I am always extremely grateful to have poems featured in the syndicated newspaper column, American Life in Poetry, which was started by my mentor and former teacher, Ted Kooser, and has now been taken over by poet Kwame Dawes. This time, the poem is “[Sometimes we wonder what unfailing means],” the first sonnet in a […]
»MoreThe Colorado Review is one of my favorite literary journals. A while back, they published one of my essays about art from a nonfiction book project, Exhibitions. The piece was called “Portrait on Metal with Patterned Scarf and Streak of Light” and was later named as a notable essay in Best American Essays. So, it […]
»MoreFor many months now, I’ve been working on a nonfiction manuscript, Taste: A Book of Small Bites. The book looks at the sweet, the sour, the bitter, the salty, and umami through an interdisciplinary lens, considering the ways that taste informs poetry and fiction, theater, film, opera, philosophy, and religion. Taste is comprised of shorter […]
»MoreRecently, as a way of commemorating Memorial Day, poet Richard Blanco read and discussed one of my poems (along with pieces by Yusef Komunyakaa and Bruce Weigl!)–on Boston Public Radio. “Before the Deployment” comes from my third collection, Stateside, which was published by Northwestern University Press in 2010. Stateside looks at the before, during, and […]
»MoreRecently, I wrote a brief essay–“Toward a Campus Poetics”–about the campus novels I read when working on my latest poetry collection, Wild Kingdom. I’ve always loved this sub-genre of literary fiction and really enjoyed talking about how these books informed my own book. You can read the piece here.
»MoreRecently, I learned that “Fairy Tale with Laryngitis and Resignation Letter,” a poem from my ninth book of poetry, Wild Kingdom, was listed as an approved text for Poetry Out Loud, the national poetry recitation competition. And only today I learned that a South Dakota senior, Rahele Megosha, who was named the 2021 Poetry Out […]
»MoreA few months ago, poet and editor Sarah Lao, interviewed me for EX/POST, a literary magazine run by a truly impressive group of high school students and undergraduates. I was so grateful to have the chance to talk with Sarah and to answer her wonderful questions. You can read the interview here.
»MoreI’m thrilled to have another hybrid book review up today at the Brevity blog. This one is a review in the form of an abecedarian about Kate Lebo’s The Book of Difficult Fruit, which also happens to be an abecedarian! As you can imagine, the review was really fun to write. You can read the […]
»MoreAppearing throughout Wild Kingdom is a sequence of persona poems spoken in the voices of different birds found on the Eastern Shore of Maryland: Sanderlings, Northern Cardinals, Blue-Winged Teals, Mallards, and Osprey. One of those bird poems recently appeared in the literary journal, River Styx, and was just been republished on Verse Daily. It’s a […]
»MoreWorking on my latest collections of essays, Exhibitions, I realized that I wanted to write a piece that would be accessible, suitable to read at literary events, but also representative of the book’s concern with the decorative and fine arts. With these ideas in mind, I began to write an essay about a cherished object […]
»MoreAn ekphrastic poem from my manuscript-in-progress, Civilians, is now up at Consequence, a literary journal dedicated to “focusing on the realities and effects of war and geopolitical violence.” Civilians will be the third book in my military spouse trilogy of poetry collections, which I began with Stateside in 2010 and followed up with Dots & […]
»MoreIn August of 2020, I began working on new book of nonfiction, Taste: A Book of Small Bites. The project looks at the sweet, the sour, the bitter, the salty, and umami through a number of shorter and flash essays, the different tastes rubbing against one another in a way that I hope will be […]
»MoreDuring the summer of 2020, I started work on a second MFA (this one in creative nonfiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts). Over the fall semester, I wrote a book review for each of the monthly “packets” that I submitted to my faculty advisor. It turned out to be a great opportunity to […]
»MoreAs I’ve mentioned previously, I began earning a second MFA (this one in creative nonfiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts) during the summer of 2020. Over the fall, I wrote a number of book reviews, as part of the monthly “packets” that I submitted to my faculty advisor. Well, I’m thrilled to now […]
»MoreWild Kingdom is out today. When I think about the eight other poetry collections I’ve written and seen to publication, it’s clear to me that Wild Kingdom had a journey entirely its own: one that began with pain and personal trauma. As a result, the early days of working on the book were challenging, because […]
»MoreMy next poetry collection, Wild Kingdom, comes out near the end of February. And, just under the wire, four of the poems from the collection have been published in the latest issue of Court Green. You can read them here. Stay tuned for more information and news about Wild Kingdom!
»More