The Swamp
Date: June 4, 2020
It is Fourth of July weekend, and until a few days earlier, we had forgotten that for coastal towns this is prime time for tourism. Despite the busy sidewalks and […]
Date: June 4, 2020
It is Fourth of July weekend, and until a few days earlier, we had forgotten that for coastal towns this is prime time for tourism. Despite the busy sidewalks and […]
Date: June 4, 2020
With the cancellation of the Virginia Festival of the Book, and recommendations to practice social distancing, there’s never been a better time to pick up some extra reading material. While […]
Date: June 4, 2020
Kim Stafford’s days have a rhythm, a routine. Oregon’s poet laureate wakes before dawn. He takes a long walk around his neighborhood. When he returns to his home in Southwest Portland, […]
Date: June 4, 2020
With all that’s going on right now, it may be more important than ever to remember to take a beat and appreciate something beautiful — even if that’s just a […]
Date: June 4, 2020
It was recently brought to my attention that my characters are obsessed with bodies—their own and everyone else’s.
Date: June 4, 2020
Vietnamese-American writer Andrew Lam considers Paradise Lost “the first refugee story.” “When I learned about it, as someone who had lost his homeland, it resonated, naturally, because Vietnam was everything to my […]
Date: June 4, 2020
In dreams I walk through crowds, brushing arms, knocking elbows. Skin to skin: hands are bare. Crocuses congregate in beds, along sidewalks. Unlatching city gates,
Date: June 4, 2020
A flare of russet,green fronds, surpriseof flush againstthe bare grey cypressin winter woods. Cardinal wild pine,quill-leaf airplantor dog-drink-water.Spikes of bright bloom–exotic plumage.
Date: June 4, 2020
“Be stubborn and ultimately believe in your writing,” advises first-time novelist Mia Heavener ’00, “especially if you are having crappy writing days.” On April 13, Heavener visited Wyn Kelley’s literature […]
Date: June 4, 2020
Tess Taylor’s new poetry collection Rift Zone is published this month. She shares five books about writing place in a time of crisis.
Date: May 2, 2009
"Everything I write requires this: Alphabet." A child sees letters first, "shape distinguishing itself from its background," but soon we lose the innocence of that first encounter to ideas of […]
Date: April 24, 2009
Dungy's first poetry collection offers a number of ways to look at what is considered to be a part of nature, whether it is a part of the plants or […]
Date: April 22, 2009
Sholeh Wolpe's Rooftops of Tehran is that truly rare event: an important book of poetry. Brushing against the grain of Persian-Islamic culture, she sings a deep affection for what she […]
Date: April 19, 2009
Perhaps there is no present, and existence is built of the alterable past moving into the alterable future, and then through the opaque door of death. Or perhaps there is […]
Date: April 18, 2009
http://edwardbyrne.blogspot.com/2007/04/leslie-heywood-proving-grounds.htmlMONDAY, APRIL 2, 2007Leslie Heywood: THE PROVING GROUNDSLeafing through the work in Leslie Heywood's premiere book of poetry, The Proving Grounds, one quickly becomes accustomed to uncovering sometimes uncomfortable and […]
Date: April 16, 2009
"In the debut collection from Kentucky poet Nickole Brown, readers experience the pleasures of poetry "the illuminated moment reverberating" as well as the pleasures of the novel–the narrative unfurling, driven […]
Date: April 16, 2009
"If you feel that high emotion and unalienated confession is not art, as Slavoj Zizek might assert that it cops to the System where the individual is valued for trying […]
Date: April 16, 2009
"Brown's awareness of the book's form, its how in addition to its what, allows for these poems' rich complexities. The order not only forms a linear narrative, but layers experience. […]
Date: April 16, 2009
"The strength of Sister is in the details, some of which are constructed through Brown's diction, which is gently infused with a southern dialect but resists caricature. She writes of […]
Date: April 16, 2009
"To write of one's own conception, gestation, birth"to write convincingly of unknowable-yet-familiar moments: that is the power of poetry and the power of Nickole Brown's debut, Sister, a self-styled "novel-in-poems.' […]