LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: Jen Karetnick

  • Ectoplasmic micro poetry reviews

    Ectoplasmic micro poetry reviews

    “Poet or poem or reader, the same/ ectoplasm,” Diane Seuss writes in her latest collection. I’m reading and writing poetry with ardor again, feeling that welcome ectoplasmic connection. I don’t know if my creative brain is clicking into gear because of the season (I often go dormant in winter and start writing again in the…

  • Three editors on rejection and persistence

    I finished choosing Shenandoah poems a couple of weeks ago. It’s such a pleasure to accept work, but there was so much strong poetry that I had to turn down, I could have built another good issue out of what I rejected. Honestly, I agonized so much I wondered if I’m cut out for this.…

  • Learning, unlearning, and #AWP21

    You know the way somebody makes a remark and it clangs in you, your body vibrating with recognition? A friend recently told me that she’s learned a lot over the past year about what she needs to be happy. Yes. I’ve had other lesson years: for instance, I learned during my long-ago stint as department…

  • The present and future of pandemic poetry

    Like a sad dragon, I’m currently sitting on a diminishing hoard of potential poems for future issues of Shenandoah—Fall ’21 and Spring ’22, presuming we get there–knowing I can’t keep ALL the gold. I’m already rejecting good poems, trying to get down to 20-ish from more than 700 batches. The last couple of weeks have…