Why the change?
Slant’s publisher, Greg Wolfe, suggested the change to The Future of Love. While I liked the tension of Dark Cathedral, we were having a hard time finding a cover image that worked with the title. The more I thought about it, the more I saw my original title as a little too, well, dark. Irony can be all too easy for poets, though perhaps it’s too hard to live up to a title like The Future of Love. But my wife wanted something more beautiful, something more positively charged. I write as if these poems are for any reader who loves a good poem, but first they are for Meghan. While this book struggles with darkness and difficulty, danger and death, it is much more about moving into the light, the real light of love that isn’t determined by circumstances or popularity or the latest fad, but by faith and hope and the persistence of beauty. We grow older, but we carry the fire still. It is not lost on us that not many in this day and age make it to the finish. You have to fight for love, against hate, but more against the distractions of the world.
What is the future of love?
I see it as both a moral and a mortal fight. The nihilistic world wants to make us doubt the true and sacred. So it’s ultimately a religious question. Because we’re all headed toward the grave from the moment we’re conceived, hearing “Time’s wingéd chariot hurrying near,” we need to make the most of the love we have in this life but also realize that there’s a more ideal love offered as a gift beyond eros. Eros is a part, an important part, of it. I find a serious passion in the Divine who created us, died for us, and who lives for us having overcome death. So we honor this Love the best we can, trying to find the words of glory strewn about us in the everyday. Frost says, “Earth’s the right place for love.” But in that poem, “Birches”, he makes it pretty clear that one must always be climbing toward the heavens, as well.
What is the future of your writing?
I have at least nine books in the works, including a novel that’s at 100K words now and needs a few more chapters. I’m in the catbird seat, as they say. I’m in a position to revise and revise, but also to explore. I can take my time, and I have solid support of friends, family, colleagues, and beautiful Grace College here in Indiana. I live on a lake now, rather than in the desert, so that is meaningful. And I am lucky to be among so many students along this journey, looking for their own poems and books to mature. It can get lonely at one’s desk, but a poet is never fully alone.
