September 7, 2017
Remembering John Ashbery’s Time and Space
Vladimir Nabokov’s confession in Speak, Memory (1951) that he does not believe in time might have been more shocking if it had come earlier in literary history; by the modernist […]
September 6, 2017
Thinking about John Ashbery
It’s been heartening to see the many tributes online to John Ashbery, who died on Sunday at the age of ninety. Has anyone given to the our language what Ashbery […]
September 5, 2017
New Poems by Oliver de la Paz and Danez Smith
Two new poems that have moved me most deeply recently are Oliver de la Paz’s “Autism Screening Questionnaire – Speech and Language Delay” in the July/August 2017 issue of Poetry and […]
August 31, 2017
Strange & Endlessly Afoot at the Circle K
Imagine our future selves as the much-harder-to-follow laws of us. Because writing a new poem requires a future self, which is not the same thing as a new self […]
August 24, 2017
Formal Innovation and Stephen Kampa’s “Another Way of Breaking the Pen-tameter”
When I read a new essay like Stephen Kampa’s “Another Way of Breaking the Pen-tameter,” which directly engages with a number of the directions I’ve explored here at the Kenyon […]
August 22, 2017
Patricia Smith’s “Skinhead”
In light of the white hate and violence on recent display in Charlottesville, as the (still living) history of white supremacy and white nationalism rose up in (was it ever […]
August 18, 2017
An Interview with Poetry Teacher Extraordinaire, Marty Skoble
The extremely humble Marty Skoble has single-handedly created a new generation of poets and writers. He was my poetry teacher from fifth grade to twelfth grade at St. Ann’s School. […]
August 9, 2017
The Politics of Renewing the Tongue
It hardly needs to be said that there’s plenty of crazed language in our public discourse. Surely this has always been the case, but just now the crazy is more […]
August 8, 2017
An Interview with Poet, Teacher, and Activist Jimmy Santiago Baca
by Kirsten Ogden This is the third interview in a series about the intersections of writing, teaching, and identity. Read Past Interviews in the series: Mike Rose, Virginia Pye. Jimmy Santiago Baca […]
August 4, 2017
The How to Get Your Students to Love Poetry and Sociopolitical Issues Lesson Plan
Just as I can’t ride the subway without finding iambic pentameter and social commentary in even a foot pain ad, poetry and sociopolitical issues have made their often awkward, yet […]
July 30, 2017
Dear Future People
how angels would walk the ocean if they wanted to walk. They don’t. They hover. —”Water at Night,” Marianne Boruch —or did you get past us, just far […]
July 21, 2017
On Writing at the Movie Theater
I covet the space of the in-between. This is why I see so many movies in the theater. The movie theater is a liminal space, situated between the darkened fantasy […]