Hawthornden International Writers’ Retreat There’s a poem I’m always trying to write. It always begins the same way. Oh, listen, listen— It is the urgency of the words that compels me. I know what the poem is about, it’s about the world and its shining. But what comes after these words is…
John Casteen is extremely talented, very dedicated, and a marvelous young writer. He always had a raw and edgy talent, an energy and kinetic spirit that were very impressive. Over the course of his time with us at UVA, he smoothed and solidified that talent and energy into finishing poems that were very impressive. He…
These cyan-colored snails emerge from the white Umbrian mist with murder on their minds—memories of slow rainy Saturdays—how the city of Firenze looked to Perugino on the day his second son was born—Lord Byron’s lost reflection buried under the pebbles in the springs of Fonti del Clitunno. I feel that snail itching its way across…
What did Sinclair Lewis say about sweet potatoes, or rather Upton Sinclair, or red potatoes? Crows. Crows all day. And the river holding on to the mist, sixty watts of sunshine at noon and the smell of cadmium under the bridge, coal yards and dumps, the boat launch south of the locks, fission in a…
In my opinion and in the opinions of many teachers, writers, and readers of contemporary poetry I am in touch with, Beth Woodcome, still in her mid-twenties, is one of the most talented, original, and hard-working poets in the country. —Franz Wright, author of many collections of poetry and translation, including most recently Walking to…
The ashtray was given as a wedding present to the young couple who later grew unhappy and died, but that was not the fault of any inanimate object. Made from crystal cut into pleasing shapes, it was held aloft by the bride, Flora, the day after the wedding. Already she thought she could see the…
If the dog were a cloud, he could run through blue pastures, and never catch his hair on a fence. He could leap at other clouds and they would not growl or bite. He could retrieve the sun, which would glow in his mouth, and light up all his teeth. And how pleased his mistress…
Dobby Gibson’s poems are remarkable for their enactment of thought. Even at their most associational, there is always a syntax of argument at work which lends his sometimes serpentine sentences forceful momentum. Even when he’s flying by the seat of his pants, there’s a splendid sense of a presiding, living intelligence. —Dean Young, author of…
from Inheritance When she was thirty-four, no longer a young woman, my grandmother Chanyi crossed West Lake to see a fortuneteller. She didn’t tell my grandfather; she wished to keep her fate a secret. Perhaps her years of married life had deepened her need for privacy. “You come along, Junan,” she told my mother. “She’ll…
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