Joanna Friedman created “The Train to My House” from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925). Please click here to read.

About the poem and the process of composing it, Joanna Friedman writes:

The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite novels, probably because it is full of passion. To honor Heron Tree‘s volume 12, I found all the sentences with “twelve” in the novel. Within these sentences, I searched for the power words, interesting phrases, and phrases with “twelve” in them. As I arranged the phrases and words to make a coherent poem, I wanted to capture the passion of The Great Gatsby and make sure that it came across on this 12-year train ride that is the focus of my poem.

In its use of 12, this poem reflects our invitation to poets, on the occasion of our twelfth volume, to use 12 in some way in their work.