Maurice Manning answered your questions. Carl Phillips did too. Enjoy!

Poet(s) currently taking questions: None.

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Best New Poet Nominations: Hunt & Macormic

Smartish Pace Editor Stephen Reichert nominated Laurel Hunt, and her poem "Glass," and D.M. Macormic, and his poem "Identity Theft," for Best New Poets 2017. SP nominations have won in ... [ read more ]

Writer’s Residency: Day Use (near Baltimore)

The Good Contrivance Farm Residency provides a 1200 square foot barn loft apartment on a small, historic farm in central Maryland, 25 miles north of Baltimore. It's run by our ... [ read more ]

Piotr Gwiazda, Smartish Pace Reading

Piotr Gwiazda reading for Smartish Pace at KGB Bar in New York City on December 1, 2012. Intro by Stephen Reichert. Music by Luna. Photographs by Deb Schwartz. 

Interview with Patrick Ryan Frank

Originally from Michigan, Patrick Ryan Frank has his master’s degree in poetry from Boston University and studied theater and creative writing as an undergraduate at Northwestern. Since then, he has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Massachusetts Arts Council, and now holds a James A. Michener Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. In August of 2010, How the Losers Love What’s Lost won the Four Way Books Intro prize judged by Alan Shapiro. He was interviewed over email by Julia Leverone of Smartish Pace in October, 2010.JL: Could you give an idea as to your background, and especially what your influences are?PRF: I grew up in rural Michigan, on what had once been a farm but is now just a wide swath of weeds and derelict barns.  I hated it at the time, and I’ve lived in big cities ever since (with the exception of a couple of stints at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown). While I always wanted to be an urban—and urbane—poet, I can’t quite pull myself completely from the fields.My influences are pretty varied, sometimes embarrassingly so.  I bought a shiny ... [ read more ]

When a Woman Loves a Man

When a Woman Loves a Man, Lehman’s best book of the last ten years, will shock few regular followers of his work. After all, we don’t read Lehman for his grand poetic ambitions, or his electrifying experiments in style, although this collection showcases Lehman’s deft hand with a sestina and an abecedarian. We read David Lehman for a particular kind of poem: humorous, at once upbeat and wistful, with a certain in-the-know, New York School-reminiscent ... [ read more ]