April 24, 2017
Positive Negation: Saying No in Poetry
The old creative writing class imperative to “write what you know” may have its place, but lately I’ve been thinking of the power of poetry not to “know,” but to […]
March 31, 2017
Is it a Reading Exam or a Writing Exam?
At the end of last school year, I was teaching a semester-long course to seniors called The Writing Life, in many ways an extension of the fall semester’s The Writers’ […]
March 13, 2017
I Turned Off News Notifications and Realized the Importance of the Humanities
Just after the winter break in 2012, when I was teaching English at Indian Springs School in Alabama, I had a new student join my class. The social and political […]
March 9, 2017
Poetry in Public: Or, Why I Leave the House
I recently returned to the Amy Clampitt House, where I’m in residence through June, after a multi-leg trip to Baltimore and Louisville. In Baltimore, I was reading for the Enoch […]
February 24, 2017
The Game
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster…when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.” – […]
January 14, 2017
Innovation in Conversation: Part II
In my last post, I segued from thinking about Terrance Hayes’s formal innovation to thinking about other poets’ formal innovations (and the possible conversations or influences therein), spending time with Randall Mann’s “Straight […]
September 19, 2016
Falling Asleep While Reading
The greatest enemy of print publishing might not be digital media or the widespread expectation that reading material be free. It might be the human body. A lot of people […]
July 1, 2016
First Person Plural: Part V (Genealogy)
Over the course of multiple posts, I’ve focused on poems that explore the first person plural – “we.” Most recently, I looked at Camille Rankine’s poem “Genealogy,” a poem that, though […]
June 20, 2016
Summer in Vermont
Saw a red and white hot air balloon floating over Winooski on my run by the river this morning. Crossed the footbridge and greeted a woman with one of those […]
March 24, 2016
Any Last Words
Over at Edutopia, ninth grade English teacher Brett Vogelsinger recently made the case for beginning each class with a poem, citing and expanding upon brevity, intensity, connection, and inspiration as […]
September 30, 2015
One Book at a Time
I’m not sure what felt better, successfully defending my dissertation, or returning 120 books to the library and being able to see the floor of my office again. My bookcases […]
September 26, 2015
Interviews & Influences: Please Excuse This Poem & Rescue Press
Following up on earlier posts about the new anthology Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, the editors Lynn Melnick and Brett Fletcher Lauer recently announced that all […]