October 18, 2019
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – October
In the beginning was the Word, I read again, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Whatever your theology, that’s a sublime lede. We call this […]
August 31, 2019
“The Prairie-Grass Dividing,” the Beer
The second in a series of seven Walt Whitman beer reviews: “The Distillation Would Intoxicate Me Also” There’s democracy in beer drinking, or so Americans like to believe. When the punditocracy […]
June 5, 2019
“Song of Myself,” the Beer
“Sobriety,” Walt Whitman wrote in 1842, is “that virtue which every mother and father prays nightly” will reside “in the character of their sons.” Tell that to Bell’s Brewery, which […]
July 26, 2017
NSFW: On “Hysterical Literature,” Leaves of Grass, and the Sexy Reading Movement
Somewhere in the foggy realm between performance art and porno, on a YouTube channel where a poem drives up page views, a woman reads aloud from a paperback book. She […]
July 19, 2017
“Your Body Includes and Is the Meaning”: Five Hot Lifestyle Tips from Walt Whitman
While being pregnant brought on particular food cravings (doughnuts, the clichéd pickles), having a baby girl out in the world has brought on an unexpected and particular reading craving—Walt Whitman. […]
March 26, 2015
Whitman Dies, as My Daughter Would Say, “For Real Life”
“I know I am deathless,” Whitman wrote, in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. “I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass, I know […]
June 26, 2012
A Humument: re-vision as vocation
Though unspoken, the po-biz (short for “poetry business,” as it’s jocularly called) has formulas and definitions. And it has schedules. Among them: if you’re a new poet, you publish chapbooks […]