On any given morning, Brett Maddux is eating breakfast at a diner somewhere in Connecticut. Maddux doesn’t go out for breakfast just to eat, but also to soak in the atmosphere at each place, people-watch, eavesdrop, converse with strangers, snap one or two black-and-white photographs and drink cup after cup of coffee.
When he eats alone, he writes poems. When he eats with friends, he talks with them about art and life and then goes home and writes poems. He has spent hundreds of mornings in diners and has written hundreds of poems.
“If I had sat on my stoop and written them there, I would have written the same things every day, about the stray cats in my neighborhood or something. Getting out of the house gives me the opportunity to take things I was already thinking about and seeing something new about them,” Maddux said over two cups of coffee — one hot, one iced — at a breakfast-and-lunch cafe near his office in Hartford’s Colt building.
“I was in a diner in Thomaston once and I went out for a minute and when I came back a woman was sitting in my spot. She said ‘I’m old and I pretty much get to sit wherever I want.’ It was great,” he said, laughing. “In Plainville, I heard a woman talk about how hard it is to argue with a sister who’s a twin. The waitress said to practice in front of a mirror. The whole conversation was so beautiful. … I would never have written those particular poems if I hadn’t gone to those diners.”
Recently, Maddux published a collection of his poems, “Regent” (Silk House Publishing, $14). The 102 untitled poems in the volume are musings on his experiences in the diners, woven through with observations on his own life and impressions on Connecticut, with the emphasis often focusing lovingly on his adopted city of Hartford:
“looking, seeing no great poet / to have ever put our city down / in words the way wallace once / did, we will do. the poets laureate / of hartford, carvers in stone of a colt, / cement where a river was, / a time forgotten and remembered.”
and:
“if there is a god, he is in the heart of they / who hold hartford spiritual, pews along the boulevard, / a hymn we have not learned to sing but know / the words to.”
“All artists — painters, writers, dancers — I feel like we’re a family telling the story of our community,” Maddux said.
Native Of Iowa
Maddux, 29, is a native of Iowa. It was love that brought him to Hartford. After graduating from the University of Iowa, he spent time
in the Peace Corps, teaching creative writing to Filipino children. In the Philippines, he met a woman from Enfield. When their tours of duty were over, she brought Maddux home with her. Maddux and his Peace Corps sweetheart are not together anymore. Now he lives in the West End. He gave his book the name of the street he lives on.
In Connecticut, Maddux first worked as a writing teacher. But now he spends his days at a job that is a far cry from poetry, as a special assistant to Sen. Chris Murphy. When he took that job, he was determined to keep writing.
“I wanted to stay who I am. I decided to write a poem every day, no matter what,” he said. “I started going to Tisane every day and I would stay until I was done. The idea was not to write something perfect every day but to think of writing the same as exercise. The more you do it the more you get good at it because your muscle gets stronger.”
That was the beginning of his diner project, which has taken him to hundreds of eateries and introduced him to countless people, some of whom he knows by name, some not. He rarely names them in his poems. “People used to think if you took a photograph of someone you stole their soul. That’s something like this,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt someone.”
Some of Maddux’s poetic observations are funny:
“drunk guy / in the diner last night / kept saying how / pickles caused infertility / and no one / could get him / off it.”
Others are emotional:
“considering southbury, fog beside the stables / please do not take me / from this.”
Others tell stories from Connecticut’s past:
“retired ironworker, local 424, / walked the iron across / when they first connected the span. / 1958 … / says he still can’t believe / he outlived the bridge.”
Some are touching:
“rich is a janitor at a coffee shop / in middletown and doesn’t smile much, says he knows / all these kids at the university come from a type of money / he can’t understand but when you get him talking / about his daughter, boy, his eyes light up.”
Inspirations
Maddux said he was motivated to start his diner project by reading Richard Hugo’s poem “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg.” “It’s about being in a run-down town in Montana, being the last person in town,” Maddux said. “The feel of that poem is very inspiring.”
However, years earlier, the first poet who meant something to him was Robert Hass, whose “Sun Under Wood” was published in 1996. Hass’ mother was an alcoholic, and Maddux’s mother had bipolar disorder.
“I felt less alone in the world,” Maddux said. “It made me feel connected, like somebody had seen me floating in the sky and someone finally said, ‘Get down here, you’re one of us’.”
Homages to Hartford’s great poet Wallace Stevens pop up frequently in Maddux’s compilation, especially opaque references to “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” “It feels like blackbirds have a distinct relationship with this city. I watch their habits, like they’re a bunch of friends going for a walk,” he said. “They are a character in my life. I think of them almost like angels swarming over the city.”
However, Maddux said until he moved to Hartford, he never read poems by Stevens, who also was an executive at Hartford Insurance. Maddux’s most obvious similarity to Stevens is his own life. His job is demanding — “I work about 60 hours a week,” he said — but he still finds time for his writing.
“You do your work job, and then do your life job. Don’t give up on creativity,” he said. “You can be productive, and you can find something that feeds your soul. Even if your job has nothing to do with art, you can still focus on art.”
For more information about Maddux, visit his Instagram account @dinersofconnecticut. To buy a copy of “Regent,” visit silkhousepublishing.com.
