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 […]
February 11, 2019
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – February
It’s happening again. Even as we speak, elsewhere—in a college dorm, maybe, or some recess of the internet—a word is changing. Just as “cool” evolved in African-American jazz circles of the […]
November 7, 2018
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – November
“I never got poetry,” someone says to me again. And I sigh. Because I never got it either—at least, not until I learned to stop worrying about “getting it.” In […]
September 25, 2018
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – September
“I, too, dislike it.” Marianne Moore, “Poetry” But you don’t hate it. At least that’s what I hope you’ll discover as you read this column. I don’t want to convince […]
May 4, 2018
Stuff People Say When You Tell Them You Write Poetry
1) Is this a hoax? 2) And they pay you for that? 3) And you tell people this? 4) Does your husband know? 5) Is that still a thing? […]
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. […]
June 21, 2017
“There is that in me”: On Selves
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) – Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” To say that I’ve been a “private” blogger […]
January 15, 2017
An Open Letter from the Only Poet on the Professor Watchlist
Dear Charlie Kirk, Founder of Turning Point USA: It’s not every day that an American poet can address someone who thinks he is dangerous. For that alone I should thank […]
May 31, 2016
Closer Yet He Approaches Us
I’ve made it a habit, from time to time on this blog, to note Whitman’s birthday. The day has come round again; the great gray celebrant is 197 years old. […]