April 7, 2016
Let’s Not and Say We Did: on traveling and literary residencies
“If they told me I couldn’t leave the radius of six miles from my house, I really wouldn’t care. There’s nowhere I really want to go.” Thus saith poet and […]
April 4, 2016
An Interview with Novelist Virginia Pye Part 1
Part 1 of the second interview in a series about the intersections of Writing, Teaching, and Identity Virginia Pye’s second novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix, was published in October by Unbridled Books. Gish Jen called it “[g]ripping, […]
March 24, 2016
“Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around a lake”: On Walking and Writing
Wallace Stevens makes an assertion in the opening stanza of the seventh section of his poem “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction” that has always stuck with me. It reads, plainly: […]
March 22, 2016
Every Night Is Ladies Night: An Interview with Sonja Livingston
On a recent flight from Boston back to Buffalo, my seatmate claimed both armrests, and never once looked up nor adjusted his position when I pressed past him to my […]
March 15, 2016
Nothing and Something–an interview with poet Rob MacDonald
As Resuscitation Party is your first full-length collection, I’m curious as to a) how long it took to put together, and b) who you were reading while writing it. Are […]
March 8, 2016
Gender fluidity versus genre fluidity and hybridity’s hubris
In her amazing SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard writes that “Greek and Roman intellectuals were fascinated by word derivations, which they were convinced gave the key not […]
March 7, 2016
Against Certainty: On Contest Judging and Self-Assuredness
Writing in The New York Times Book Review in early January, Rivka Galchen elucidated her opinion on literature’s unforgivable sin. To wit: For me, the unforgivable sin in literature is […]
March 3, 2016
Civis Americus Sum
Historical analogies between Ancient Rome and contemporary America never get old for a good reason: The parallels are uncanny, and, however imperfect, are consistently more striking than the divergences. The […]
February 19, 2016
The Art of the Literary Humblebrag
The humblebrag (RIP Harris Wittels) seems to be part of our contemporary culture, but its literary variety is of an ilk slightly different from your normal “I-seriously-need-to-stop-going-to-the-gym-5-days-a-week” kind. For those unfamiliar […]
January 24, 2016
Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Death of God
The connection hinges on the meanings of the word mystery, but it’s worth considering. Creation, after all, is the scene of the greatest whodunit of all time—theoretical physicists and speculative metaphysicians […]
January 22, 2016
Of Late: Procrastination and Poetry
There has to be a word for the very special kind of procrastination that goes into planning a poetry course. I certainly engage in the regular kind of procrastination with […]
November 20, 2015
Who Only Has at Heart Your Getting Lost: Wandering Into Poetry
Even for those of us who don’t have to be convinced to read poetry in the first place, it can be a challenge to “keep up” with poetry. If you’re reading […]