Memoir

On Poetry and Loss, Part 2

I sometimes think African American “cool” and Irish humor developed out of an awareness of the truth that life is not merciful.

Tagged as: Catholic, Catholicism, grief, hernandez, Jimenez, Lorca, Loss, Me Sobra El Corazon, or Machado, Poetry and Poetics, spanish poetry

Read the full article →

On Poetry and Loss

by Joe Weil Memoir

The handling of such overwhelming material is first and last, a question of form. Grief, loss, outrage, must be made portable.

Tagged as: and Elizabeth Bishop, apostrophe, apostrophic address, elegy, Facebook, Fernando Pessoa, frank o'hara, grief, Loss, lullaby of the onion, miguel hernandez, One Art, Paul Celan, Roethke, status updates, The Book of Disquiet, The Day Lady Died, villanelle

Read the full article →

Terms, Truth, Sun Sparrows: A Very Important Lesson from My Father

by Joe Weil Academia

I tell my students that education can do the work of evil: it can make a bunch of aleatory systems with PHDs think they have a right to be superior to the Rocky Weils of this world. They can make a son misunderstand the wisdom of his own father. They stink of torture and snobbery, they are rank with the odor of exclusion and bias, and we call this “truth” or “Dogma” or “terminology.”

Tagged as: aleatory systems, bias, dogma, elizabeth, exclusion, false wisdom, Joe Weil, New Jersey, rocky weil, sun sparrow, terminology, truth

Read the full article →

The Book Bag

by Joe Weil Memoir

The weirdest things survive. I lost my parents and some of those friends also died: Eric, who introduced me to vampire comics and Henry Miller novels, his brother Greg who netted the biggest trout I ever caught, Huey who threw a good fast ball, and liked jamming with me on the piano.

Tagged as: early literary efforts, Joe Weil, memory

Read the full article →

Look What God Can Do!

by Colie Hoffman Memoir

No one wants to appear childlike and vulnerable to others, but everyone (everyone who seeks out new experiences, anyway) wants to feel that way–along with love, awe is the one of the emotions people seek most deeply. And for writers, whose job is to express the inexpressible, the hidden, these two aims can feel at odds.

Tagged as: colie hoffman, India, Sangam House, vulnerability, Writer in Residence

Read the full article →

Ur Poems: Sarah V. Schweig

by Sarah V. Schweig Memoir

The first poem I ever loved was The Raven. Specifically, one line from the poem haunted me when I was young, and still does: “The silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain.”

Tagged as: Edgar Allen Poe, Poe, Sarah V. Schweig, The Raven, ur poems

Read the full article →

Meditation on Milosz

by Joe Weil Memoir

We must always be as careful with nostalgia as we are with most forms of vulgarity: it is too close to the whore’s heart, and can be used by politicians to promote a “purity,” an Edenic return that supports the most vile sense of the volk.

Tagged as: A Certain Neighborhood, Czeslaw Milosz, meditation, memory, nostalgia, Proust, volk

Read the full article →

Dispatch after emerging from the post-AWP hangover: or My first AWP

by Adam Pellegrini Memoir

At a party last Thursday night after a full day at this year’s AWP conference, I broke one of my own absolute rules – never, under any circumstances resort to quoting The Big Lebowski.

Tagged as: Adam Pellegrini, AWP, Big Lebowski, Coen Brothers, movie quotes

Read the full article →

The other thing grammar is good for

by Daniel Silliman Language

Grammar can be a brutal, brutal thing.

Tagged as: English as a Second Language, grammar, how language works, shame, teaching, What is grammar good for?

Read the full article →

Meditation on Apollinaire

by Joe Weil Memoir

I must describe the physical sensation this poem had on me. It was a hot and humid day, and the house was full of fans whirring, and flies buzzing, and no one was home.

Tagged as: Apollinaire, Johnny Cash, Le Pont Mirabeau, Long Black Veil, Mirabeau Bridge, Refrain

Read the full article →

The Bookshelf

by Daniel Silliman Memoir

In books rowed up on the shelf you see, for the first time, your own death.

Tagged as: books of life, mortality, reading, reading memoir

Read the full article →

Portland

by Stuart Krimko Memoir

I’m sitting up in bed, or on the couch, as it were, where I have been trying to sleep off the slew of vodka-and-tonics I downed last night at our Sand Paper Press reading here in Portland. Shawn Vandor, whose Fire at the end of the rainbow was just reviewed over at Dossier, and I [...]

Tagged as: convalescence, Elizabeth Bishop, Los Angeles, Rimbaud, spring, William Carlos Williams

Read the full article →

Page 1 of 212 »

Current Hits
Most Popular
Most Commented
Reviews

Indie Bookstores: Paris
What would a trip to Paris be without a gentle kiss from Destiny?
Indie Bookstores: Cambridge and Boston
The first books I saw when I walked in were Franco Moretti’s two-volume history of the novel. I’m in paradise.
The Solipsist in Purgatory: Jollimore’s AT LAKE SCUCOG
It’s always a relief to me when I see a book published by somebody outside the “poetry ghetto.”
And I Chose—All: Mary Ruefle
Picasso wrote this well before Mary Ruefle started publishing books, but if his words could be an egg, Ruefle’s Selected Poems would hatch right out of it.

Memoir

On Poetry and Loss, Part 2

On Poetry and Loss

Terms, Truth, Sun Sparrows: A Very Important Lesson from My Father

The Book Bag

Look What God Can Do!

Ur Poems: Sarah V. Schweig

Meditation on Milosz

Dispatch after emerging from the post-AWP hangover: or My first AWP

The other thing grammar is good for

Meditation on Apollinaire

The Bookshelf

Portland

POEM OF THE WEEK

TOPICS

POETRY FIX

Archives