After I reread Jon Loomis's poem "At the Lake House" (from The Mansion of Happiness), I thought I knew his name and a little searching turned up his poem, "Deer Hit" which I had read much earlier. That poem is about being 17 years old, driving drunk, and hitting a deer. I used it in a classroom lesson. I first read his poem "At the Lake House" on The Writers Almanac and had bookmarked it for a future prompt.
On first reading, I considered it a poem about betrayal, but when I read it a few more times it began to be a poem about what you don't know about people you think you know well. That is our prompt this month.
What have you discovered about someone close to you - parent, spouse, sibling, colleague, friend, neighbor - that you had not known? It might be a betrayal, a secret, something shameful, or something extraordinary. But more importantly, this revelation about them changed something in you.
Jon Loomis was born in 1959 in Athens, Ohio. He holds a BA in creative writing from Ohio University, and a MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia. where he studied under the poet Charles Wright. He is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Vanitas Motel his first book of poetry, won the 1997 annual FIELD prize in poetry. His 2001 poetry collection is The Pleasure Principle. He is also the author of the three Frank Coffin mysteries set in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
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