I received really nice news today. It turns out that one of my essays, which appeared last year in The Colorado Review, was selected as one of the “Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2019” for The Best American Essays 2020. I was really excited for this little piece of nice news, because I love […]
»MoreI love Ted Kooser’s weekly newspaper column American Life in Poetry. Ted was my teacher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and he remains an important mentor. Ted never fails to remind me that it’s the work that matters, that each day we apprentice ourselves to language, dedicating ourselves to the craft of poetry and to […]
»MoreToday, I received my contributor’s copies of one of my very favorite literary journals, Copper Nickel, which operates out of the University of Colorado Denver; one of my poems appears in the current issue. “A War Is Forever” is a companion piece to a poem that recently appeared in The New England Review, “What Do […]
»MoreWell, after a delay of many, many months, my new poetry collection is finally out in the world. Published by the Evansville Press at the University of Evansville, Simple Machines was selected by Ned Balbo as as the 2019 winner of the Richard Wilbur Poetry Prize. The book is probably my most formal collection to […]
»MoreI submitted work to The Southern Review for nearly ten years before I received my first acceptance (for poems that later appeared in my fifth book, The Arranged Marriage). And it still remains a thrill to have my words published by a journal I so love and admire. I’m delighted to have a poem, “Norfolk, […]
»MoreI woke up this morning to the very surprising news that my first book of nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes, won the 2020 Firecracker Award in creative nonfiction from CLMP, the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. Of course, I’m thrilled. I ventured into writing nonfiction so tentatively five years ago, and throughsmoke was […]
»MoreMany, many months ago, before everything changed into grief and horror, I was asked to write a column for the “What Sparks Poetry” feature on Poetry Daily. This is a really great project; poets write about a poem that matters to them and then offer a prompt inspired by the text they’ve just discussed. I […]
»MoreOccasionally, a poem arrives as a present. Instead of having to labor over every word, the poem is simply dropped into the mind, like Athena sprouting from the head of Zeus. This was the case with my poem, “What Do You Give the War that Has Everything,” which pretty much wrote itself over the course […]
»MoreThe Common is a literary journal that I’ve long admired. Its mission is to “to deepen our individual and collective sense of place.” I’ve always loved writing that powerfully evokes landscapes, cities, particular parts of the world, capturing the sounds and smells of those places. So, I was of course ecstatic when The Common accepted […]
»MoreIt’s always lovely to receive an acceptance from a journal or literary review. But, sometimes an acceptances comes as an extra good piece of news, arriving at just the moment when we need a little bit of encouragement. I really admire The Cincinnati Review; it’s a beautiful journal that consistently publishes thoughtful, engaging, rigorous work. […]
»MoreYesterday morning, I woke up to the very surprising news that one of my poems was the “poem of the day” over at the Poetry Foundation website. I wrote “Pledge” what feels like a million years ago, back in mid-March, right at the start of staying at home, when the term “social distancing” still felt […]
»MoreA while back, I was writing these very strange, lyric poems about different moments in the Biblical story know as the Akedah (i.e. the binding of Isaac by his father, Abraham). I’ve always hated this narrative. It makes me angry and gets at all of my various discomforts with religious piety and obedience. One of […]
»MoreIn the middle of so much darkness, it is really nice to have a small piece of good news. A couple of months ago, I received an email telling me that my poem, “The Long Deployment,” would be featured on an upcoming episode of The Slowdown, a syndicated podcast by Tracy K. Smith. I’ve had […]
»MoreThis summer, I was absolutely thrilled when I received an acceptance from The Colorado Review, a journal to which I’ve been submitting for what felt like decades. I wrote “Portrait on metal with Patterned Scarf and Streak Light,” after sitting for a tintype portrait in Dallas. The experience was such an interesting and disorienting one […]
»MoreI’ve always loved Gulf Coast, which is published by the creative writing program at the University of Houston. For years, it was one of my “goal” publications, a journal I dreamed of being in. After all, Gulf Coast is not only a beautifully produced journal, but it also has a tremendous track record for publishing […]
»MoreAlthough I am not a religious (or even spiritual) person, I’ve always loved the journal, Image, whose mission is to “engage with the religious traditions of western culture.” So, I was ecstatic when the recently appointed nonfiction editor, Lauren F. Winner, accepted one of my new essays for publication. “The Dead Class” is a braided piece, […]
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