LESLEY WHEELER
  • About
  • Contact
  • Essays and Interviews
  • Events
  • Poems
  • Poetry’s Possible Worlds
  • The State She's In
  • Unbecoming
  • Radioland
  • Propagation
  • The Receptionist
  • Tendrils, connections, & kindness in publishing

    Tendrils, connections, & kindness in publishing

    We arrived in Virginia yesterday to a home landscape that’s lusher and more humid. This morning I went to the weekly farmer’s market and the produce has changed: zucchini, beets, and cherry tomatoes are edging out the strawberries, delicate greens, and scapes. My son and I took a walk after and found vines extending tendrils […]

    June 8, 2022
  • Filaments & telephone lines

    Filaments & telephone lines

    A potential alternate title for this post: talking myself out of post-book-launch blues. Yesterday, as I was troubleshooting on various book-related fronts, I started wondering if “troubleshooting” was another of the military metaphors that colonize my vocabulary (“front” is one). The original meaning of troubleshooting, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was a pleasant surprise. […]

    May 24, 2022
  • I’m floating in a most peculiar way

    I’m floating in a most peculiar way

    Book launch days bring a weird energy. That combined with the planetary riffs in Poetry’s Possible Worlds has Bowie’s “Space Oddity” looping in my head, which is a pretty good soundtrack, really. Not that I’ve become untethered like Major Tom, but yesterday was full of “Big Bang Day” social media tweets, pre-party anxiety, and a […]

    May 18, 2022
  • Countdown…and teaching ideas for Poetry’s Possible Worlds

    I’m getting very close now to the launch of Poetry’s Possible Worlds and therefore working hard on Poetry’s Possible Publicity. The task is a supermassive black hole tugging at my effort and energy, most of which will vanish without a trace–but I still believe in putting it out there. As Claudia Emerson framed it to […]

    May 13, 2022
  • My mother’s haiku

    Daughter, it seems that I talked nonstop now I speak without talking Somewhere around 2010, I taught a class in our four-week May term on writing poetry in forms. One project we did together: after reading more serious haiku and renku, my students had to staff a public booth and write haiku on commission in […]

    May 8, 2022
  • Poetry and the truth of it

    My mother died a year ago April 30th, so I’ve felt haunted these past few weeks. Many kind friends have been checking in with me; for now I’m just saying “okay” and wondering afterward what I meant. Truly, I’ve watched people go through life-rocking grief that lasts years, and that’s not me. My mother died […]

    May 1, 2022
  • Poetry’s Possible Worlds for pre-order–so there, Three of Cups reversed!

    One great thing this week: Poetry’s Possible Worlds arrived at the distributor, so you can pre-order it from SPD! This is particularly excellent because of the great thing NEXT week: the first book launch event! Virginia’s Poet Laureate was kind enough to connect me to the Muse Writers Center, which is hosting a virtual event […]

    April 24, 2022
  • Ashes to bluebells

    “Early on, I divined that this book already exists in the future. / After all, I thought of it; it’s a probability somewhere, complete, on a shelf. / My intention is to consult that future edition and create this one, the original, for you.” -Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, from A Treatise on Stars (2020) At first, when […]

    April 17, 2022
  • Hard lines, soft lines

    Next week I should receive my advance hard copies of Poetry’s Possible Worlds. I feel like I’m facing a portal, a door to strange woods opening at the back of a wardrobe. I know book launches are lucky and thrilling, but they also ramp my anxiety right up, especially the tasks that involve talking up […]

    April 10, 2022
  • Differently to #AWP22

    It’s been a packed week, but also kind of a splendid one. I feel more connected to literary people again–and more conscious of how much the first pandemic year, especially, disconnected us. I returned from a good conference last Sunday to visit with the wonderful poet January Gill O’Neil, who talked to my class the […]

    March 20, 2022
←Previous Page
1 2 3 4 5 … 43
Next Page→

LESLEY WHEELER

Proudly powered by WordPress

 

Loading Comments...
 

    • Follow Following
      • LESLEY WHEELER
      • Join 480 other followers
      • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
      • LESLEY WHEELER
      • Edit Site
      • Follow Following
      • Sign up
      • Log in
      • Report this content
      • View site in Reader
      • Manage subscriptions
      • Collapse this bar