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. . . in the end, the poem is its own witness to something indefinable with which the poet is engaged. Whatever the poet thinks it is, the poem itself is the vehicle, the container, describing itself and gesturing beyond its words.
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How to live with a love so intense, a pressure so ripe?
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As we go, we are breathlessly held in an in-between state, a limbo, a transition.
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Hurting heightened everything, both within and without it.
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Eric Tran discusses his new collection, THE GUTTER SPREAD GUIDE TO PRAYER.
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She holds me. We hold each other.
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Secrets are expectations passed down over silent years.
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As long as I could feel, I was going to get high.
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Elizabeth Scanlon discusses her debut full-length collection, Lonesome Gnosis, brains and trains, and poetry as prayer.
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It seems when our dialogue loses nuance, society in turn loses its mind.
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[T]o be a tourist in a foreign country is very different than being a tourist in a foreign country where you are expected to feel you have returned home.
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Eileen G’Sell discusses her debut collection, Life After Rugby, how and why she chose her book’s title, and challenging gender categories.
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Barbara Jane Reyes discusses her new collection Invocation to Daughters, poly-vocality in poetry, and the importance of centering women’s voices.
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She never stopped, a bee buzzing from flower to flower to flower, collecting all the sweetness she could.
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Why would I ask for my sanity from the Devil as I sleep walk, only to give it up again to the Holy Spirit?
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No touching unless he touches you. No touching where people can see. No touching unless dared to touch. Brad makes the rules, but never says them aloud.
...moreAmy Shearn writes about swimming and prayer in Forward: I like swimming though I suspect I’m not very good at it; pool visits involve removing my glasses and I’m so nearsighted that I’ve never actually seen anyone else swim, so I’m not sure how you’re even supposed to be doing it. Pools are dreamy, unfocused […]
...moreI stopped putting things in quotation marks because I really wanted the reader to continue to understand or believe or think that he or she was in my head. Listen up as Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club, Cherry, and Lit, talks to NPR’s Terry Gross about the art of memoir, the purpose of […]
...morePlease help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted. Juan Vidal examines how T.S. Eliot, Flannery O’Connor, and Madeleine L’Engle approach prayer, and how prayer helps one derive meaning in a creative life.
...moreBrian Teare’s second book sorts through the past and charts a new path for the future of poetry.
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