John James Writes About the Story Behind The Milk Hours

At Literary Hub, learn about the life experience that brought about John James's first collection of poetry, The Milk Hours (Milkweed Editions), recipient of the Max Ritvo Prize, as selected by Henri Cole. James begins, "At the age of 24, I had the bizarre but enlightening experience of learning from a poem that my father had committed suicide. In a sense, I’d known this for a long time." From there: 

I was six when he died, and the explanation I’d been given was that he was “sick,” that he suffered from a disease called “depression.” A priest gave me a card with haloed Jesus on the front. After that, my family was reticent. I filled in details for myself.

I was in college when a letter from my paternal grandmother arrived. At that point, we’d been estranged almost my entire life. After my father’s death, my family moved from Long Beach, California, where I’d been born, to Louisville, Kentucky, an hour’s drive from the tobacco farm where my mother’s parents lived. Pretty quickly, we lost touch—less out of habit than by design. When a person commits suicide, you look for someone to blame. Sometimes that blame is justified. My mother sought geographic and emotional distance.

This wasn’t the first letter. They’d arrived throughout my life—sometimes with my grandmother’s return address, sometimes in the guise of advertisements for activities I’d been interested in at the age of four or five. One appeared to be a letter from a Tae Kwon Do studio. I was passively discouraged from replying, though the option was never barred. When I grew older, I became curious.

My grandmother and I corresponded in general terms for several years. I cultivated the relationship, but held her at a distance. I gave my email address and sent updates, but never shared my phone number. She was never on social media, but if she was, I probably would have avoided her. But the messages grew deeper, closer, and as I made my way through college, then moved away for graduate school, I began to share details: photos, poems.

Read more at Literary Hub.