Luca Penne Commentary

I took a one-day workshop with a poet named Jeff Friedman, and he assigned us all to write a poem based on a color. Since it was spring, green naturally came to mind. I wrote a first draft very quickly and then in my next drafts green began to take on other meanings. I'm out of work again. I earn a living as a carpenter on projects like building barns. The great money rip off by the banks and Wall Street has made it impossible for me to earn a decent living. I can no longer afford to pay rent on my one-bedroom apartment so I've had to move in with a friend of my mother's. I guess that's why the cold hard cash image comes in at the end. I discovered that ending in the final draft. As the poem progressed, the color just kind of opened up for me. In successive drafts, I was able to find the rhythm, the music of the color. That’s important because I want my prose poems to be poems, not just stories.


Luca Penne runs a ski lift and builds barns in the summer, when there are barns to be built.