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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…
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So much poetry month
Love poem, lust poem, breakup poem, prayer poem, curse poem, contemplating-mortality-while-looking-at-a-dead-animal poem, nature-sure-is-beautiful poem, nature-sure-is-weird poem, language-is-weird poem, art-inspires-me poem, what’s-the-point-of-poetry poem, I-miss-my-home poem, escape poem, world’s-going-to-hell poem in its environmental and political varieties, people-are-shitty poem, I-have-hope-anyway poem, my-body’s-failing-me poem, struggling-against-despair poem, hey-I’m-not-dead-yet poem, apology poem, not-sorry poem, I-fear-for-my-children poem, grief poem (a category much…
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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…
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Poetry & music & feeling better
This video is of a random person we watched on a quiet beach on our four-night trip to Aruba: a parasailer gliding back and forth for an hour, occasionally leaping or dipping into the Caribbean but mostly just writing his verse across the horizon, left to right and calmly back again as the sun set…
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Three of swords time
The best thing this week: my poem “Sex Talk” was featured by Poetry Daily. Lots of friends and a few strangers sent or posted lovely notes about it. This poem came not long after my mother’s death, if I’m remembering right, as I worked through the grief and freedom that follow the death of a…
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Forbidden blog
January 25th Last night I finished Forbidden Notebook by Cuban-Italian writer Alba de Céspedes. Yes, I steal time for pleasure reading even on school nights, when I can. This novel was a Christmas gift from a good friend, and knowing zero about the writer (or translator Ann Goldstein), I had no sense of the world…
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Some indie books for your list
This week in the U.S. academic calendar involves a lot of reflection on and (less rewardingly) grading of student writing. I always sift and contemplate of my own year’s work, too, looking over what I’ve read and written, considering what I want to do next, or do better. I wasn’t surprised to see poet-blogger Ann…
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Walking: a footnote
I just finished “Traversals: A Folio on Walking,” guest-edited by Anna Maria Hong and Christine Hume for the summer 2023 issue of The Hopkins Review. Walking and poetry have so many intersections: they foster observation, thinking, feeling, and talking; prompt unexpected encounters; depend on rhythm; and sometimes resemble each other even structurally, because meditation and…
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Holding dear
I find it pretty easy to blog about writing, reading, and teaching–but very hard to post about other subjects that are constantly on my mind, from climate justice and social justice to politics. I don’t have special expertise in the latter subjects; I really don’t like jump-on-the-bandwagon social media declarations for reasons I could write…
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LESLEY WHEELER 