LESLEY WHEELER

Category: reading

  • The Great Pink Sea Snail rides on

    The Great Pink Sea Snail rides on

    During my ridiculously lucky 3-night residency in Miami last week–praise to SWWIM and the Betsy Writer’s Room!–I worked on a multipart poem I started in October. The sequence begins by conjuring a tiny land snail. A brainstorm occurred to me on the sand, because in South Beach you’re basically obligated to do some of your…

  • Stars, luck, and revelations

    Stars, luck, and revelations

    “The Instagram astrologers says big positive changes are coming for me this week!” I yelled from my reading chair to my spouse at his laptop, although the cats seemed interested, too. He said something like “that’s nice, honey,” or maybe just a neutral “mmm” because he was concentrating on the hundredth book of comics scholarship…

  • Instead of patriotism, fungus

    Instead of patriotism, fungus

    I’m not feeling the red-white-and-blue this year, so I hereby give you an image of the very pink Barbie pagoda mushroom–Podoserpula miranda–from New Caledonia, image drawn from The Global Fungal Red List. You’re welcome. I found stories about its discovery when I was reminding myself of the names of mushroom morphologies for a novel I’ve…

  • Rustle like old women’s laughter

    Rustle like old women’s laughter

    This week, in my “Modern Poetry’s Media” course, I told my undergrads about poet Helene Johnson‘s success during the Harlem Renaissance, subsequent disappearance from the literary scene, and rediscovery late in the 20th century. “Rediscovery” is a funny term, of course–she knew where she was the whole time, although other poets and the critics weren’t…

  • Tender and furious

    Tender and furious

    A friend sends me haiku most days, under the rule that I don’t comment on them because I do that for a living and it can wear me out–it’s a pleasure to just watch them float by. One of the latest was addressed to a black widow living near his bed, informing it that he…

  • 2024 in reading

    2024 in reading

    Pictured above are four strong new poetry books I read during the time-out-of-time between Christmas and New Year’s. Television Fathers by Sylvia Jones, a former Shenandoah Editorial Fellow, stretches the boundaries of the poetic in surreal and striking ways, often by deploying ekphrasis. In Rough, there’s lots of powerful ekphrasis too, but what stays with…