LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: Cimarron Review

  • Divination by poem

    Divination by poem

    I’m sending you a brief postcard from snowdrop time. Virginia has always had “midwinter spring, its own season,” to quote Four Quartets–a balmy few days in February–but never, that I can recall, so early in the month. Omens everywhere. Meanwhile, here’s what’s going down: Back to nudging my creative writers to try their hand (or…

  • 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…

  • Big-ears plots her escape

    Sometimes the news just silences me: children suffering in camps, the Justice Department refusing to seek justice after the killing of Eric Garner, racist tweets from the white-nationalist-in-chief. I make donations and sometimes participate in political action, but mostly I’m sitting around like Ursula, all ears and touchy whiskers, no words. I will say, having…

  • She cannae take any more, cap’n

    Trying to teach Robert Hayden on Friday, I had such a mother of a hot flash that my glasses fogged up. I’m not sure my students even noticed. We were discussing Hayden’s complicated elegy for Malcolm X, a small star releasing its own fire, and the seminar is full of canny astronomers with their own…