I used to think a poem could become a flower, a bear, or a house for a ravaged spirit. I used to think I understood what it meant to write a poem, and understood the impetus to write, and even knew a little something of the immensity of the source of poetry. I was never…
The vigor and accomplishment of contemporary American literature is nowhere more easily appreciated than in the journals and quarterlies that labor doggedly, and for the most part thanklessly, to display both the quantity and quality of the enterprise. The quantity and quality of those journals and quarterlies themselves is both staggering and delightful, and the…
Women think they know everything about love and they are wrong. Men think they know nothing about love and they are wrong, too. Books spoil you for love Love spoils you for food Food spoils Reading was the first thing worth leaving home for. I read the way you should never love or eat….
". . . whence a whole world emerges."—Cavafy A friend of mine finds out from her agent (her editor never calls) that her book, her fourth, has been dropped from her publisher’s catalogue. The work is too difficult. A writer I know is told, "How about putting in some dogs? People love it when…
It is my pleasure to nominate Nuar Alsadir. I have been a great admirer of her work for many years now. With echoes of Rumi and Hafiz, her poems are a delicate mix of the quotidian and the profound. In witty, vibrant, always surprising turns, she reveals to us the weight of each fleeting moment….
Ms. Maclay has a superb lyric gift, a remarkable imagistic clarity, and a constant sense of invention. Her recent prose poems—a departure for her—strike me as some of the most gracious and compelling of the genre. She is melding the concerns of her more fiercely lyric pieces with a more elongated music phrasing, and the…
I’m proud to nominate Patrick Michael Finn, one of my most accomplished, prolific former students and one of my favorite writers. Mr. Finn remains someone I talk about quite often, though he graduated in 1997, and someone whose stories have never left my mind. I still remember his characters—lonely Joliet teenagers struggling with religion and…
I endorse with great enthusiasm the poems of Jaswinder Bolina. I firmly believe he is a poet whom we will be hearing about in the not-too-distant future. The foundations of his work are complex, and I will attempt to lay them out here. Clearly, one would deduce from reading these poems, here is someone who…
Jennifer Boyden’s poetry is haunting, empowered by a crisp but lyrical language. It’s quietly thoughtful and emotionally engaging. —Nance Van Winckel, author of four books of poetry and three short story collections. She teaches in the graduate creative writing programs of Vermont College and Eastern Washington University.
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