August 28, 2014
Meditation on Leslie Jamison’s THE EMPATHY EXAMS (and beyond) (Part Three of Six…)
(Continued from Part Two) Ultimately, Jamison gets so much about West Virginia right: the spellbinding beauty “honeycombed” with corruption beneath its surface, and how “People with political influence and powerful […]
August 25, 2014
Remarkable Findings
I captured this video a few months ago while reading the late Irene McKinney’s last poetry collection, which I blogged about here. I intended to post this video back then, […]
July 14, 2014
And How Many Rains Must Fall
“And how many rains must fall before the stains are washed clean?” Taken from the writings of Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, this line served as the title for Imran […]
July 11, 2014
Out of This World: Irene McKinney’s HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH DARKNESS YET? [Part Two of Two]
[This is Part Two. You can read Part One here.] “During the Night” echoes one of McKinney’s earlier poems, “Visiting My Gravesite: Talbott Churchyard, West Virginia”—another poem in which she […]
July 4, 2014
Another Radiant Child: The Retropoetics of Joey Bada$$
One of America’s exciting young poets is 19 years old. Like several other innovators, who are among the greatest the country has ever produced–Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), […]
June 12, 2014
on or around THE TATTERS / BRAZIL’S DANCE WITH THE DEVIL
Brenda Coultas, The Tatters (Wesleyan University Press, 2014). Dave Zirin, Brazil’s Dance With the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy (Haymarket Books, 2014). I am thinking of a […]
May 23, 2014
Remembering Vern Rutsala
Having spent his life producing a sizeable body of poetry, having received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation, having been a finalist for the […]
April 23, 2014
on or around GRACE PERIOD
[Aaron Kunin, Grace Period: Notebooks 1998-2007 (Letter Machine Editions, 2013)] A concern that I have been, of late, overusing the word aphoristic has left me reluctant to cleanly describe this book. But […]
April 23, 2014
Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day!
While today is the official national Poem in Your Pocket Day, at Kenyon we got things started earlier in the week. On Tuesday at dawn, KR’s team of “Ninja” poets […]
April 2, 2014
Rogue Shop
The other day the poet Michael Loughran took me to a secret location—well, we had a little trouble finding it—to talk about my latest book, Century Swept Brutal, with a […]
March 14, 2014
March Podcast: Roger Rosenblatt
Roger Rosenblatt is one of a kind. Yes, yes, I know, that’s a cliche. Forgive me. It also happens to be true. Roger, KR’s Literary Ambassador, whatever the hell that […]
March 10, 2014
KR Fellows Transition
We’ve had the first sweet taste of spring here in Gambier after a brutal winter. After a couple three days now of 40s and 50s there’s still a fair bit […]