Moon Beams #18 - David Prather

David Prather hit many notes I love to see and megaphone as best I can on “Moon Beams,” among them how poets make up a sizable and growing community in our day, and how poetry’s engagement with the world as it stands deepens the perspectives, connections, and creativity the genre brings to our time.

“These are people who have the same world views that you do,” David said about contemporary poets, “….in touch with some of the things that you are in touch with today, not the things of the past, this is a living art form.”

Case in point, David shared that making bold moves on poetic structure plays well with the unique subjects he chooses to write about, citing a comment from a fellow poet that influenced him in ways that are apparent before one even starts to read one of his poems:

“When poems are entirely left-justified, they called it ‘lawnmower poetry,’” said David. “And that kind of hit home for me, I thought, ’You know what, you’re right, we can do more.’ Because poetry is not just about words, it’s about music, it’s about painting, poetry is a combination of so many things. When you see that poem on the page, you know it’s a poem.

“I love making my lines go across the page in ways that provide either tension or beauty or something that I hope adds to the experience of the poem.”

Among others, David praised fellow poets Alexis Rhone Fancher and John Sibley Williams as artists he looks up to, and shared these lines from William Woolfitt’s poem “West Virginia in the Latter Anthropocene” (published at Still Journal) as a poignant, many-layered passage testifying to his home state:

“Perhaps we will no longer spew the lies of our fathers.

quilt ourselves in sweet nothings and newsprint.”

More of David’s work can be found at his website davidbprather.com and his book Bending Light with Bare Hands, released in February 2025, is available from Fernwood Press.

Many thanks to David for his time, energy, and everything he does to contribute to and inspire the poetry community.

Explore the space and insist on invention and happy trails, everybody.