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  • Western Saddle, I

    set out across the fields anonymous, drawn inward like a sea of dusk beneath the cribbed retreat of sun. Remember us against the vinyl in that summer like an apocalypse across the sheetless rising chipped repeat of artificial light of grocery lists wrung. Last night and last night’s last night you cheat the snow, my…

  • Pastime Lanes Lounge

    Friday night, my divorced brother trying out his new girlfriend on us, the oldies funk band so loud all we can do is dance and wait for a break— she sways, arms tight to her chest, fists shaking imaginary maracas. My brother’s steps have not changed—some vague C & W hip twitch from wife #1….

  • Influence

    Halliday’s in Italy and Koch is dead (though I admit Koch never meant much to me). What matters is he made Halliday feel understood in (I imagine) much the way Halliday made me. I read him and knew I was free. A few years later he read me and just often enough responded enthusiastically (all…

  • Tierney’s Gourmet

    Recommendation: I am delighted to nominate Brittani Sonnenberg, a senior at Harvard, and a member of my Creative Writing class last fall. Brit is a joy in every way: smart, unpretentious, perceptive, and adventurous. As a member of an improv comedy group, she is used to taking risks; you can see in her work, I…

  • On Jeffrey Pethybridge

    I’ve known Jeff since 1996 when, as my undergraduate student at Old Dominion University, he first attended one of several classes we would have together. The high level of his energy, his seriousness, his palpable joy in reading and shaping poetry was immediately apparent, and it was soon thereafter that he became more a collaborator…

  • On Brittani Sonnenberg

    I am delighted to nominate Brittani Sonnenberg, a senior at Harvard, and a member of my Creative Writing class last fall. Brit is a joy in every way: smart, unpretentious, perceptive, and adventurous. As a member of an improv comedy group, she is used to taking risks; you can see in her work, I think,…

  • On Tanya Larkin

    One of the things I admire about Tanya Larkin’s work is how perfectly accessible it is, while at the same time lush with invention, music, obliquity, and all the other thrills we’ve come to recognize as visionary writing. The occasion in her poems is often an exact place which has the odd property of being…