Matthew Hittinger

It was August 2008 and I was revisiting a sheaf of poems I had written the previous summer. The sheaf chronicled a brief but intense relationship with a writer and with a geographic place, and I wanted to see if there was anything left unsaid about the experience. Out of the drafting process for potential new poems sprung “Dear Chanticleer,” which very quickly dared me to cast it in the shape of its subject matter. I love the challenge of a formal constraint, and spent the good portion of a Saturday adapting a pretty conventional looking draft into what you see here. The title came last, a wink and a rhyme.