{"id":3007,"date":"2020-03-12T17:55:41","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T17:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/?page_id=3007"},"modified":"2020-03-14T18:54:19","modified_gmt":"2020-03-14T18:54:19","slug":"follansbee","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/follansbee\/","title":{"rendered":"Follansbee"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t4X2\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tan online poetry journal\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Melissa Hotchkiss\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBig Bang\t\t\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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by Pete Follansbee<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Then there was the day
\nI showed the schoolchildren
\nthe wolf spider I had
\ncollected from the floor
\nand onto a page of paper
\nso as not to kill her but
\nto show her humanely
\noutside.
<\/p> \n

<\/span><\/p>\n

But before I could
\nget her to the door,
\nshe slipped, like an idea,
\noff the page, and fell
\nto the white tile floor
\nwhere, to our surprise, her
\nso-many babies splashed
\naway like drops from an object
\nfallen in, say, a pond or a lake
\nor even an ocean, for
\nthe size of the expanse of
\nwater makes no difference;
\nit\u2019s simply the impact and its
\nso-many arcs of consequence, the
\ntrajectories already decided
\nby the speed and angle
\nof the fall.
<\/p> \n

<\/span><\/p>\n

And on this day, the mother
\nspider fell from perhaps two
\nfeet and the expanse she hit
\nwas solid white tile, but still
\nher children splashed so beautifully
\noff her back and away, not a one
\nhurt nor the mother, all
\nof whom scattered like drops
\nso quickly to the edges of the
\nslick and shiny floor, and to the walls
\nand any edge of darkness they
\ncould find to get away from this
\nlight, this broad and cold
\nopenness, this sudden and barren air.
<\/p> \n

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Poet's Statement: While the title, \"Big Bang,\" alludes to that moment when the universe began, the poem's inspiration emerged from a very small-scale and local event: the \"explosion\" of baby wolf spiders off their mother's back and body. Still, this small event prompted startled amazement from me and the two witnesses who were with me. Our amazement eventually subsided into concern, mainly for the mother and her so many babies, all scattered across the floor of their new universe. And sometime soon thereafter, the poem itself exploded\u2014though very quietly\u2014into being.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>
\nBio:\u00a0Currently, Pete Follansbee's poem, \"Outside In,\" appears in the inaugural edition of Beyond Words<\/em>, an arts journal out of Berlin, Germany. Also, a recent poem, \"Four-Year-Old-Child, Falling\" is online (poem number 4) in the January issue of 8 Poems<\/em>, and Pete's \"Dark Heart,\" about the tragic Charlottesville alt-right demonstrations three summers ago, is still online at the About Place Journal<\/em> (in Vol V, Issue IV \"Infinite Country\"). Pete's work has also appeared in The New Guard, The Atticus Review<\/em>, and The North American Review,<\/em> as well as in other journals. An MFA graduate from The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, Pete currently lives and teaches in the newly hip city of Richmond, Virginia.<\/p>\n<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4X2 an online poetry journal Photo by Melissa Hotchkiss Big Bang by Pete Follansbee Then there was the day I showed the schoolchildren the wolf spider I had collected from the floor and onto a page of paper so as not to kill her but to show her humanely outside. But before I could get…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3007","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3007"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3041,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3007\/revisions\/3041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}