Literary Boroughs #3: Omaha, NE
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 third
First Drafts: Poetry
A Conversation With Traci Brimhall, Amy Gerstler, Andrew Hudgins, and Timothy Liu 1. How do your poems come to you? Traci Brimhall: They rarely come to me. Usually I have to go find them. They’re a bit wily like that and generally prefer midnight over noon and my office
People Are Funny
This is old news, but in 2005, the Poetry Foundation gave the poet Billy Collins something called the Mark Twain Poetry Award of $25,000, “recognizing a poet’s contribution to humor in American poetry.” The press release included these two sentences: “Billy Collins has brought laughter back to a melancholy
Literary Boroughs #2: Portsmouth, NH
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 second
Gatekeepers Part Four-point-One: on why the [red] pen is mightier than the sword (and other politically useful clichés)
Nearly ten years ago, when I was a twenty-year-old baby-poet with a sense of self-importance even more inflated than it is today, I organized a “Poetry in Protest” reading in Amherst, Massachusetts to demonstrate against what became, a couple months later, “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” My work screening manuscripts for
Small Press Spotlight: Canarium Books
As I said in my previous blog post about the most intriguing small presses publishing poetry, I really think small presses are publishing some of the really interesting poetry out there right now. I had the good fortune of speaking with Joshua Edwards, the editor of Canarium Books. He
Blurbese: “a _____ debut”
Book reviewers generally frown on unnecessary adjectives. Precisely how they frown depends on the situation, but you can bet if an author’s use of adjectives comes up in a review it’s not as a compliment. If a book is filled with rare and unusual descriptions (e.g. “a perturbing peccadillo”),
The Writing Life: Five Things My Third-Grader Taught Me
1. Writing is fun. In one of my favorite films, Chariots of Fire, Harold Abrahams explains his motivation for running: I will raise my eyes and look down that corridor; four feet wide, with ten lonely seconds to justify my whole existence. The film goes on, of course, to
Five for Eduardo C. Corral
I first read Eduardo C. Corral’s poems in Poetry and was knocked out by them. I then found out that Carl Phillips had chosen Eduardo’s first book “Slow Lightning” as his inaugural choice as judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize (the first Latino poet to ever
Hearing Voices: Women Versing Life presents: Deborah Clearman
“You can say anything with kindness” is the oft-repeated phrase of most professors in writing workshops. It’s a reminder, of course, to speak the truth in our criticism of each other’s work, but to speak it gently. It’s one way to make the workshop environment feel safe and comfortable.