November 30, 2015
Thanks and Thanksgiving and Thank you
Thanksgiving was last Thursday, and giving thanks always makes me think of W. S. Merwin’s “Thanks”: Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you we are stopping on […]
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 […]
December 23, 2014
Ruefle, Redux (Part Three)
In her lecture “On Sentimentality” (collected in Madness, Rack, and Honey), Mary Ruefle provides the full text of Hart Crane’s “Chaplinesque” and then offers Crane’s own explication of the poem’s […]
November 30, 2014
Ruefle, Redux (Part Two)
I wrote about Mary Ruefle in early October—and now, on this last day of November, I’m writing about her again. Tomorrow my workshop will discuss “Lectures I Will Never Give,” […]
October 5, 2014
Ruefle, Redux (Part One)
Mary Ruefle gave a reading at the University of Michigan last Thursday, which meant that I was able to spend an hour, along with about a hundred others, in her […]
June 30, 2014
A Tournament of Hunchbacks
Last month, at the University of Michigan, I took part in a faculty institute on pedagogy and the arts. We shared teaching strategies and classroom can-you-believe-its. (One professor reported a […]
August 20, 2013
Virtues of Madness and Vices of Honey: An Interview with Mary Ruefle
[This interview was preceded by an introduction; you can read that here.] Last year, Ruefle and I corresponded via mail; our correspondence is printed below. You can find out more […]
August 12, 2013
Lectures With Nothing (Or Everything) To Say: On Mary Ruefle
[This post serves as the introduction for a soon-to-be-published interview with Ruefle.] The function of the anecdote in criticism is double-edged: at once ailment and salve. But in considering Mary […]
September 13, 2012
Mix Tape: Mindful Writing, Mindful Submitting
An interview with Dinty W. Moore on being a mindful writer. “There is nothing wrong with wanting a career, some recognition, a steady salary, and, most importantly perhaps, the access […]
August 14, 2012
Mary Ruefle’s Magic Madness, Rack, and Honey
Mary Ruefle’s poetry is, more than likely, something you’re familiar with already (if not, here’s KR’s Hilary Plum’s review of her Selected Poems, in which she writes the following: “Of […]
March 21, 2012
Craft Note: The Elegy (part one)
[Blogger’s note: This post is part of a series of craft notes that look forward to the work Tarfia Faizullah and I will be doing at the Kenyon Review Writers […]