“The Weather Channel,” by Dan Gerber
Men standing out in storms,
talking,
telling us how violent the wind is,
showing us they can still stand up to it
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“Yom Hashoah in Florida,” by Rick Hilles
Here, the trees pay their respects, mourn openly,
wear dreadlocks of hanging Spanish moss
sun bleached ash-blue and swaying; in seawind
they become prayer shawls
salted with dust, grief threads of every kind
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On “Floating, Brilliant, Gone”: An Interview with Franny Choi
“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.”
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Sharing the Pain, Sharing the Process: An Interview with Keith Lesmeister
“I think open endings require a little more work of the reader; that, when a scene or story is left open, the reader gets to imagine for him/herself how things might’ve turned out.”
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On “Our Sudden Museum”: An Interview with Robert Fanning
“Among this book’s major themes and images is that of the house—that structure that is often what holds a family. What happens when that house is emptied of its inhabitants? When that house has grown vacant, or has become abandoned by the departure or passing of those who lived there?”
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“Spanish in America: Notes on Feeling Culturally Multiple,” by Frank M. Meola
Such images, alien to our suburban lives, along with her shifts into mixed Spanish and English, revealed how much my grandmother still lived in that other place. She denied wanting ever to return to Spain but followed news from her native country with keen interest, eager for the demise of the Franco dictatorship, an event she lived long enough to celebrate.
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“The Woman Who Knew Judo,” by Mary Gaitskill
I met Jean Taylor when I was five years old. She was the tallest woman I had ever seen, and she walked slowly, with her head up and her shoulders back, her hips moving like the hips of a slender cat. She wore black slacks and she had big feet which seemed to me very graceful, especially when she wore her straw sandals with the artificial cherries on them.
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A Review of Carol Smallwood’s “In Hubble’s Shadow”
“Simple images, such as the dandelion in the sidewalk crack or ice in lemonade, invite us to compare our own experience and find meaning where there was none before. More complex, but equally intangible experiences can be found in poems like ‘Rearrangements,’ which explores the aftereffects of covert child abuse, although each victim is different.”
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“January 1, 1924,” by Osip Mandelstam
Oh, life of clay! Oh, century’s death throes!
I am afraid only he will understand you
Who wears the helpless human smile of a man
Who has exhausted himself.
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Climbing Lion Rock: An Interview with Wawa and Henry Wei Leung
“This intense, absurd tragedy, I realize now, is my invisible foundation. The myth of Pei Pei is born here—an image that picks up the devastation between Nietzsche and the world and between me and Hong Kong. The dead part of me still lingers in Hong Kong through Pei Pei.”
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