In distance running circles, we talk about the “shelf life” of our legs. The hips, knees, ankles, and feet can sustain only so much wear and tear before they start to give out. What does impending expiration look like? One day I run a solid 8-miler; the next day I can’t pull my right leg…
The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. The series will run on our blog from May 2012 until AWP13 in Boston. Please enjoy the first post on Asilah, Morocco…
Now you’re on an auction block, struggling to stand, naked except for a scrap of blanket wrapped around your shoulders. You watch as money exchanges hands and realize that you are owned now, someone’s belonging. These new people call you Phillis, again and again, as if the name your parents gave you is easily discarded,…
In the days immediately following my last post, in which I stumbled semi-sensically through the difficulties of assessing images that are designed (at least in part) to resist explanation, Facebook lit up with a series of articles about a talking pineapple that recently appeared on a New York Public Schools System standardized test, much to…
As a poet, I am always trying to do new things with my own work, trying to push my own boundaries so that I don’t end up writing the same poem over and over in the same way for the rest of my life. The tough question is, how does one do this? Beyond living…
The Variations John Donatich Henry Holt & Co., February 2012 288 Pages $25.00 One notable fact about John Donatich’s protagonist in The Variations, a priest named Dominic, is that the narration never refers to him as “Father.” His elderly mentor, Father Carl, is always given proper accreditation, but Dominic himself is always just plain old…
A Conversation with Lauren Groff, Kevin Moffett, and Christine Schutt This week, I’m excited to introduce a series of conversations I’ll be posting in the coming months: First Drafts. I’m talking to writers across genres about that tenuous and thrilling moment when something new arrives and, in one way or another, begins to demand a…
A fiction writer once told me that she thought most American poetry was apolitical and self-centered. Here’s the poem she made up to go along with her feeling: I was looking out the window upon a field thinking about myself. The line breaks are mine. I can see her point being proven in the poem…
I was fifteen when I decided I would make myself appreciate Emily Dickinson. One summer afternoon I sat down on my bedroom floor with a small book of Dickinson poems I’d been given as a gift and a dictionary. I’d never looked up so many words (I was not yet a literary girl). I began…
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