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Matt McBride & Amy Woolard Nominated for Best New Poets

Smartish Pace nominated Matt McBride's poem "Cities of Advertisers" and Amy Woolard's poem "A Girl Gets Sick of a Rose" for the 2013 Best New Poets anthology. SP is proud ... [ read more ]

Party & Reading Tonight! Saturday April 13th

Issue 19 Reading & Party (with The Great American Canyon Band!)

April 13th, 2013 (7:00pm) -- (11:00pm)

LOCATION: CopyCat Building, 1501 Guilford Ave Baltimore, MD 21202

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David Lehman Smartish Pace Reading

David Lehman, Smartish Pace Reading Series, Introduction by Assistant Editor John Martin, KGB Bar, New York, NY, October 4, 2008.

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 ]

Issue 20 Readings!

9/1/2013 (7:00pm) -- (8:00pm)

Baltimore, New York, Raleigh, Austin, Virgin Islands

We will have Smartish Pace Issue 20 readings in Baltimore (TBA), New York City (KGB Bar), Raleigh (Contemporary Art Museum), Austin (TBA) and Virgin Islands (TBA). 

Dates to be announced here throughout the year. 

Eve's Red Dress

The poems in Eve's Red Dress are about "Losing the Blues." Like any honky-tonk girl on a Saturday night, Eve slips into her red satin dress, "pull[s] up to a neon / martini glass, order[s] a shot of tequila…I'll never be royal for you again," she declares, and: I'm cerise, vermilion, scarlet,ruby, crimson, fuchsia, magenta,and flame. I could burnthe hands off a man. ("Losing the Blues," 44-45) The book is organized around ... [ read more ]