March 22, 2017
On Sacred Spaces & Community: Jewish Poets Speak Out
March 14, 2017
Voyager I Am Singing the Fire
Jews, we sing the fire. Our song is of people who care for the fire. We sang from inside fire. For thousands of years in the diaspora, our fire survived through […]
March 13, 2017
I Turned Off News Notifications and Realized the Importance of the Humanities
Just after the winter break in 2012, when I was teaching English at Indian Springs School in Alabama, I had a new student join my class. The social and political […]
March 6, 2017
Painting the Since [Then]
This World is not Conclusion. A Species stands beyond – Invisible, as Music – But positive, as Sound – It beckons, and it baffles – —Emily Dickinson, “This World is not […]
February 28, 2017
Citizenship (Part Two)
Earlier today I glanced at my Facebook News Feed and saw, as usual, post after post about the president. He was doing what he always does: playing footsie with the […]
February 27, 2017
Innovation in Conversation (Part IV): Speaking with Randall Mann, Richie Hofmann, Phillip B. Williams, and Chen Chen
Over the past few months, I’ve spent time here at The Kenyon Review blog with the art and thought of contemporary poets engaged in formal innovation, focusing in particular on […]
February 24, 2017
The Game
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster…when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.” – […]
February 23, 2017
On Difficult Loves
February 22, 2017
Goon I Feel You
How such gentle names belie the bodies checked into boards. Like in another context you could say: Here maple leafs fall among islanders, and think I’m talking about vacationing […]
February 16, 2017
I’ll Never Forget Her Name: On Private Selves in Public Spaces
Let me begin by stating this is not a post-AWP-reflections essay. Or maybe it is exactly that. I was talking to a poet who did not think herself a poet, […]
February 7, 2017
On Poetry and Politics
Despite American poetry’s grand political past, such as Whitman’s hymns to democracy and human variety, and its ongoing achievements, some strains of American critical thought suffer from isolationism, at least […]
February 6, 2017
On “Chen [No Middle Name] Chen”: Identity in Form
When I first encountered Chen Chen’s poem “Chen [No Middle Name] Chen,” another example of a poet engaged with the anagram as a formal construct (I have considered, in varying […]