By Dakota Parks for Inweekly
Jonathan Fink’s poetry doesn’t just speak—it transports you. His latest collection, “Don’t Do It—We Love You, My Heart,” invites readers on a journey exploring language, mixed emotions, national identity, major historical events, philosophical quandaries, personal narrative and the resonant threads connecting them. As his third published work, this collection marks a departure from the tightly structured poems of his earlier books, unfolding into his most experimental and expansive project yet. Now available to the public, the book’s release will be celebrated with a signing event this week at Pensacola Museum of Art.
“I always loved poetry,” Fink said, reflecting on his early connection to the art form. “My father was an English professor and a poet, so poetry was in the fabric of my day-to-day life. Poetry is a space that welcomes not only musicality and language but contradictory and complicated emotions and feelings. Something I always quote in class is that W.H. Auden said, ‘Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings.’ So poetry is one of the last places, I think, that welcomes that as a strength rather than a weakness.”
This personal credence shines in “Don’t Do It—We Love You, My Heart.” The collection includes an array of poetic styles: intimate narrative poems and meticulously researched pieces that verge on essays to one-sentence poems that stretch over multiple pages. The book opens with a poem inspired by the true story of a cyclist convincing a jumper on the George Washington Bridge to reconsider, searching for “words to pin him to the path, the bridge.”
“One of the elements that appears in all of my books is trying to write about actual, historical events,” Fink explained. “That poem, which is the title of the collection, is based off a ‘New York Times’ article I read about the story. The cyclist actually says, ‘Don’t do it—we love you, my heart,’ which is such a wonderful and powerful turn of phrase. And, of course, I’m inventing and imagining the circumstances of that encounter, as I do in most of my poetry.”
This poem sets the tone for the broader urgings of the collection—the tension alive between the verses, the urgency of shared empathy, the reminder that words and stories matter, even save lives. As a professor at the University of West Florida, Fink carries this spirit into the classroom, constantly encouraging students to embrace the fluidity of poetry, experimenting with form and style to uncover their voices.
“I’ve been at UWF for almost 20 years now, and students always remind me of our interconnectedness and shared humanity.” Fink said. “Richard Hugo has an essay in defense of creative writing classes that argues that creative writing classes are one of the last places that articulate, ‘Your life matters.’ Your stories, your hopes, your dreams, everything about who you are is worthy of writing. It’s a great reminder to students that the space where they are exploring their lives and writing is something we treat seriously, and we treat the artistic process seriously simultaneously.”
Fink’s journey as a poet has always been informed by a blend of personal introspection and historical inquiry. His first book included a historical sequence about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, while his second featured a collection of sonnets on the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the siege of Leningrad. In contrast, this new collection is less rigid in form and more experimental in its meandering journeys through space and time.
“Kurt Vonnegut once said that a writer’s previous work is like tracks in the snow because you can see where you’ve been,” Fink said. “For me, this book is a reaction to my earlier work, which was very controlled in its structure. I like the idea of having some sort of structure because it allows me to shift my focus away from the thematic elements of the poem—the meaning—and instead concentrate on the structural components. With this collection, I wanted more breathing room. It’s about trusting my voice and welcoming seemingly disparate elements together: from the historical to the literary to the decidedly unliterary elements.”
The collection spans a wide range of topics, including Fink’s upbringing in West Texas at the end of the Cold War, intimate reflections on his family life, a brief history of execution and its survivors, ekphrastic meditations on the paintings of Goya, Leonardo da Vinci and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft, and sprawling poems that draw parallels between personal and national history.
“I think what I like about working with historical material, both autobiographical and broader history, is that once you place something in time, you automatically have a past, a present and a future. You have a ‘here’ and a ‘there,’ which gives you so much more to work with structurally,” Fink explained. “One of the unintended aspects of this book is how much it revolves around the Cold War era—especially the 1980s—reflecting my experience as a Gen X kid. That time was pervasive in our lives, and incorporating history into a first-person narrative poem gives you a clear structure to work within, spanning across both time and place.”
Many of Fink’s poems begin and end with a careful framing of an anecdote, memory or inspiration, before expanding into broader historical and philosophical reflections. It’s as if the narrative offers an adventure, inviting readers to delve into the language and the winding paths of thought that unfold within.
One such poem, “A Year of Growth,” is framed by the scene of building a treehouse with his children but quickly unravels into meditations on parenthood, childhood curiosity and grief, ultimately serving as an elegy to his late mother-in-law. The narrator juggles his children’s demands to keep playing while stress and grief bubble to the surface: “Who says the world is fair? mostly resisting, though sometimes not, to itemize, while wielding a clothes-less Barbie or broken toy like a judge’s gavel, every slight from work and love and politics both foreign and domestic … as grief permeates all things,” it reads.
“I was trying to capture that triggering event of building a treehouse for the girls out back, but as the poem developed, it became an elegy for my wife’s mother, who was in the process of passing away,” he said. “That wasn’t my original intention, but for me, the challenge—and the joy—is bringing together different materials and competing elements to create an architecture in which they cohere. With a family and three daughters, I can’t just leave to explore the world on a whim. I’m stationary these days, but my writing process feels like pulling up core samples from permafrost—digging down through layers of history to see what I can uncover and bring to the surface.”
This approach mirrors the essence of Fink’s poetry: pulling on these threads and tensions, weaving together connections that invite readers into a shared space of discovery.
“What I hope readers take away from this book is an attention and appreciation of language, because language is not just intended to be a vehicle for information. I hope they read these poems and have an experience—a sense of feeling like they’re in the presence of the world. When I read a book, I always hope an author will bring me into this shared space they’ve created in an honest and important way. Then hopefully my attention to the outside world has changed in some way as I re-enter it,” Fink said.
Jonathan Fink
University of West Florida Crossroads Conference Book Signing Event
WHAT: Public reading, book signing and reception with authors Sonya Huber, Charlotte Pence, Nahal Suzanne Jamir and Jonathan Fink
WHEN: 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30
WHERE: Pensacola Museum of Art, 407 S. Jefferson St.