“I’m excited by the nature of genre, like gender, to eschew formula and boundaries. I think since the world is on fire, our words are getting hotter, more urgent, more unrepentant.”
Deep Love, Deep Sorrow in the Same Body: An Interview with Gala Mukomolova Read More »
“Poems are personal devotional devices. They’re little shrines—places you touch again and again, in editing, arranging and rearranging the contents until you have them just right, just so beautiful or compelling that god / God can’t ignore them.”
Little Shrines: An Interview with Lauren Clark Read More »
“You don’t need an MFA to be a good writer, but you need readers who understand what you are trying to do, and won’t let you get away with not doing that.”
On “Psalms for the Wreckage”: An Interview with Joshua Young Read More »
“Poems are often these very strange moans. These very impossible efforts toward the innermost pangs. Somehow, the trying to go there gives me hope. To reach down and into. To make your whole language and your whole body move that way.”
A List of Further Possibilities: An Interview with Chen Chen Read More »
“I think so much of engaging in poetry (and in all art, at least art that’s not terrible and designed to preserve structures of power and oppression) is an exercise in empathy. Maybe at its base, poetry is paying close attention and then putting intentional language to communicate to another person what you’ve found.”
On “Floating, Brilliant, Gone”: An Interview with Franny Choi Read More »
“As much as I try to stay open to wherever the poem is going, I know my concerns come with me to the page. Environmental concerns, political concerns, as well as literary concerns. I hope my poems can find an audience, even one outside of the usual readership of poetry — although that doesn’t really shape the composition of poems.”
On “The Bird-while”: An Interview with Keith Taylor Read More »
“Humor helps the heart to open. And heartfelt laughter leads us towards greater connection with those around us. If you can find a way to share humor with others, then there’s an openness towards greater listening and compassion. With the serious topics I write about […] there’s a way such stories can calcify the heart if one isn’t careful. I noticed this in my teaching—if I’m just giving my students the disturbing facts about humanity without humor, it can lead to depression, discouragement, and a deeper political/social apathy. So, humor seems to restore our humanity to us—it allows us to deal with suffering with a more open heart.”
On “Children of the New World”: An Interview with Alexander Weinstein Read More »
“I’m not sure that Burn Lyrics is, strictly speaking, ‘in conversation with’ either Carson or Sappho. The model I have in mind is more like concomitant dimensions. I hope that a reader might experience a frisson of recognition, an emotional yet perhaps unplaceable feeling, when those dimensions overlap or communicate with one another.”
On “Burn Lyrics”: An Interview with Benjamin Landry Read More »
“Above my desk is this line from Wallace Stevens: ‘In the world of words / Imagination is one of / The forces of nature.’ I think of the city that way—it’s a force of nature. It can enrapture you with its pulsing marquees or literally blow broken glass in your face. Where I live especially, the wind blows, and it’s either the smell of chocolate (from a nearby factory) or sewage. A stranger starts talking to you and you don’t know how to feel—you are guarded, but then you are friendly. You love this and you hate this. You are tired because it’s hard, and you feel strong because it is. And anxiety pulses beneath all of this, it (here we go with Heidegger) wakes you up to yourself, and in the very best situation, it makes you remember that you are the city.”
On “The Refusal of Suitors”: An Interview with Ryo Yamaguchi Read More »
Ernest Hemingway famously said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Openness, presence—that’s the secret. It’s understandable, then, why so many writers crave a set time and space to write with no distractions, no peripheral commitments, and sometimes no human interaction whatsoever to engage most fully in the solitary act of writing.
A Return to Presence Read More »
