Hardin-Simmons University Creative Writing

Publications

I Only Have At Heart My Getting Lost* 

In his book The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing (New York: Norton, 1979), poet and teacher Richard Hugo states that "the true or valid triggering subject is one in which physical characteristics or details correspond to attitudes the poet has toward the world and himself" (5). That being the case, I suspect that someone reading my four poetry books would conclude that Bob Fink is schizophrenic.

I have been called an East Texas poet, a West Texas poet, a family poet, a baseball poet, a Viet Nam poet, a religious poet (once even a Zen Buddhist poet), a disturbing (or was it disturbed) poet, and a wryly-humorous poet. Except maybe for the Zen Buddhist, I would acknowledge each of these labels while admitting that I am none and all of them. In my book The Tongues of Men and of Angels, I became, in several of the poems, Saint Paul--the apostle who wrote in First Corinthians 9:22, "I accommodated myself to people in all kinds of different situations." Paul did this "so that by all possible means [he] might bring some to salvation." I tried to be Saint Paul and try, in turn, to be each persona in each of my poems so as to understand what the experience / the conflict in the poem means to the persona.

Because I am a "process" poet, like an actor getting to know his character, I become the poem's persona and experience his or her world, confronting and sometimes resolving the conflict discovered on this journey following the poem's unmarked path. In the first draft I don't know any more than the persona about where we're going or what we will or will not learn when (or if) we arrive at some destination. It often takes months (sometimes years) of investigative revision to determine if the trip was valuable. Oh sure, I almost always enjoy the journey (my favorite poem being the one I'm writing at that time), but for this experience to be of value to a reader, I've got to somehow understand what it means.

Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990), admonishes writers to "Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of art. Do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength" (78). So, becoming my poems' personae, I have climbed to the top of a sycamore tree and laughed at my mother below "holding her apron like a net." I have stood in the batter's box and taken strike three, frozen by the slider breaking at my knees. I have been lifted up by angels and tornadoes and clutched my wrist, counting. I have bowed in the dust, seen myself darkly, lifted a cup of coffee to the day "survived / to almost talk about / back home in the states." I have forgotten my wife in Waxahachie, the Exxon station. I have held my wife until my breathing "almost matched / her steady pace." I have sworn "five hundred times" at my dead father, "I forgive you! I forgive you!" I have begged forgiveness of my sons. In public places I have laughed out loud "at nothing . . . nothing at all." I know it was a good laugh. I hope the poem will make clear why.

(*allusion to Robert Frost's poem "Directive") 

Books:

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Twilight Innings: A West Texan on Grace and Survival. Literary nonfiction. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2006. To order: Amazon.com.

Twilight Innings: A West Texan on Grace and Survival, one of five finalists in the "Essays" category for ForeWord Magazine's 2006 Book of the Year, was awarded the "Silver" medal, second place.

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Tracking The Morning. Wings Press Poetry Series. San Antonio: Wings Press, 2005. To order: http://www.wingspress.com/book.cfm?book_ID=74 To order: Amazon.com.

Tracking The Morning was one of three finalists for the 2005 Violet Crown Book Award from the Writers' League of Texas.

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The Tongues of Men and of Angels. The TTUP Invited Poets Series. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 1995. Texas Tech University Press.  To order: Amazon.com.

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The Ghostly Hitchhiker. Corona Poetry Series. San Antonio: Corona,1989.

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Azimuth Points. 1981 Texas Review Poetry Prize Chapbook. Huntsville: Sam Houston State University, 1981.

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Beyond Where The West Begins. Limited Edition Poetry Chapbook Commemorating the Abilene Public Library's 100th Anniversary 1899-1999. Abilene, Texas: Friends Of Abilene Public Library, 1999.

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16 Critical Introductions to Poetry Collections:

Editor, since 1996, of Texas Tech University Press's Walt McDonald First-Book Series in Poetry and the Press's Invited Poets Series.

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Poems In The Following Selected Journals & Magazines:

America, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Descant, Gulf Coast, Harvard Magazine, IMAGE: Art Faith Mystery, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, The Southern Review, Southwest Review, The Texas Observer, The Texas Review, TriQuarterly.

Poems In The Following Selected Anthologies:

Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry: 1986-1988 (Beverly Hills: Monitor Book Company); Baseball: The National Pastime in Art and Literature (Time Life Books); Hummers, Knucklers, and Slow Curves: Contemporary Baseball Poems (U of Illinois P); Inheritance of Light (U of North Texas P); Is This Forever, Or What: Poems & Paintings from Texas (New York: Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins), Literature: The Power of Language (Harcourt); Looking For Your Name: A Collection of Contemporary Poems (New York: Orchard); Odd Angles of Heaven (Wheaton: Harold Shaw); Poetry: A Longman Pocket Anthology (Addison Wesley Longman); The Poetry Anthology, 1912-2002: Ninety Years of America's Most Distinguished Verse Magazine (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee); The Texas Anthology (Sam Houston State U); Texas In Poetry: A 150 Year Anthology (The Center for Texas Studies, U of North Texas); Texas In Poetry 2 (TCU Press).

Personal Essays / Literary Non-Fiction In The Following Periodicals and Anthologies: 

The Baylor Line, Concho River Review, The Cortland Review, Gloss, IMAGE: Art Faith Mystery, The Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, New Mexico Humanities Review, River Teeth, Shadow And Light: Literature And The Life Of Faith (Abilene Christian UP), TEXAS: The Houston Chronicle Magazine, The Texas Review, Windhover: A Journal Of Christian Literature.

Updated: September 11, 2010