Category: Virtual Poetry Salon
A Very Good Anti-Best List
It’s exasperating when people refer to a work of art as “great” as if that were an objective pronouncement. Great for what? The idea that there could be stable, neutral criteria by which literature could be judged more or less worthy is at best… Continue Reading “A Very Good Anti-Best List”
Virtual Salon #13 with Sonia Greenfield
This intense week, I’m featuring a new collection by activist-editor-poet Sonia Greenfield (check out Rise Up Review sometime, too, for brilliant poems of resistance). Letdown consists of 64 numbered prose poems about pregnancy, birth, raising a special needs child, miscarriage, grief, and recovery. No… Continue Reading “Virtual Salon #13 with Sonia Greenfield”
Virtual Salon #11 with Martha Silano
Dear Mr. Wordsworth, It turns out there is no tranquility. When you read any of Martha Silano’s books, all of them fizzing with brio and invention and awe, you want to start a salon just so you can invite her. As Diane Seuss says… Continue Reading “Virtual Salon #11 with Martha Silano”
Virtual Salon #10 with Ruth Dickey
I mark up most of my poetry books–prepare to be shocked–IN PEN. I probably started in grad school, before sticky notes came in all those colors and sizes, and inked notes are more legible when you return to a text to teach or write… Continue Reading “Virtual Salon #10 with Ruth Dickey”
Virtual Salon #9 with Sara Robinson
Since poetry, like bourbon, has a long shelf life and often a long trajectory of rising to wider attention, I’m including a couple of 2019 authors in this salon series, including Sara M. Robinson. Blurbing her new book, Needville, I wrote, “So many voices… Continue Reading “Virtual Salon #9 with Sara Robinson”
Virtual Poetry Salon with Tess Taylor
I’ve always liked fierce poems and feminist poems, but it wasn’t that long ago that I noticed how many of the poetry collections I like best are deeply grounded in place. In Tess Taylor’s new collection, Rift Zone, that place is California in a… Continue Reading “Virtual Poetry Salon with Tess Taylor”
Virtual Poetry Salon #5 with Caroline Cabrera
And even in blindness our chemistries communicate. Our instinct, a lace mycelium. When my cheeks go hot and I distrust a man I may be sensing the hair as it rises from another woman’s neck. I may smell her experience. We know more than… Continue Reading “Virtual Poetry Salon #5 with Caroline Cabrera”
