Fierce Lyric in Karla Kelsey’s “Blood Feather”
Essay - “Blood Feather stages scenes of both unexpected victory and chronic defeat in the three featured lives, while allowing us to imagine an alternative history for these women, had they been listened to and given latitude to exercise their rightful prerogatives in the culture at large, rather than retreating into conventional expectations of femininity.” 9/1/2024
Essay - “Blood Feather stages scenes of both unexpected victory and chronic defeat in the three featured lives, while allowing us to imagine an alternative history for these women, had they been listened to and given latitude to exercise their rightful prerogatives in the culture at large, rather than retreating into conventional expectations of femininity.” 9/1/2024Shifting Patterns and The Rose
Poetry - “Ever human-centric/We self-aggrandized/Anthropomorphized/And now agonize.” 8/30/2024
Poetry - “Ever human-centric/We self-aggrandized/Anthropomorphized/And now agonize.” 8/30/2024Ekphrasis and Eugene Datta’s “Water and Wave”
Essay - “Once the speaker’s psyche and voice are introduced via questions, the photo in a sense begins to dissolve, becoming secondary, important, vital in its own right, but not ultimately defining. Thus the fecund faithlessness of poetry.” 8/18/2024
Essay - “Once the speaker’s psyche and voice are introduced via questions, the photo in a sense begins to dissolve, becoming secondary, important, vital in its own right, but not ultimately defining. Thus the fecund faithlessness of poetry.” 8/18/2024Paying For Pleasure
Poetry - “The old man had paid dearly/he could still get lost in dreams” 8/16/2024
Poetry - “The old man had paid dearly/he could still get lost in dreams” 8/16/2024Homelands Poetry - “The bright green of summer wheat/with the brown of the ducks that stalk the fair/dykes where the raft spiders search for things to eat.” 8/16/2024
Poetry - “The bright green of summer wheat/with the brown of the ducks that stalk the fair/dykes where the raft spiders search for things to eat.” 8/16/2024Villanelle on a Theme from Rimbaud and Other Poems
Poetry - “He feels himself watched/as he counts accents./He knows the painter’s/watching for the precise moment/when his blue ink freezes.” 8/9/2024
Poetry - “He feels himself watched/as he counts accents./He knows the painter’s/watching for the precise moment/when his blue ink freezes.” 8/9/2024How To Write Lyric Poetry
Essay - “This lyre-derived heritage survives robustly in the lyrics of pop songs, guitars now taking the place of the lyre and the orality of the human voice singing taking precedence over all.” 8/4/2024
Essay - “This lyre-derived heritage survives robustly in the lyrics of pop songs, guitars now taking the place of the lyre and the orality of the human voice singing taking precedence over all.” 8/4/2024
After Emily Dickinson, “Circumference thou Bride of Awe”
Poetry - “Every night/A lover be” 7/26/2024
Poetry - “Every night/A lover be” 7/26/2024Midnight Sutra Poetry - “In yellow night, the day refuses to give ground/and I prepare to wait out its siege. Soon you’ll/arrive, and together we’ll chant the Midnight/Sutra” 7/22/2024
Poetry - “In yellow night, the day refuses to give ground/and I prepare to wait out its siege. Soon you’ll/arrive, and together we’ll chant the Midnight/Sutra” 7/22/2024A Different Kind of Knowledge: Matthew Zapruder’s “I Love Hearing Your Dreams”
Essay - “The combination of dread and cheer these reveries bring about could accurately be called the optimist’s nightmare. The poet-speaker holds compassion as the stalk of a dandelion holds juice, hidden yet keeping the flower active and aloft through sheer tensile strength.” 7/21/2024
Essay - “The combination of dread and cheer these reveries bring about could accurately be called the optimist’s nightmare. The poet-speaker holds compassion as the stalk of a dandelion holds juice, hidden yet keeping the flower active and aloft through sheer tensile strength.” 7/21/2024
You Hesitate, You Die
Poetry - “A metaphysical compass, a refrain, an unyielding ethos in which to believe,/no longer reserved for near misses with the vehicular minions of the MTA,/I have come to regard existence as nothing more/than this pull between hesitation and action” 7/12/2024
Poetry - “A metaphysical compass, a refrain, an unyielding ethos in which to believe,/no longer reserved for near misses with the vehicular minions of the MTA,/I have come to regard existence as nothing more/than this pull between hesitation and action” 7/12/2024Poems Without a Passport: Solmaz Sharif’s “Customs”
Essay - “Sharif’s style throughout Customs is neither bland nor baroque. It has the directness of what one overhears while waiting in line to cross on foot an international border or passing through immigration at an airport. It is a stylization of how people talk in such circumstances.” 7/7/2024
Essay - “Sharif’s style throughout Customs is neither bland nor baroque. It has the directness of what one overhears while waiting in line to cross on foot an international border or passing through immigration at an airport. It is a stylization of how people talk in such circumstances.” 7/7/2024
