This past April, spring 2025 intern Cayden Coleman sat down with acclaimed poet, novelist, and long-time associate editor at Potomac Review, Mike Maggio, for an insightful and wide-ranging conversation. Their video discussion—shared below—delves into a dynamic mix of topics: from the power of literary classics and the works of Shakespeare and Kafka, to Gothic fiction, translation, literature as political activism, performance art, and the influence of musical artists such as Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Maggio also describes his writing process, explores form and meter in poetry, and shares strategies for publishing and editing. The interchange illuminates Maggio’s journey as a writer and his creative philosophy, but also reflects on art and literature in general—the deep reach of it, the profound human impact.
Additionally, we’re thrilled to showcase two poems by Mike Maggio:
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“A Little Nightmare Music” (previously unpublished)
-
“Post” (from his recent collection Let’s Call It Paradise)
View the interview in a new window.
Two Poems by Mike Maggio
A Little Nightmare Music
(after Dorothea Tanning)
O this endless night!
drowning in these Pavlovian holes that rule this unruly sea.
O Pandora!
What a mess of this shipwreck we have made!
The mollusks roam untamed through these monstrous rooms
the starfish mock me with their vicious minds.
O mother of pearl!
O father of plasticine trapped inside my Achilles heel!
Why have you abandoned me?
I am mad with melancholy!
I float among these gasping waves
snap at their mewling jaws
a million mincing swords
tapdancing above my severed head.
O this damned endless night!
When will it come to pass?
I rise and fall inside this gnarl of time
careen into the graping abyss
and watch the cellophane platoons march by
abliss inside this curséd sea.
And so the flowers!
The psychophonic flowers!
They dare to symphonize their death.
They arrive with their waspish eyes
mourn me with their sadistic stems
smother me with their ghastly scent
as if I am to blame!
I am insane!
I wilt in the distance.
I spin like a whirling dervish.
I foxtrot like a crippled walrus
whose tortured legs will not allow the climbing of the golden stairs.
I am paralyzed with despair.
I am Neptune drowning in a sea of salt.
I am an open wound desperate for a reason.
I am sky palpitating beneath the sputtering sun.
I sleeprush through time, basting in this sizzling sea
while Hades crackles with blistering wrath.
I plunge forever
forever into this maelstrom of destiny
evaporate into a crescendo of lamentation
evanesce unrepentant
as this midnight night of music insists on unceasing its tragic song
and I watch myself blur in these untoward waters that refuse to let me be.
Post
on killing were the Kirkuk Disor
iented Nine on Tuesday Lt.-
ant Musab said the operation
is serious: while voters under
stand Iraq U.S. marines requi
re elections the insurgents the
Super Marines crash military
rocket force today a press repor
ter announced extended threats from on
ly a routine marine to a peo
ple disoriented only if
a middle violent going ov
er –said abilit
y –said day was were
to be killed ago
Mike Maggio‘s publication credits include fiction, poetry, travel and
reviews in many local, national and international publications including
Potomac Review, The L.A. Weekly, The Washington CityPaper, and The
Washington Independent Review of Books. His full-length publications include
a novel, The Wizard and the White House (Little Feather Books, 2014), a
novella, The Appointment (Vine Leaves Press, 2017), and a collection of
short stories, Letters from Inside (Vine Leaves Press, 2019). His latest
collection of poetry, Let’s Call It Paradise, was released by San Francisco
Bay Press in 2022 and won the International Book Award for Contemporary
Poetry in 2024. His latest publication is a novella entitled Woman in the
Abbey which won the Literary Titan Gold Book Award. His website is
www.mikemaggio.net.