Monthly Archive:: October 2011
Innovators in Lit #10: The Lit Pub
Molly Gaudry is the author of We Take Me Apart, which was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Awards for Poetry and has been shortlisted for the 2011 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. She runs Cow Heavy Books and is the founder of The Lit Pub, one of the
A Note from the Blog Book Reviews Editor
It’s been almost six months now since we started reviewing books here on the Ploughshares blog, and having wobbled down the path this long we’re finally feeling ready to throw off our training wheels. That means over the next six months you can expect to see some changes in
Where It Came From
A guy named Rob told me about noodling. I hadn’t known him long; he was a friend of a friend. We were drinking on a roof, which we did often in those days, in early 2000, outside Boston. This particular roof, a thin, slanted affair with a twenty-five foot
Clean
Clean Kate Northrop Persea Books, August 2011 64 pages $15.00 With intense clarity of image and spare language, Kate Northrop’s poems immediately lure you into intimacy; placed in a present, visual moment, and often addressed in second person, you are the one who is seeing.
Free Ploughshares, Featuring Guest Editor Martin Espada
This week’s free Ploughshares contest features our Spring 2005 issue, guest edited by Martin Espada and featuring work by Melissa Bank, Robert Creeley, Adrienne Rich, and a Pablo Neruda poem translated by Ilan Stavans. In order to win this issue, leave a comment below detailing why you love
The Seamstress and the Wind
The Seamstress and the Wind César Aira New Directions, June 2011 144 pages $12.95 César Aira is a deconstructed Kafka; a compact, comprehensible Roberto Bolaño obsessed with the frightening nonsense of civilization. The latter comparison terrifies academic readers, because if Bolano is made compact and comprehensible, how can they pretend
Innovators in Lit #9: Lookout Books
Lookout Books, the literary imprint at UNC Wilmington, was founded by Emily Louise Smith, director of The Publishing Laboratory, and Ben George, editor of Ecotone. Lookout gained national attention when their debut title, Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision, landed a cover review in the New York Times, with Pearlman going
Interview with Curtis Harnack
Sometimes the right thing simply happens at the right time, and everything falls into place so beautifully that it’s almost impossible to remember how you existed beforehand. So it was for me when I was accepted to Yaddo last fall, and ended up in a wonderful group of people.
Power Ballads
Power Ballads Will Boast University of Iowa Press, October 2011 160 pages $16.00 This post was written by Lynne Weiss. A lot of writers are drawn to music. There is nothing scientific about this impression, but I think there are more novels, poems, and stories about music and musicians
Free Ploughshares! Special Poetry Issue
Free Ploughshares time! For this week, we’re featuring our Spring 1982 special poetry issue, featuring an interview with Robert Bly and poems by Maxine Kumin, Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall, and Sharon Olds. To win this issue, simply comment in the space provided below with a reason why you