LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: Heterotopia

  • Cosmic, dystopic, poetic

    Cosmic, dystopic, poetic

    Spring proceeds peony by heavy-headed peony. With satisfaction and struggle, I’ve mostly finished the editorial part of the season, although we’re now proofing Shenandoah‘s Spring issue. I’ll be off the hook for a while, except for the relatively moderate workload of running the annual Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Writers, because I’ve now set the poetry…

  • Working unpoetically

    Working unpoetically

    This was probably my least poetic National Poetry Month ever–not that the label matters, really, but spring is usually a good writing season for me. I did read poetry but didn’t write or revise a blessed thing. Instead of feeling poetic, I’ve just been really, really tired. Maybe it’s Covid aftermath, or seasonal allergies, or…

  • Lines Composed in Bath a Few Days After Visiting Tintern Abbey

    Lines Composed in Bath a Few Days After Visiting Tintern Abbey and Also Nottingham, Coleford, Netheravon, and Miscellaneous Places Viewed Accidentally Because We Forgot to Reserve a Car with Sat-Nav and Had No Map. June 22, 2015. Twenty-six years have passed!–two advanced degrees, two mortgages, two beauteous teens raised to height if not to wisdom…

  • Postcard for Jean

    Today I’m thinking of my much-loved Aunt Jean, who died at her home in England this morning. I came to know her best in 1988, when I stayed with Jean, my Uncle Pete, and my cousin Nigel in Cyprus for three weeks. I was studying abroad at the University of Southampton and, during a long…

  • Big Poetry Giveaway 2014

    So it’s national poetry writing month again, and shouldering aside all the forces that prevent one from concentrating on any project in a dogged way, I am writing. The plan: draft a long poem, one section per day, for thirty days. The rules: I just have to write a little bit daily, at any time,…

  • Moldy

    Some good advice I received from Barrow Street editor Peter Covino about the manuscript of Heterotopia:  stop saying “I remember” so much. After all, he remarked—I’m sure I’m paraphrasing badly—isn’t “I remember” implicit in every poem? I received that comment with chagrined recognition. I’d even published a poem in my first book, Heathen, called “I…

  • Heterocosmic

    My mother divested herself of all kinds of things last year—furniture, dishes, adulterous husband. On one of my visits she loaded me up with a bin of old papers and photos. I quickly divided them into four piles: one each for me, my sister, and my brother, and one for disposal. Then I left my…

  • Myself the only kangaroo among the beauty

    Researching poetic networks is making me feel anomalous. Partly this is just the familiar unfamiliarity of living in a different country, where every friendship is new and you’re never quite sure whether you understand people or they understand you. Some of my disorientation is minor and funny, like realizing in the middle of reciting “Spring-Sick”…