April 10, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XIX: The Pure Products of America)
[Continued from: “American Sonnets (Part XVIII: From the French for…)”] Rimbaud’s addition to the lineage of both disguised form a la Auden and the “American” sonnet is more than speculative; […]
April 8, 2018
Wooden Indians: Prescriptive Roles in Publishing
Performative narratives that minority writers are expected to follow are both bountiful and brutally constrictive. Many authors find themselves in situations where, in order to complete projects or be included […]
April 7, 2018
Putting Together Your First Poetry Book
So you’ve decided you’re ready to take your onslaught of poems and form them into your very first poetry book. This is an exciting time, and I hope I can […]
April 6, 2018
In Defense of “Show Don’t Tell”
Part One of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era (2009), the now-classic history of the influence of writing programs on twentieth-century American literature, uses as its title two of the hallmark […]
April 5, 2018
An Interview With Leslie Jamison
Caroline Hagood: In The Recovering you braid literary criticism, memoir, and cultural criticism in an innovative manner. How do you see these different strands interacting with and enriching one another? […]
March 30, 2018
On Writing, Workshop & Mental Health: A Roundtable (Part 2)
Poetry is absolutely necessary for my mental health. Growing up, we never talked about well-being in my family– that is, directly. While my mother was easier to talk to, as […]
March 29, 2018
On Writing, Workshop & Mental Health: A Roundtable (Part 1)
The following began as a conversation on Twitter initiated by this tweet by Emma Bolden, which opened up a larger conversation about the writing life, workshop experiences, and how we deal […]
March 28, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XVIII: From the French for…)
[Continued from: “American Sonnets (Part XVII: An American Sonnet By Any Other Name)”] I stepped out of America for a moment in mentioning Rimbaud – as David Lehman did – […]
March 24, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XVII: An American Sonnet by Any Other Name)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part XVI: ‘What’s up ahead / which is resistance’)”] In the “Brief Glossary of Forms and Other Terms” at the end of David Lehman’s Ecstatic Occasions, […]
March 20, 2018
The Writer’s Labyrinth
All things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of an Ariadne’s thread leading thought into its own labyrinth. […]
March 14, 2018
Poeta, You Resist
Author’s Note: The following was read at the Women of Resistance book launch last night, March 13th, 2018, at Strand Bookstore in NYC. I wanted to write a piece that incorporated the […]
February 28, 2018
Re-Reading Theodore Roethke
Animism, or the belief that nature has a soul, only provides a partial way in to Roethke’s poetry. He doesn’t merely believe in the existence of a soul in nature; […]