features

The Possibility of Wholeness

Interview by Melinda Wilson

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Melissa Kwasny’s first three books regularly engage various thinkers and “philosophies of the land.” Her fourth book, The Nine Senses, uses her earlier work as a launching pad to something fresh: an enactment of “what [she has] learned.” The spellbinding prose poem series is a can’t-miss …

The Auroras of Autumn by Wallace Stevens

Alfred A. Knopf 1950

It’s hard to pinpoint one book by Wallace Stevens as his most outstanding, since across his oeuvre there are so many brilliantly complex, beautiful, and fascinating poems—which is why he is one of America’s very most important and influential poets. In his last full collection, The Auroras of Autumn, Stevens continues to address his …

North Central by Lorine Niedecker

Fulcrum Press 1968

North Central, published in 1968, is Niedecker’s meditation on humankind’s place in the midst of infinite Nature and eternally cycling History. She summarizes this predicament in the line: “Man / lives hard / on this stone perch / by sea / imagines / durable works,” which is followed closely by: “let’s say / of art / We climb.” Is art, then, the …

The Dark Arts, That Is

Interview by Ken L. Walker

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A preferential statement is awfully difficult to make because, as Foucault writes, it is only etched into a culturally temporal concrete.  It is, in actuality, systems of discipline that coerce us to believe our statements are eternal. In fact, they’re dead once they reverberate into the ether. Nevertheless, some statements reverberate into an individual’s memory, and there live

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Tourist Trap, NYC is a web video series that follows touring poets to some of New York’s top tourist destinations, as well as lesser known bars, reading venues and unheralded back streets. Each episode features one or two poets as they explore the city and discuss their work, how urban landscapes influence their writing, the history or importance of landmark they’ve chosen to visit, as well as anything they might deem relevant along the way. Each episode culminates with a short reading at their destination of …

There Are Answers in the Trees

Interview by Ken L. Walker

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When Chris Martin and I began brewing ideas to conceptualize a different kind of interview, we didn’t have to talk long. His newest book, Becoming Weather (Coffee House Press 2011), joins an incredible roster of Coffee House Press authors and has already been choreographed and performed by dancers as well as scored by musicians. …

The Music of Possession

Interview by Ken L. Walker

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I saw a book with Donny Hathaway on its cover at the 2008 AWP Conference here in New York City. Judging it by its cover, I spent my last ten dollars to buy Winners Have Yet to Be Announced. The poems in that book purport themselves to be artifacts of documentary evidence—research-based poetry where a portion of the inspection is almost fictitious, non-actual, but much of it …

Tourist Trap, NYC is a web video series that follows touring poets to some of New York’s top tourist destinations, as well as lesser known bars, reading venues and unheralded back streets. Each episode features one or two poets as they explore the city and discuss their work, how urban landscapes influence their writing, the history or importance of landmark they’ve chosen to visit, as well as anything they might deem relevant along the way. Each episode culminates with a short reading at their destination of choice.

Available …

Here are reviews of the five National Book Critics Circle Award nominees in poetry. A reading featuring the nominees will be held at 5 pm on Wednesday, March 9 at The New School’s Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, New York, NY. Winners will be announced at the same location at 5 pm the following evening, Thursday, March 10.

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Nox, Anne Carson

New Directions

“Herodotus is an historian who trains you as you read.”

From John Deming’s review (forthcoming): “The …

Polestar Reading Series, curated by Melissa Broder, teamed up with We Who Are About To Die to host a reading on Sunday, January 30th at Bruar Falls in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  The event featured DJ Jason Diamond and the following readers: Marisa Crawford, Matthew L. Rohrer,  Nate Pritts, Melissa Stein, Craig Morgan Teicher, and  Andrew James Weatherhead.

Marisa Crawford’s debut book, The Haunted House, was released in 2010 by Switchback Books. Here’s her set-list:

From The Haunted House:
“Perfect Blue Orbs”
“Yum Poison Apple”
“Briar Rose”
“I Had Never Felt So …