September 30, 2018
Verve {in} Verse: In Conversation with Edward Vidaurre
Note: Verve {in} Verse is my new poet-focused feature here at The Kenyon Review in which I converse with poets about their work and interests both on and […]
September 29, 2018
New Origins
Poetry may often come to us in small packages and brief passages, but poetry is rooted in our big human questions: who are we? how (and why) did we get […]
September 11, 2018
Luck, Lit, & Gutter Spouts
I was twenty-three years old when I won the Hopwood Award for Poetry. A recent college grad, I lived in a leaky apartment that I’d furnished with lawn furniture and […]
September 10, 2018
Little Monsters: On Sex, Exorcisms & Efes
I’d lay down my life for the fawn who, arising, at night to the sweet sound of harp and flute, saw a cup in my hand, said: “Drink your […]
September 5, 2018
Derrida and Deconstruction Simplified
There is a lot of antipathy towards Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction both in and outside of academia. In the interest of furthering the dialogue, I add my most basic view […]
August 30, 2018
Present in Process: An Interview with Caryl Pagel
Caryl Pagel’s vision has shaped not only her own poems, essays, books, and chapbooks, but two presses, a literary magazine, and now a new literary fellowship focused on inclusion, equity, […]
August 24, 2018
A Coney Island of the Mind
I visited one of my favorite places recently, that strange and wonderful land at the southern tip of Brooklyn called Coney Island. Aside from inspiring one of my favorite poetry […]
August 20, 2018
The International Congress of Youth Voices: An Interview with Jamesha Caldwell
Earlier this month, young writers and activists convened in San Francisco for the inaugural International Congress of Youth Voices. Among those student delegates was 18-year-old “Baltimore-bred poet and storyteller” Jamesha […]
August 9, 2018
15 Things To Do Before I Die
On Showtime’s The Big C (yes, I watch old shows when I can’t sleep), when Laura Linney’s character finds out she has cancer and only a certain amount of time left, she […]
July 31, 2018
In the Summer You Really Know: on living, writing and not publishing
Summer has always been my least favorite season and, weirdly, my most productive one. Being that for most of my life I’ve been immersed in academia in one form or […]
July 27, 2018
There’s Just Something About Female Friendship
(Yes, that is Anne of Green Gables and Diana Barry, founding members of the Female Friendship Hall of Fame.) I never thought I would be married with two kids and […]
July 25, 2018
“the little song pulsing”: An Interview with Oliver de la Paz
[Continued from “Scaffolding”] * When I read Oliver de la Paz’s poem “Diaspora Sonnet 25,” which the Academy of American Poets featured as its Poem-a-Day selection earlier this month, I […]