Charles Rafferty is the author of 14 poetry books and chapbooks, most recently The Appendectomy Grin (BOA, 2025), A Cluster of Noisy Planets (BOA, 2021), The Problem With Abundance (Grayson Books, 2019) Something an Atheist Might Bring Up at a Cocktail Party (Mayapple Press, 2018), and The Smoke of Horses (BOA Editions, 2017). His stories have been collected in Saturday Night at Magellan’s (Fomite Press, 2013) and Somebody Who Knows Somebody (Gold Wake Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in Gettysburg Review; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; Ploughshares; Prairie Schooner; Rhino; and The Southern Review. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Currently, he co-directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College and teaches in the Westport Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Sandy Hook, CT.
BOA: Can you talk about your previous aversion to prose poems?
Rafferty: I used to think of them as mules — sterile hybrids. Now, I see the prose poem as a euglena — that cutthroat survivor with a foot in two kingdoms.
B: Are you attracted to prose poetry because it is more formless?
R: Every good poem has form. To say otherwise is like saying some water doesn’t have temperature.
B: Can you tell us about your writing habits?
R: I write every day. No one can shoot a nickel off the back of a galloping ox with just one bullet. The most one bullet will get you is a dead ox.
B: So you never take a break from writing?
R: Everyone needs a break from their daily routine. If we let the garden go untended long enough, even the weeds come into flower.
B: Why do you think the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud is so important to your work, despite the difference of more than a century?
R: The wake of a swan continues long after it has taken flight.
B: What do you think of the stature of poets in America today?
R: Poets are fourth magnitude stars, and everybody’s night vision has been ruined by cop shows and Instagram.
B: Are your poems autobiographical?
R: I’m always wary of autobiography. The thing that is most accessible is not always the best material. There’s a reason the pyramids were not constructed of sand.
B: Who do you see as the perfect reader of your poems?
R: Someone with an Amazon account and an impulsivity disorder.
