January 17, 2017
Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks In Form: An Interview with Peter Kahn
In writing about the formal innovations of Terrance Hayes here on The Kenyon Review blog, I noted the soon-forthcoming The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks. This wasn’t the first time I’d […]
December 31, 2016
Rituals of Hope: On New Year’s Resolutions
I never make resolutions on January 1 because for me, Rosh Hashanah ushers in the New Year, a time in which I enter a quiet, reflective solitude. But […]
November 29, 2016
In the Present How Can She Exist In Multitudes
Lately it appears the water has been waiting for us to keep trying to make it across. The rivers and trenches glossed with light know we are so relentless as […]
October 24, 2016
“Ultimate Male Nightmares”: on Boxing Helena and Election 2016 (Part 2)
“All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me—consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.” —Donald Trump I refused to watch the debates this year; unfortunately, given […]
October 8, 2016
Order and Stability
I can’t help but notice the word “instability” getting used, in political writing, to refer to widespread and continued lawlessness, violence, rioting, and so on. A “stable” society is one […]
October 3, 2016
Contemporary Ekphrasis
Last week at the Montana Book Festival the poet Michael Earl Craig and I conducted a workshop entitled “Contemporary Ekphrasis,” and for funsies I thought I’d post my “lecture” notes […]
September 9, 2016
How To
Who said—and I’m woefully paraphrasing—that each poem teaches you to read it in the reading of it? Or each poet teaches you to understand their personal language within the poems themselves? I […]
September 6, 2016
Justin Wymer: “A Response to Jamie Zvirzdin’s ‘Observations of a Science Editor’”
Read the next post by Natalie Mesnard I remember a friend who was taking a fiction workshop with Jamaica Kincaid telling me that, once, during a conference, Kincaid gave her […]
August 29, 2016
‘Is that real?’: an interview with Justin Sanders
A few weeks back, I wrote about the work of emerging writer Justin Sanders. Here, Sanders takes some time to answer questions about truth and fiction, higher education, influence, and Baltimore. I’ve […]
August 25, 2016
First Book Interview with Sarah Bartlett
Winner of the 2014 Subito Press Book Prize, Sarah Bartlett’s Sometimes We Walk With Our Nails Out, her first collection of poetry, is a debut that doesn’t feel like one. Divided into three […]
July 28, 2016
What Can’t Be Cast Off: An Interview with Fiction Writer Rachel Hall
In many of my columns for the Kenyon Review blog, I’ve been exploring what we hold onto and what holds onto us. What do we try to discard? What haunts […]
July 12, 2016
Identity In Flux: On Jewishness & Poetry
In late 2014, I asked six different poets of various ages and backgrounds questions about Jewish identity and poetry. I had answered some questions about poetry and faith on The Best […]