From Bennington to Book Tour: A Life-of-Letters Q&A

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Last weekend I had the privilege to travel up to Bennington College, where I spoke on a Life of Letters panel with friend (and fellow Ploughshares contributor/guest blogger) Megan Mayhew Bergman. Megan and I are both alums of Bennington’s low-residency MFA program; I graduated in 2009, Megan in 2010.

5 for Carl Phillips

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When the poet Alan Dugan was alive, there used to be a reading every summer in Wellfleet at the local library where members of his workshop would read their poems to, mostly, locals.  It was a generous thing of Alan to do, and also something rare – seeing poets

Hearing Voices: Women Versing Life presents Tarfia Faizullah and the Unpublished Manuscript

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The work of getting a manuscript published, that rejection and frustration, begins to feel at times like self abuse. Writing is a lonely adventure, but most of us feel driven to it; quitting is inconceivable. Submitting work, though, is more like managing a business, and most poets I know

Anatomy Courses, and an Interview with Blake Butler

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Anatomy Courses Blake Butler and Sean Kilpatrick Lazy Fascist Press, January 2012 132 pages $10.95 Anatomy Courses by Blake Butler and Sean Kilpatrick is twisted in the best possible sense: linguistically. Butler and Kilpatrick’s work of fiction consists of 62 short sections, mostly one or two pages long, that

Martín Espada on Colonialism and the Poetry of Rebellion in Puerto Rico

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When I entered Poets House on May 31st for Martín Espada’s Home Page talk on Puerto Rican poetry, I carried with me a long-standing memory from Ernesto Quinoñez’s Bodega Dreams. Early in the novel from 2000, the narrator recalls his junior high school in Spanish Harlem: The whole time

How Do You Get Past the Sirens?

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Several weeks ago I wrote a post called Why I’m Not On Twitter (Yet). I spoke about my compulsive/addictive tendencies as they relate to the Internet, and expressed my concern that joining Twitter might not be the best thing for me, my family, or my work. I received an

Literary Boroughs #6: Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN

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The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. The series will run on our blog from May 2012 until AWP13 in Boston. Please enjoy the sixth

The Indoor Secret Movie Voice or Being Wildly Coherent

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As soon as you find your voice, you’ve lost it                                                                          Jon Anderson *

Juneteenth and Some of Its Books

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Today is June 19. For those that don’t know, this is a holiday celebrated in some parts of America as Juneteenth. Also known as Freedom Day, it marks the day that the Union army arrived in Texas in 1865 and actually enforced the Emancipation Proclamation, more than two years

Hearing Voices: Women Versing Life presents Katherine Case and Meridian Press

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I knew Katherine Case as a poet first. We were in a poetry workshop together at Mills College, and I was enthralled with her ability to integrate so many ideas into a poem that was usually one breathless sentence. Little did I know that when class ended, and I