LESLEY WHEELER

Author: Lesley Wheeler

  • Reading T. S. Eliot’s tarot cards

    I was talking to my British and Irish poetry class about the “wicked pack of cards” Madame Sosostris wields in “The Waste Land” when one person said, “There should be a Modernist Poets tarot deck.” My brain exploded: H. D. as The Star, Pound as The Emperor, Sassoon as the Nine of Wands, maybe Yeats…

  • Book season (hours of ellipsis)

    Pumpkins are all right (in pies, not in lattes, thanks)–but what the suddenly cool, rainy weather makes me want to do is read. It’s also nourishing to be read. Hurrah for the thoughtful attention Sarah Stockton gives Poetry’s Possible Worlds in the Staff Favorites section of River Mouth Review. I love the Octoberish timing AND…

  • The wheel(er) considers turning

    The wheel(er) considers turning

    “Yeah, I didn’t want to remind you about the equinox,” my spouse said. “Right? Another thing on the to-do list,” I agreed. We mimed leaning our shoulders into the wheel of the year. “But I got it done!” It’s autumn and my birthday and I’m struggling. Sleep has been especially hard. If I’m to have…

  • Professor monster will see you now

    Professor monster will see you now

    First, Poetry’s Possible Worlds is back in print, with copies trickling into warehouses and order-able again! Phew. And I’m looking forward to my book-club-style discussion of Unbecoming in Radford VA next week, details in the flier above. What’s haunting a larger passage of my brain-cave, though: facing down the monstrous mixedness of my September life.…

  • Splitting / creative scholarship

    Splitting / creative scholarship

    My son left this week for his senior year at college, which removed a handy barrier between me and working all the time. My writer self, my teaching self, and my role as Department Head are competing hardest for my hours. Teaching and chairing are more deadline-driven so my writer self is hanging on by…

  • To do, poetically–or just some human sleep

    To do, poetically–or just some human sleep

    I know people love fall, a feeling I get a glimpse of during sabbaticals, but for me it’s the season of deadlines, flurry, trying to carry too many turning leaves at once then dropping them. For instance, today is the three-month anniversary of my new book, Poetry’s Possible Worlds, yay! I meant to get a…

  • Not only close but intimate reading

    Not only close but intimate reading

    My spouse, Chris Gavaler, and I met while working on a Rutgers undergraduate literary magazine, The Anthologist. We were both chiefly poets then, shaping each other’s opinions in long Sunday night arguments over submissions (and sometimes over a twelve-pack). After graduation, we moved in together, after which followed many years of reading each other’s drafts;…

  • Broadside giveaway, reviews, & long views

    Broadside giveaway, reviews, & long views

    If you’ve reviewed Poetry’s Possible Worlds in a magazine, or on Goodreads, Amazon, or your blog–or if you can post a review, even a brief one, in any of those venues in the next month or so–I’d be glad to send you one of the beautiful broadsides Ecotone commissioned after awarding my poem “Unsonnet” the…

  • Mycelial poetry devouring the ruins

    Mycelial poetry devouring the ruins

    For the last couple of years, my muse has been mycelial. I mean both that fungus infests my current mss–I’m revising a poetry collection and a novel–and, in a related way, that a mycelial life seems like what I ought to be aiming for. Spreading tendrils underground, sprouting mushrooms after a storm, metabolizing trouble: these…

  • Electing another trajectory

    Electing another trajectory

    I’ve known since childhood that to many people, I’m not a full person, but I can’t pinpoint the moment I grasped it. Sexual assaults in college and high school were strong messages that my body didn’t belong to me. In a middle school class debate, a teacher required me to argue AGAINST the Equal Rights…