In spring 2018, while I was working on the manuscript that became American Samizdat, I also began work on another manuscript of poetry. At the time, I was teaching a class called Form & Theory and, because my students writing formal poems, I decided to return to received forms too. And this is how Simple […]
»MoreNow that I’ve found a home for throughsmoke: an essay in notes, I’ve begun work on a new series of essays. This project, tentatively titled Exhibition, a Self-Portrait, focuses on what it was like to grow up in a home with a very fine art collection. If throughsmoke gave me an opportunity to experiment with flash nonfiction, then Exhibition is pushing […]
»MoreI’m currently suffering through a bad January cold. So, my mood was significantly lifted today when I found an advanced copy of American Samizdat waiting for me in my mailbox! The book won’t officially be released until the end of March. But, it’s already available for pre-order. So, if you feel like supporting your local poet, […]
»MoreBack in the rainy days of February, on a particularly gloomy Friday afternoon, I received a very unexpected email from Graywolf Press. Tracy K. Smith was editing a new poetry anthology, American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, and she wanted to include “The Long Deployment” as one of the fifty poems! I was stunned. Now, […]
»MoreI’ve been keeping my head down the last few months, focusing on teaching and preparing for the launch of American Samizdat and throughsmoke, This morning, I received the final cover for American Samizdat, this beauty designed by Diode Editions’ Law Alsobrook. I love it! I’ve quickly become a huge fan of Law’s work, and this might be one […]
»MoreIn early 2018, I began working–almost in a fever–on a linked series of lyrical fragments. I had been rereading Louise Gluck’s The Wild Iris and listening to Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise, and suddenly I wanted to be back in a space of intense persona, a voice both mine and not mine. Years ago, when I drafted From […]
»MoreA few years ago, when The Arranged Marriage was published, a beautiful review of the book appeared in New Pages (one of my favorite resources on the internet). It was written by a poet named Kimberly Ann Priest and made all of the kinds of astute observations that I hoped a reader would make about the […]
»MoreI’ve said this before, but having a book of poetry published really is a strange animal. It’s not like publishing a novel, which involves the release of the book followed by a brief, intense period of publicity and marketing. If the novel “hits,” then it continues to receive attention and support from a press. If […]
»MoreThere are certain poetry sites that I visit every week, places like Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. I love reading what’s happening right now in poetry, what’s catching editors’ attentions. So, I’m thrilled to have “From the Pentagon”–one of many sonnets in Dots & Dashes–featured as this week’s syndicated column for American Life in […]
»MoreDuring the spring semester, I undertook a very odd, intense project. I gave myself six weeks to draft a new poetry collection, a link sequence of lyrical fragments that imagined a particular what if: what if we suddenly lost the First Amendment and American poets had to learn to write the kind of coded verse that […]
»MoreA few months ago, I came across some wonderful online interviews with military spouse writers like Siobhan Fallon and Lisa Stice at the Military Spouse Fine Artists Network (a.k.a. MilspoFAN). I reached out to Jessica Goodin, a modern dancer, choreographer, and Board-Certified Dance/Movement Therapist who is also a military spouse and the founder of MilspoFAN; […]
»MoreI’m so happy to have a new poem, “Minutes,” in the most recent issue of Birmingham Poetry Review. As the title indicates, this poem is inspired by the “received form” of departmental minutes. For many years, I was tasked with keeping minutes, a chore that I never imagined would eventually result in an actual poem. Who […]
»MoreFor nearly four years, I’ve been working on throughsmoke: an essay in notes. The manuscript started as little meditations about perfume that I wrote on my now-defunct blog, “The Gefilte Review” (RIP). One day, a friend said to me, you should turn this into a book. I laughed, finding it difficult to imagine how these disparate essays […]
»MoreA few weekends ago, I had the pleasure of sitting for photographer Brad Taylor of Caprock Studio, who took my new headshots. Now, like a lot of people, I don’t love having my picture taken. I’m very hard on myself and have knack of picking out every one of my flaws in every photograph. But, […]
»MoreI first met Peter Molin when he was still active-duty and teaching literature at the United States Military Academy at West Point. I’m not sure who introduced me to Molin (perhaps it was Brian Turner or maybe Siobhan Fallon?), but it became immediately clear to me that he was a fierce advocate for contemporary war […]
»MoreRecently, I had the opportunity to talk with Jessica Murray (an excellent poet and PhD candidate at the University of North Texas) about Dots & Dashes. The interview is now featured in Memorious, a literary journal that is edited by the very wonderful Rebecca Morgan Frank. You can read the interview here. And here’s my poem, “Scheherazade,” […]
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