November 29, 2015
“Merely in living as and where we live”: Part II
Last week, on a bright, blustery Baltimore morning, Joseph Harrison rang the doorbell at 32 W 25th Street, and we entered Royal Books. Specializing in first editions, the store is a book […]
November 20, 2015
Who Only Has at Heart Your Getting Lost: Wandering Into Poetry
Even for those of us who don’t have to be convinced to read poetry in the first place, it can be a challenge to “keep up” with poetry. If you’re reading […]
October 31, 2015
Trick-or-Poem: A Halloween List
So many of my favorite poems aim to unsettle or conjure or raise the dead. There are, of course, the truly classic Halloween go-to poems like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Robert Service’s […]
October 30, 2015
“Let there be”: Abdul Ali’s “Holy”
Abdul Ali’s poem “Holy” from his 2015 debut collection Trouble Sleeping has me thinking about poems and prayers, poems as prayers. “Always, they begin / as units of prayer,” Ali’s poem starts. “They,” in […]
October 30, 2015
On Flamenco: Ellison, Lorca, and Me
“Cante Flamenco, or cante hondo [sic] (deep song, as the purer, less florid form is called) is a unique blending of Eastern and Western modes and as such it often […]
October 29, 2015
The box is only temporary: Plath and Apian Imagination
Tuesday was Sylvia Plath’s birthday (October 27), and I’ve found myself thinking of and rereading her “bee poems”–“The Bee Meeting,” “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” “Stings,” “The Swarm,” “Wintering”–five […]
October 23, 2015
Gwendolyn Brooks & a Poetry of Collective Self
One of the best-known poems in the first-person plural is probably “We Real Cool,” by Gwendolyn Brooks, which first appeared in Poetry in September 1959, and was then published in her 1960 […]
October 14, 2015
Elitism and American Poetry
The question of “the audience of poetry” is one that vexes poets and critics endlessly in our country. There are, on this as on so many other issues, two camps, […]
September 30, 2015
Imagining America
This weekend–starting tomorrow–I’ll be attending my first Imagining America conference. When I left Iowa City and my position as the director of the Iowa Youth Writing Project, I felt confident that new […]
September 29, 2015
–the academy
Five weeks ago–“5w”–my friend Jane Lewty–janelewty–posted a screenshot of a few stanzas to Instagram. The highlighted words indicated that she had been searching for the poem online, and found it […]
September 27, 2015
Love Letter to a Textbook: Structure & Surprise
There should be a perfect German compound word for the particular sustained balance of elation and relief a teacher feels when teaching from a new-to-you textbook that just works. Someday, perhaps, I’ll […]
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 […]