A guy named Rob told me about noodling. I hadn’t known him long; he was a friend of a friend. We were drinking on a roof, which we did often in those days, in early 2000, outside Boston. This particular roof, a thin, slanted affair with a twenty-five foot drop to a driveway below, probably…
Clean Kate Northrop Persea Books, August 2011 64 pages $15.00 With intense clarity of image and spare language, Kate Northrop’s poems immediately lure you into intimacy; placed in a present, visual moment, and often addressed in second person, you are the one who is seeing.
This week’s free Ploughshares contest features our Spring 2005 issue, guest edited by Martin Espada and featuring work by Melissa Bank, Robert Creeley, Adrienne Rich, and a Pablo Neruda poem translated by Ilan Stavans. In order to win this issue, leave a comment below detailing why you love Martin Espada or any other of the…
The Seamstress and the Wind César Aira New Directions, June 2011 144 pages $12.95 César Aira is a deconstructed Kafka; a compact, comprehensible Roberto Bolaño obsessed with the frightening nonsense of civilization. The latter comparison terrifies academic readers, because if Bolano is made compact and comprehensible, how can they pretend to be the only ones who…
Lookout Books, the literary imprint at UNC Wilmington, was founded by Emily Louise Smith, director of The Publishing Laboratory, and Ben George, editor of Ecotone. Lookout gained national attention when their debut title, Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision, landed a cover review in the New York Times, with Pearlman going on to win the PEN/Malamud for…
Sometimes the right thing simply happens at the right time, and everything falls into place so beautifully that it’s almost impossible to remember how you existed beforehand. So it was for me when I was accepted to Yaddo last fall, and ended up in a wonderful group of people. Among them was Curtis Harnack. *…
Power BalladsWill BoastUniversity of Iowa Press, October 2011160 pages$16.00 This post was written by Lynne Weiss. A lot of writers are drawn to music. There is nothing scientific about this impression, but I think there are more novels, poems, and stories about music and musicians than, say, dancing or drama or painting or film. Willa…
Free Ploughshares time! For this week, we’re featuring our Spring 1982 special poetry issue, featuring an interview with Robert Bly and poems by Maxine Kumin, Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall, and Sharon Olds. To win this issue, simply comment in the space provided below with a reason why you love Robert Bly or any of the…
Until recently, Kate Flaherty was our Senior Reader for fiction. We sat down and talked to her over e-mail about literary magazines, reading slush, and her own work. Ploughshares: Tell us a little about your literary life – what were the first important books for you, when did you start writing? Kate Flaherty: Wow. Those…
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