What Is The Most Underrated American Poem?
I conducted short interviews with a group of hotshot poets, scholars, and critics to help out. I invited them to nominate an American poem they think is underrated—a poem they wish more people loved and taught, a poem that might be for many an unknown unknown.
Fiction Responding to Fiction: Paley and Hempel
Grace Paley’s work has influenced many writers, both her contemporaries and those who followed. Amy Hempel has spoken often about Paley’s imprint on her work. For Hempel’s story “Today Will Be a Quiet Day,” Hempel has identified one Paley story as being particularly important.
Review: BAD FAITH by Theodore Wheeler
By anchoring his collection around Aaron Kleinhardt, Wheeler creates subtle connections. The stories feel linked in an understated but solid way, creating a canvas with more depth than any one short story alone could give. Wheeler’s characters are people we know.
The Mango Story: Beyond the Asian Stereotype
For a nonfiction food writer, the mango provides an endless mine of stories. For those living in Asia and immigrants in other countries, eating mangoes is so visceral, so memorable an experience that the significance of eating them often transcends mere flavor. Mango then becomes a metaphor.
What Does Your Liberation Look Like?: In Conversation with Liz Mputu and Justin Phillip Reed
In a blog series for Ploughshares, I interview a poet and a non-poet. This time, digital media artist Liz Mputu and poet Justin Phillip Reed. I want to talk about how to manage the expression of violence, feeling of violence, portrayal of violence and also, anger as a thing
The Independent Publishing Resource Center
O’Malley is the Executive Director for the Independent Publishing Resource Center, a nonprofit arts organization in Portland, which she describes as a launchpad for artists, writers, and makers. One program that stands out is the IPRC Certificate Program, a yearlong study in creative writing, with four tracks, including prose, poetry, image and
Small Departures: Aphorisms, Poems, and their Intersections
I see the aphorism as a flag the poem is waving, a point of contact, or discovery, that exists only in relation to the space around it: poem, aphorism, more poem, then reaching into blank space. When an aphorism stands alone, there’s no more poem around it, just the
A Blackout By Any Other Name
A year and a half ago, most of Turkey lost power. 80 of its 81 provinces, excluding Van, suddenly had no electricity. Since power outages in Istanbul are fairly frequent, that morning as I was out helping my then boyfriend get a tax number in central Istanbul, the lack
“A Way I Could World-Build in Poetry”: An Interview with Margaret Rhee
Margaret Rhee’s poems use the what-if of machines falling in love as a springboard to launch us into a strange, beautiful, unforgettable new world that is all her own. Earlier this year, we had the chance to talk about poems, robotic realities, and whether someday machines might really fall
Reading Frantumaglia After the Unmasking of Elena Ferrante
It’s been impossible to ignore the furor surrounding the revelation of Elena Ferrante’s identity last month. Some consider it an inevitability, yet the majority of her fans seem to feel that it is enough to have been given the gift of her writing, without expressly violating her wishes.