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Shaky & a still life
On election day, I taught a Zoom workshop to a small creative writing workshop at Western Washington State, with a focus on spell- and prayer-poems. The teacher and I thought hard about the timing and decided it would be a good distraction for us and them–and it sure was. I read some poems and answered…
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Publishing in the apocalypse (please vote!)
My last poetry book, The State She’s In, launched on March 17th, 2020. I’m far from the only author whose disappointed feeling was swamped by the dimensions of pandemic disaster. Millions died; literary cancelations were vanishingly small potatoes by comparison. Other authors shared stories of their 9/11/21 launch dates or the collapse of the book-buying…
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Mycocosmic cover & pre-order link!!!
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Impossible, improbable, and infinitely full
It’ll be Shenandoah‘s 75th anniversary in 2025 and celebrations are beginning. First up, an exhibition at W&L’s Leyburn Library curated by Editor in Chief Beth Staples and students. It features precious and startling items from the archive. For example, poems and letters from Langston Hughes and E. E. Cummings are on display, and, more unusually,…
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Magic reciprocity
My two fall classes are a first-year writing seminar called “Other Worlds” and an advanced poetry class called “Haunted & Strange,” so as autumn starts, I’m feeling weird in a good way. I’m also reading Robert Duncan’s The H.D. Book, full of meditations on poetry’s magic and modernism’s intersections with the occult, and wow, I…
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Small college English, ’90s style
I just began a new term with thirty years at W&L in the rearview mirror. I looked up 1994: aside from the leaders and wars I remembered, Wikipedia reminded me that was the year Munch’s The Scream was stolen, Kurt Cobain died, Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president, the Chunnel opened, and Pulp Fiction…
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Calendaring, with palpitations
My body never tells me “it’s a full moon,” but I have a strong sense for the wheel of the year. Something shifts in me, an internal reorientation, and I think oh, August 1st, Lughnasadh, Lammas, midpoint between summer solstice and fall equinox. First fruits of the harvest, here we are! Of course, the US…
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Talkin’ poetry, music, & ambition
In her memoir A Freewheelin’ Time, Suze Rotolo emphasizes the young Bob Dylan’s “fever to learn”: making pilgrimages to hear legends, hanging around his peers to pick up their songs and arrangements, occasionally using said arrangements on his own records before said peers got the chance. According to another source, Dylan at least once absconded…
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Spiral aboveground, mycelium beneath
Sick for much of the last few weeks, I became a literary twister, pulling in a lot of reading and flinging out a few things, too. I’m not in poetry submission mode, except for a couple of residency applications. Instead, I’m occupying the quiet eye of a poetry storm by preparing a book for publication,…
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The conference program and underprogram
Gregory Pardlo, paraphrased, from a staged conversation with Allison Joseph: I know I might sound like a hypocrite, but don’t worry about the prizes; there’s so much compromise and chance in the process. Just keep doing your thing and saying yes to opportunities. Conferences have a program and an underprogram. Between events I talk to…
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LESLEY WHEELER 