Black Earth Institue: Social Distancing
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
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: June 4, 2020
Poet Tess Taylor questioned what it means to be creative, when every day feels like a radical reinvention of life. “These days, helping myself and my family steer a way around sadness, […]
Date: June 4, 2020
LINCOLN, Neb. — My mother was born into a flu-stricken household at the height of the pandemic of 1918. Within minutes she was swaddled in a homemade quilt and placed […]
Date: June 4, 2020
1985 Long and black, the streaksof gray, aflutter in the lightwind as she prepares to tell her story at the Federal Building:reaching into a tattered sackshe pulls out a doll […]
Date: June 4, 2020
The Skin of Meaning He was late to the party and without directions,though his invitation was secure, and his instinctskeenly honed to an acceptable edge, and as we arewaiting to […]
Date: June 4, 2020
Ascension Didi Jackson The blue jays lay claimto the raspberry busharriving in groups of four or five:one holds a rubied berry in its beakand feeds it up in the white […]
Date: June 4, 2020
after Käthe Kollwitz I heard they no longer sew eyelids of the dead shut.At the morgue, I busied myself countingthe lacerations on my husband’s neck and wrists.I wore sunglasses and […]
Date: September 24, 2009
Erinn Batykefer’s award-winning debut collection given a 4 1/2 star review on Library Thing: “The mark of excellent poetry is that it leads you to places you could never find […]
Date: September 9, 2009
Ching-In Chen’s debut collection of poems is a sprawling and ambitious work …. I found myself admiring the book for being so satisfyingly messy, for allowing itself to sprawl and […]
Date: July 4, 2009
A lot of the most exciting prose published in the last couple years is enlivened by the introduction of non-English elements. The Times Book Review made note of the way […]
Date: June 22, 2009
6 + 1: Interview with Timothy Green I introduce a new feature, the "6 + 1" interview. I ask my guests six questions, and they get to ask me one […]
Date: June 22, 2009
Memory provides the raw material for the stories we tell about ourselves. Or maybe memories are fictions themselves, vague impressions of feelings combined with fleeting shards of images woven together […]
Date: June 22, 2009
Language can be an intriguing subject, and author Orlando White explores the language we speak every day, English. "Bone Light" is his discussion through verse of the subject, exploring the […]
Date: June 17, 2009
The stories in Greg Sanders's debut collection are difficult to categorize. They owe a debt to Franz Kafka and fabulists like Jorge Luis Borges but seem just as strongly to […]
Date: June 3, 2009
AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW, Vol. 30, No. 4, May/June 2009"Author of the prize-winning novel The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts (2001), editor of several literary anthologies and numerous essays and stories […]
Date: June 2, 2009
DeWitt Henry, mon sembable, mon frere, was two years behind me at Amherst, but way ahead of me in life. While the rest of us were yearning for graduate school, […]
Date: May 18, 2009
The work of the poet is one of reassessment: it's a continual look at the intricacies and minutiae of a world outfitted with a voluminous gadgetry of words. Poems, at […]