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

Poet(s) currently taking questions: None.

Archives:

Jason Gray Poetry Reading - June 9, 2019

Jason Gray read for us and you can watch it here!  [ read more ]

Joseph J Capista Poetry Reading - May 12, 2019

Watch his reading here!  [ read more ]

Smartish Pace @ CityLit Festival

Smartish Pace @ CityLit 2010 from Smartish Pace on Vimeo.

Smartish Pace at CityLit Festival on April 17, 2010, held at the Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.

Interview with Aaron Poochigian

Traci O’Dea (Associate Editor, Smartish Pace): How has translating Sappho affected your own poetry?

Aaron Poochigian: I had always wanted each line of my poetry to be songlike and ravishing. Now, after having lived with Sappho for about two years, I have a better sense of what that means. But I should be more specific about her influence. Many of Sappho’s poems give the reader the impression that he or she is eavesdropping on a private conversation, as in the following fragment:As you are dear to me go find a youngerBed as your due.I can’t stand being the old one any longer,Living with you.I now readily slip into the conversational mode in my own work. Sappho, in fact, is credited with pioneering the “personal” in poetry, partly because she gives the reader this window into the intimate. She also makes frequent use of what I call “choral” expression—that is, the speaker as a first person plural “we” representing a group of people. I now often write poems in “group voices.” Perhaps the poem “The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis” is the best evidence of her influence on my work.     The Marriage ... [ read more ]

Island of My Hunger--Cuban Poetry Today

We just may witness open dialogue between our nation and Cuba in the foreseeable future. And since the silence between our countries was part of a border of non-communication spanning the globe, any introduction to the developments in any formerly shuttered discipline is exciting. Thus the publication by City Lights Books of Island of My Hunger—Cuban Poetry Today is momentous.However, from Editor Francisco Morán’s introduction forward, what is directly apparent is this anthology ... [ read more ]