Poetry

Well-Traveled Verse: The Book of Poems You’ll Find Everywhere in India

ByJohn Rufo June 1, 2015

Indian bookstores come in wide varieties: street-sellers pitch copies of everything from tabloids to Freud, more upscale boutiques feature plastic-wrapped paperbacks in scholarly fields, and stuffed-to-the-brim cubicles at train depots deliver Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels beside worn editions of the Gita. But, without a doubt, I always came across copies of Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections. The…

Poetry | Reading

The Poetry of Subtle Movement

ByTim Ellison May 13, 2015

In recent months, Farrar, Straus and Giroux has released two poetry collections that encapsulate much of what I love about poetry: James Lasdun’s Bluestone: New and Selected Poems and Devin Johnston’s Far-Fetched. Lasdun and Johnston are quite different in style and subject matter, but they are both masters of the subtle shift, the poem that…

Book Reviews | Nonfiction | Poetry | Reading | Series

THE NEUTRAL CORNER: Michael Hofmann’s “Where Have You Been?” And Gottfried Benn’s “Impromptus”

ByJohn Skoyles May 1, 2015

The neutral corner is one of the two corners of the ring not used by boxers between rounds. It is also the corner a boxer must retreat to after he has floored his opponent. The Neutral Corner was also a bar in Saratoga Springs, New York, that I frequented when at Yaddo in the late…

When We Are Given a Feast of Flesh

ByJohn Rufo April 2, 2015

How do I remember spaces? Bedrooms, beaches, backseats, bazaars. The time between dreams. Night. The no-man’s land of a twelve-hour flight. I remember the world as words. I spent my last few weeks in Delhi hunting for books. For relatives, for friends, but, finally, for my own sake: to call back India when I was…

Authors | Nonfiction | Poetry | Reading | Writing

Naming as Paying Attention

ByAlex Chertok March 15, 2015

Names can be hard for the tongue to wrap its head around. I say this with the conviction of my full being as a male, a poet, a twin, and a slight stutterer. (Of course I stutter. My brother and I lived our early lives assuming that the world, too, would understand our twin-speak. And…

Book Reviews | Poetry

Review: TWENTY THOUSAND PIGEONS by Justin Bigos

ByAmelia Hassani March 6, 2015

Twenty Thousand Pigeons Justin Bigos iO Press, 2014 1st edition sold out; inquire here When I think of twenty thousand pigeons, I think of Disney vacations and city park picnics from childhood—precious memories ruined by grey birds pooping in my hair and stealing my French fries. But when I think of Twenty Thousand Pigeons, a…

Nonfiction | Poetry | Writing | Writing Advice

(Writing) Exercise: Self-compassion

ByAlex Chertok February 15, 2015

I’m talking here of memory’s difficulty. Difficult not in the way I have to wrack my weak brain to remember what happened, but in the way I’m forced to face that time I let my brother, bleeding from the mouth, run the mile home alone. Difficult in the way that looking back prompts me to…

Book Reviews | Poetry

Review: AIMLESS LOVE by Billy Collins

ByTim Ellison January 14, 2015

Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems Billy Collins Random House, October 2013 288 Pages $16.00 Buy: book | ebook Three thousand miles away from my library—most of it translated literature, most of it tortuously postmodern—I turned in a lonely hour to my dad’s hardcover copy of Billy Collins’ Aimless Love. I’d never read much of…

Book Reviews | Poetry

Review: LIKE A BEGGAR by Ellen Bass

ByEllen Duffer January 2, 2015

Like a Beggar Ellen Bass Copper Canyon Press, March 2014 70 pages $16.00 Buy: book Exquisitely wrought in language and imagery, Ellen Bass’s third collection meditates on sequencing images. Her poems open in one place and close elsewhere. She signals this with titles that point toward the firsts and lasts, such as “The Beginning of the…

Poetry

Well-Traveled Verse: The Book of Poems You’ll Find Everywhere in India

The Poetry of Subtle Movement

THE NEUTRAL CORNER: Michael Hofmann’s “Where Have You Been?” And Gottfried Benn’s “Impromptus”

When We Are Given a Feast of Flesh

Naming as Paying Attention

Review: TWENTY THOUSAND PIGEONS by Justin Bigos

(Writing) Exercise: Self-compassion

Review: AIMLESS LOVE by Billy Collins

Review: LIKE A BEGGAR by Ellen Bass

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