LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: modernism

  • Rustle like old women’s laughter

    Rustle like old women’s laughter

    This week, in my “Modern Poetry’s Media” course, I told my undergrads about poet Helene Johnson‘s success during the Harlem Renaissance, subsequent disappearance from the literary scene, and rediscovery late in the 20th century. “Rediscovery” is a funny term, of course–she knew where she was the whole time, although other poets and the critics weren’t…

  • Best American, lit mags, and the merry-go-round

    Best American, lit mags, and the merry-go-round

    I’m now allowed to announce that my poem “Sex Talk” will appear in Best American Poetry 2025, chosen by Terence Winch. I had absolutely no idea it was under consideration and have never been in one of these anthologies before–didn’t think I ever would be. The December email from Mark Bibbins was a bolt out…

  • Reading T. S. Eliot’s tarot cards

    I was talking to my British and Irish poetry class about the “wicked pack of cards” Madame Sosostris wields in “The Waste Land” when one person said, “There should be a Modernist Poets tarot deck.” My brain exploded: H. D. as The Star, Pound as The Emperor, Sassoon as the Nine of Wands, maybe Yeats…

  • Book season (hours of ellipsis)

    Pumpkins are all right (in pies, not in lattes, thanks)–but what the suddenly cool, rainy weather makes me want to do is read. It’s also nourishing to be read. Hurrah for the thoughtful attention Sarah Stockton gives Poetry’s Possible Worlds in the Staff Favorites section of River Mouth Review. I love the Octoberish timing AND…

  • Not with a whimper but a bang!

    Actually, that title sounds sexual–sorry. I MEAN to tell you how my year is ending, show off some cool student work, and wish you a happy solstitial impeachment frenzy. My happy news–honored above by a photo of Ursula ecstatic about catnip–is receiving a Katherine Bakeless Nason Scholarship to Breadloaf Environmental Writers Conference this June. This…

  • Modernism in Native American Heritage Month

    Some terrific people at my university just organized our first ever Native American Heritage Month, involving two lectures, two documentaries, and a poetry reading with tastings of traditional foods. I made it to four out of five events, and every one was interesting, moving, and really fun–I’m so grateful to the organizers for their work.…

  • Teaching US Poetry from 1900-1950

    I started teaching modernism as a graduate student, leading discussion sections for Walt Litz at Princeton in ’91. When I arrived at W&L in ’94, I resolved to teach much more diverse syllabi: I put the version of modernism I’d studied in conversation with the New Negro Renaissance and included many women writers (Walt’s syllabus…

  • Imaginary journals with real poems in them

    If you’re not enjoying what you’re grading, maybe the problem lies in the assignment. I think I’m right in attributing this provocation to Paul Hanstedt, either during a faculty development talk he gave here or on a long-ago Facebook post, but at any rate, it was electrifying, and resulted in real changes in my course design.…

  • Krazy Kat among the nasturtiums

    COMICS=POETRY+GRAPHIC DESIGN, says Austin Kleon, who is, in turn, reprising Gregory Gallant, a.k.a. Seth–but wherever the formula comes from, I love the possibilities it raises for both comics and poetry as media. It’s my starting point for a paper I’m giving at the Modernist Studies Association conference very soon. I’ll be discussing the 1920 Krazy…

  • Poetry by the Sea, Pt. 1: Edna Rules

    “Edna rules!” a woman declared to me in the hotel hallway, waving a vigorous fist. “I mean, Vincent!” I organized a panel  on Edna St. Vincent Millay for Poetry by the Sea, an annual writing conference in Madison, Connecticut. The other speakers were Anna Lena Phillips Bell speaking about Millay as an ecopoet; January Gill…