The Look2 essay series, which replaces our print book reviews, takes a closer look at the careers of accomplished authors who have yet to receive the full appreciation that their work deserves. Reviews of new books can still be found on our blog at pshares.org. It was my good fortune to have been enrolled…
There is a moment in every sail, whether you’re in a ten-foot dinghy or in a fifty-foot-plus cruiser, when the physics of wind and water catch hold of you. You can feel it in the lift of the boat against your back and in the way the muscles of your legs involuntarily tighten to compensate…
The last nonfiction/memoir course I taught at Florida International University last year included a new student, a young woman named Susan Falco. She was the quietest person in the class, yet spoke with authority (quietly) when she spoke. What she wrote was not only memorable—it burned itself into my memory. Her prose seemed to me…
Lindsay Stuart Hill’s two poems were written after a stay at Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York. Zen texts and the practice of meditation have influenced many of Hill’s recent poems. In a letter to me, she wrote: “As I reread these monastery poems, for me they are centered on the fundamental tension that…
Jynne Dilling Martin completed her MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, where I teach, and although she was never my student, except in the occasional workshop, I’ve kept my eye on her. From the start her impressive gifts included a distinct voice— headlong, unprotected, usually jazzed, sometimes manic, often very funny, and always…
When Barbara Perez moved from San Antonio to Boston—a city she’d never visited—to join a new program’s first MFA class, she revealed a certain willingness to take risks. Her work radiates the same willingness, using logic twined with metaphor to explore passion’s depths. In poems like “Bottle,” mindfulness is the natural way to express feeling…
A psychological experiment was once performed on horses. Each animal had been taught to stamp a hoof four times, say, when the trainer called out that number. The horses that got the number right were rewarded with a carrot or cube of sugar. But for experiment’s sake, the trainers periodically denied the horses their rewards…
Reprinted from Issue 3 of Ploughshares, Winter 1972. (guest edited by James Randall) Richard Yates was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1926. He graduated from the Avon School in 1944, served in the last years of World War II, and until 1952 worked at a variety of jobs, ranging from newspaper rewrite man to…
I recently worked with Nickolas Butler here in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His literary focus remains the same, explorations of the human quest for meaning and value. In this story, Lyle, the primary character, loses his settled job and his settled place within a community. Searching for a deeper, more meaningful sense of self, he…
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