February 12, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XIV: Stein’s Sonnet)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part XIII: The Hinges)”] In my last post, I thought a bit about how Gertrude Stein first opened up (or rather, unhinged) some of the doors […]
February 7, 2018
On Writing Naked, Bloody, in Exile
Write naked. That means to write what you would never say. Write in blood. As if ink is so precious you can’t waste it. Write in exile, as if you […]
February 2, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XIII: The Hinges)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part XII: Precursors)”] Terrance Hayes connects with Harryette Mullen connects with Gertrude Stein connects with Terrance Hayes. The links (hyper- and literary) above aren’t just from […]
January 29, 2018
An Interview with Rachel Lyon
In Self-Portrait With Boy, Rachel Lyon has written a powerful debut novel. Self-Portrait examines the aftermath of the moment Lu Rile takes a photograph that inadvertently captures a boy’s fatal […]
January 27, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XII: Precursors)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part XI: Insistence)”] Terrance Hayes ended a 2006 post for Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog, by writing that “it is possible to value two very different things at […]
January 24, 2018
Dispatches From the World of Cuban Poetry
Culled from countless books, magazines, and anthologies, the January/February KR issue pays special tribute to the work of Cuban Generation Zero, or Generación Cero, poets, born post-1970 and publishing post-2000. […]
January 19, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XI: Insistence)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part X: Box, Box, Boxes, Boxes In)”] In addition to the overlapping concerns of form and content I began to consider in the previous post, Stein’s […]
January 17, 2018
An Interview with Naima Coster
Naima Coster’s debut novel, Halsey Street, examines critical issues such as gender, gentrification, anger, and art making. Recently Coster wrote a thoughtful, important essay on the significance of having a […]
January 16, 2018
American Sonnets (Part X: Box, Box, Boxes, Boxes In)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part IX: Concept and Impact)”] I’ve been pulled in two directions in my reading and thinking in the past few weeks. I’ve been writing posts inspired […]
January 5, 2018
The Little Mermaid and the Little Girl Writer Part One
I will never forget sitting in the front row of that movie theater watching The Little Mermaid, wide-eyed, wondering what happened to that discarded mermaid tail. Did the witch store […]
January 4, 2018
Difficult and Devoted: My Abbreviated 2017 Reading List
Another year has come and gone. As always, I wish I had read more—to have spent more hours of this year alone, in the quiet, with nothing but a book, […]
January 3, 2018
Thinking of Wallace Stevens in Winter
A snowy morning seems the perfect time to revisit two Wallace Stevens winter-snow-philosophy poems that have lived inside me since I first read them years ago, “Thirteen Ways of Looking […]