LESLEY WHEELER

Category: Uncategorized

  • Arthur Sze’s mushrooms

    Arthur Sze’s mushrooms

    I planned to get my third novel started this January, and I have. I wasn’t far in, though, before my brain started playing hooky. Psst, Lesley, I have a poem idea for you. Poetry always seems to prefer a sidewise approach, when I’m looking the other way. There’s nothing to do but obey. Arthur Sze’s…

  • 2025 in reading (playing Yesterday)

    2025 in reading (playing Yesterday)

    My eldest child embroidered their way through this hard year, so for Christmas they gave me some of my favorite poetic lines on a little panel of violet cloth. They’re from Dickinson’s “Let Us play Yesterday.” “The o’s kill me,” Madeleine remarked about the difficulty of embroidering round letters. This detail seems poetic in its…

  • 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…

  • The knife

    The knife

    At one of the many events I attended this fall, a magazine editor, reflecting on downsides of a generally rewarding job, sighed and said something like “so many bad poems.” What’s hardest for me about selecting poems for Shenandoah is how many good poems I receive, way more than I can accept, given a limited…

  • Washington-bound (the other one)

    Washington-bound (the other one)

    I’m packing now for 12 days in the Pacific northwest (not nearby Washington D.C., which essentially seems like Mordor now). Here’s the poetry part of my itinerary: I’m excited, not just about the barding around part but exploring unfamiliar scenery (the Olympic peninsula! temperate rain forest! mountain and Pacific views!)–and seeing friends. I’ll technically have…

  • Voices in my head

    Voices in my head

    I don’t know how to harmonize the jostling inner voices of the last few weeks into coherent prose, so here’s some cacophony.

  • Hawthorns, bogs, & undersongs

    Hawthorns, bogs, & undersongs

    The BurrenSometimes you bring pain along like a walletof funny-colored bills or a mobile phone.Here’s a knotted neck for the Burren. A spirit-fissure to echo the limestone grykes. Karstpavement matches you: riven grays, white lichen,sky pale with tiredness. Stand on a clint and becomeinvisible, perfectly camouflaged by pain.Yet in the watery gaps tiny pink flowers…

  • A D.C. reading, ghost pipes, & more Dickinson

    A D.C. reading, ghost pipes, & more Dickinson

    My new mushroom-patterned dress and I will appear at Kramer’s in Washington, D.C., this Tuesday 7/22, where I’m reading at 7 pm with Steven Leyva and Tonee Mae Moll. (The dress is kind of retro and I think I look like a sci-fi 50s nurse in it, or maybe a waitress at a fungus-themed diner.)…

  • Dickinson’s fungal weirdness

    Dickinson’s fungal weirdness

    This Thursday, 7/17, at 6 pm Eastern, I’m reading with Nadia Alexis in a virtual series, Phosphorescence, hosted by the Emily Dickinson Museum. (Nadia’s great book Beyond the Watershed launched on the very same March day as my Mycocosmic so it’s been a pleasure to pair up a couple of times.) The reading is free…

  • Itinerant Poet with Toadstools, Witches, & Shame

    Itinerant Poet with Toadstools, Witches, & Shame

    Mycocosmic is now three months old. Since it sprouted, I’ve done twenty events, recorded a few podcasts, received some nice notice (here’s the latest lovely review, by K.B. Kinkel). Meanwhile I taught very-full-time and kept working to set up summer and fall events, although they’re scheduled more calmly. “How are you feeling about the launch?”…