LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: crab orchard review

  • The conference program and underprogram

    The conference program and underprogram

    Gregory Pardlo, paraphrased, from a staged conversation with Allison Joseph: I know I might sound like a hypocrite, but don’t worry about the prizes; there’s so much compromise and chance in the process. Just keep doing your thing and saying yes to opportunities. Conferences have a program and an underprogram. Between events I talk to…

  • Talking to mountains

    There’s a mountain I talk to on a fairly regular basis–really, two mountains, Big House Mountain and Little House Mountain. From the window of my study, one shoulders the other nearly out of view. On a clear day, sometimes I can see the difference. Today both are occluded by dull white mists. Instead of trying…

  • Birthday-head

    Should I wear the top hat or tiara while teaching Yeats tomorrow? Poe thinks it’s a stupid question. People keep asking me how I feel about turning fifty tomorrow. One answer is: lucky. I’m back in the swing of teaching after a difficult summer, and I find it as rewarding as ever. My spouse and…

  • Intertidal zone

    I’m currently reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s flood of a novel, New York 2140, at the edges of the work day. Sea levels have risen fifty feet but stubborn New Yorkers are trying to redefine their big moldy apple as SuperVenice, navigating the street-canals via vaporettos and hydrofoils. When you read a long book slowly, it seeps into…

  • Reasons to be cheerful, part 4

    We’re supposed to be cheery in late December, right? Ho ho ho. I’ve been having a rough time, for reasons I can’t write about at the moment. But like H.D., when times are bad, I eat my way through it. This can be literally true: hello, Christmas pudding! But I also mean that I chew through piles…

  • Poetic karma

    I’m sure I’m doing a horrible disservice to an important theological concept by throwing around the phase above. I understand karma itself only in a pop-cultural way—the idea that you reap what you sow, even if not right away, not obviously. Here’s what I mean by hitching it to the adjective “poetic.” I fervently hope…