poetry Archive

Review: THE AFTER PARTY by Jane Prikryl

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Jana Prikryl’s The After Party is one of those rare debut volumes, like Stevens’s Harmonium, in which we meet an already fully-inhabited voice. In some such cases, much unforeseeable development may be in store, as with Graham’s Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts; sometimes, as with Delmore Schwartz’s In Dreams

Flowers Around Your Soft Throat: An Interview with Poet Christina Seymour

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Christina Seymour is the author of the poetry chapbook Flowers Around Your Soft Throat (Structo Press, UK). Her work appears in Cider Press Review, North American Review, Cimarron Review, Wingbeats II (Dos Gatos Press), and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Maryville College in east Tennessee.

Looking for Cavafy in Istanbul

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When I first set out to find C.P. Cavafy’s maternal home five years ago, my friends and I figured heading to the local church in Neochori (present day Yeniköy) would yield the best results. The Alexandrian Greek poet had spent three years of his life, from 1882 to 1885,

Blackberries Forever

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In “Trances of the Blast,” the poem from the book by the same name, Mary Ruefle begins with a question and answer: “What is the code for happiness?/Blackberries forever.” Although the book—Trances of the Blast—came out several years ago, this particular line has haunted me ever since.

Review: GHOST/LANDSCAPE by Kristina Marie Darling & John Gallaher

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In the collaborative poetry collection Ghost/Landscape (Blazevox, 2016) by Kristina Marie Darling and John Gallaher there is no beginning or end. The first poem is “Chapter Two.” So begins traversing a time loop of poems where the reader can really “begin” anywhere. What is a beginning and what is

Sight Lines: An Interview with Poet Sandra Marchetti

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Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a collection of poetry from Sundress Publications (2015). She’s also written four chapbooks of poetry and lyric essays, and she is a lecturer in interdisciplinary studies at Aurora University near Chicago. I interviewed her about her latest chapbook, Sight Lines.

How to Do Things With Readings: After Cave Canem’s 20th Anniversary

Like any literary form or rule, the poetry reading raises questions regarding subjectivity and context: whose conventions are these, what do they enable, and how do they suit the projects at hand?

In Bookstores Near You: THE BLACK MARIA by Arcelis Girmay

I found Aracelis Girmay's the black maria in a month filled with keen grief, the kind that follows a tragedy like Orlando or the loss of a loved one so paramount to your life that afterward people just going about their lives seem like a perverse mystery.

Mexican Indigeneous

It might be considered anathema to our neighbors south of the Rio Grande but Phoneme Media is having a veritable publishing celebration of indigenous Mexican poetry. This small, indie publisher with one of the coolest catalogues of world lit understands what Anthony Seidman wrote recently in World Literature Today.

Notes on the State of Virginia: Journey to the Center of an American Document, Queries VII, VIII, and IX

In these three queries, Jefferson attempts to distill the complex meteorological, demographic, and military features of Virginia into a series of data points. His prose—supplemented by graphical tables tracking everything from rainfall to carriage wheels—draws a fine grid over the natural and human activities of the Commonwealth.