Enjoy the old Q&As! Maybe we'll do this again one day, soon. 

Poet(s) currently taking questions: None.

Archives:

Joseph J Capista Poetry Reading - May 12, 2019

Watch his reading here!  [ read more ]

Clarinda Harriss Poetry Reading - May 12, 2019

Watch her poetry reading here!  [ read more ]

Phillis Levin, Smartish Pace Reading

Phillis Levin reading for Smartish Pace at The Walters Art Musuem in Baltimore, MD on September 19, 2009. Intro by Stephen Reichert of Smartish Pace. Music by Christopher Dunn.

Interview with Lia Purpura

Laura Klebanow: It seems you came to write poetry first, and prose poetry and essays next. Is this correct, or has your work in each genre developed less compartmentally? For example, do you ever start a poem and watch it become a prose poem or essay, or vice versa?Lia Purpura: The issue of how one discernible genre grows from another is utterly mysterious to me. I’m certain that I’m writing prose, though my essays are called “lyric essays.” In fact, I’ve just written an essay titled “What is a Lyric Essay?” for Seneca Review. In it, I’m making a plea for allowing the form to remain as mysterious as possible. I do mean “mysterious” though in the best way – challenging and magical and able to work on a reader and knit up above the page. I don’t mean at all “unclear” or “sloppy”. The language ought to be as precise as possible in order to affect the most unlikely moves. When I’m writing, an impulse makes itself known as a prose itch or poem-itch. Some failed poems have extended out into prose and found their musculature that way. I don’t think a derailed essay has ever turned ... [ read more ]

Boy Drinkers

It is no mistake that Terence Winch's latest collection, Boy Drinkers, begins with a poem entitled "Comfort." These lovely, human poems represent a search for just that, in a world that offers little in the way of genuine security. Set up as a catalogue of Winch's teachers (Fathers, Mothers and Brothers, all, for Boy Drinkers is also a unique window into a Catholic boyhood), the collection-and each individual poem-builds with the hope that someone will ... [ read more ]