Short Conversations with Poets: Derek Mong

Derek Mong writes a poetry that’s part of a growing canon of fatherhood verse. Work made in the light of little children. Geffrey Davis, Benjamin Gucciardi, Niall Campbell, Dan Chelotti, Craig Morgan Teicher, Matthew Dickman—work that springs in part from the root offered decades ago by such books as Galway Kinnell’s The Book of Nightmares, or Robert Hass’s “Songs to Survive the Summer.” It’s still surprising enough to see a dad doing full-time parenting work—and to see that unfolding still constitutes...