August 22, 2019
LITTLE MONSTERS: ON LLAMA SESTINAS & FREE VERSE POETIC FORMS (PART 2)
Read Part 1 here. Looking back now, as August comes to a close, I’m struck by the peculiar strength and joy that came with both writing and engaging in conversation […]
August 20, 2019
The Struggle Between the Visual and the Verbal in Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi” Part Five
This is Part Five of a series. Read parts one, two, three, and four. Ultimately, the brawl between the seen and the said that goes on in the poem causes […]
August 19, 2019
To See How It’s Made: An Interview with Margot Livesey, Author of The Hidden Machinery
This post is the seventh in a months-long series that explores the topic of craft: what it is, how it has evolved, who has historically had access to it, and […]
August 16, 2019
The Struggle Between the Visual and Verbal in Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi” Part Four
This is Part Four of a series. Read parts one, two, and three. In one example of this simultaneously spatially and temporally mobile impulse, Lippi depicts a future image of […]
August 14, 2019
The Story the Storytelling Tells: A Note on the Ramayana
Every God has his consort, his corresponding Goddess—so Brahma, the Creator-God, has Saraswati, the Goddess of arts and letters, a match made in heaven, so to speak. Shiva’s consort is […]
August 14, 2019
On Capturing the Banality of History
In the first chapter of the sixth book of A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell’s twelve-book series chronicling upper-class English social life in the early twentieth century, […]
August 14, 2019
Little Monsters: On Llama Sestinas & Free Verse Poetic Forms (Part 1)
I confess, up until a few years ago, I’ve long held the belief that free verse is the ultimate expression of creation. (Prose people, wait before you lob your […]
August 13, 2019
The Struggle Between the Visual and Verbal in Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi” Part Three
This is the third post in a series. Read parts one and two. We can see Browning leaping back-and-forth in another instance of the poem’s ongoing battle between word and […]
August 9, 2019
We Need Fresh Perspectives: An Interview with Amy Sayre Baptista and Meagan Cass, Series Editors, Craft Chaps
This post is the sixth in a months-long series that explores the topic of craft: what it is, how it has evolved, who has historically had access to it, and […]
August 8, 2019
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – August
Forget the Pulitzers. Forget the MacArthur “Genius” grant, The New Yorker, and all the other laurels too. The greatest honor for a poet—and for a poem—is to be known by […]
August 7, 2019
The Struggle Between the Visual and Verbal in Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi” Part Two
This is Part Two. You can read Part One here. Any marriage of the visual and verbal in poetry contains its share of arguments. This struggle between the painted and […]
August 5, 2019
The Most Direct Good: An Interview with Matthew Salesses, Author of Craft in the Real World
This post is the fifth in a months-long series that explores the topic of craft: what it is, how it has evolved, who has historically had access to it, and […]