September 11, 2015
Septembers
I think my hip hop band, The Wick, had a rehearsal the evening of September 11, 2001. I know I had British Literature with Dr. Summers. We had planned on […]
September 9, 2015
Kayak Morning Blog Post #3: Grief and Memory
Throughout this month, we’ll be using the blog to have a conversation about Roger Rosenblatt’s Kayak Morning. Rosenblatt will receive the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement in New York City […]
September 2, 2015
The Daniel Swiftboating of Helen Vendler
The knives are out again for Helen Vendler. In a recent review for The Spectator, Daniel Swift accuses the poetry critic of performing a bloodless “scientific evaluation of literature.” Her […]
July 31, 2015
Black, Child, Hood: From Vince Staples to James Baldwin
“The situation of our youth is not mysterious. Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. They must, they […]
July 31, 2015
Not an Elegy for The University of Akron Press
We are still writing and revising the fate of The University of Akron Press. I say “we,” since the voices that matter to me are the voices of the poets, editors, […]
June 21, 2015
From the Same Nothing
(part 1 of 2) Earlier this week, I started to write about “animals,” and truly, it started out about that broad: I love animals, something a second grade girl might […]
June 11, 2015
The Low Pass Theory, Part 1
The scene is always the same. My feet are planted far too close to a tower of speakers, my head nodding with near-injurious enjoyment to some now-obscure track selected by […]
June 5, 2015
My My Emily Dickinson
Last week I finally visited Emily Dickinson’s house, a place that had haunted me as though I’d been there before but couldn’t recall the wallpaper, and couldn’t let go of trying […]
May 5, 2015
Bashōand my Grandmother: Reflections of Travel, 1689 & 1968, Part 2
Last week I wrote about my grandmother Kitty’s travel journal from 1968 alongside Bashō’s travel journal from 1689. While journeying to foreign coasts, the two forty-somethings kept time by scribbling about practical […]
April 29, 2015
Bashō and my Grandmother: Reflections of Travel, 1689 & 1968
My late, maternal grandmother, known to everyone as “Kitty,” kept a journal on the cross-country trip she made with my grandfather from Western Pennsylvania to Southern California in the Spring […]
April 25, 2015
Poetic Warnings in FX’s Justified and Hopkins
On Justified, Boyd Crowder is the eloquent outlaw of Harlan, Kentucky. He loves stealing money and blowing things up — and can persuade almost anyone to trust him. He’s sweet, too; […]
April 22, 2015
What’s Got Away: Niedecker, Takuboku, Wabi-Sabi
I’d like to discuss two short poems about objects, specifically, objects remembered, in light of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi; however, this consideration must occur in a slant light, because […]