the Kalliope: a consideration of contemporary American poetry.
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Diana Khoi Nguyen on Wheaton Campus
It was my pleasure to welcome Diana Khoi Nguyen to Wheaton for a reading last week. And I just thought to include my introduction here. Thanks so much to Diana! The students were absolutely enthralled by her presentation. I have always been fascinated by poems that account for the enormity of their subject matter. An…
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My Dream AWP Panel
I’ll admit, I’ve submitted multiple panel proposals to AWP, and they’ve all been rejected. Maybe it’s because I can never come up with a pithy panel title. Or maybe it’s that writing the panel description has felt like old Twitter, where you had just 140 characters. And I want to include all the things I…
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Reading Past the “Poetic Speaker”
For several years, I have been working on reading methods that extend a poem past its “poetic speaker.” Not that reading for speaker is unhelpful or unnecessary. I just don’t see it as part of the end game in my reading process. Or I’m interested in having complex models for when I come across an…
About this site
For many years, I’ve kept a database about poetry books, prizes, teaching positions, and literary journals. I’ve called it Kalliope, because that’s the Greek muse of epic poetry. And, well, I like thinking of the epic scope of American poetry!
And while all that data is still alive and well, I’m changing it so it’s private now. In its place, a blog! Where I’d like to relate some of my personal thoughts about poems, poetry books, literary journals, poetry criticism. Visual art. For a few years I was writing book reviews, which I loved. And then I didn’t love, because reviewing poetry books gets little respect. And every few years there’s going to be someone writing about how dumb book reviews are. Then that person’s friend will probably write something about how poetry is dying.
Consider this site an idiosyncratic aside to those conversations. I am a poet. My wife is a poet. And we are raising a daughter who has assured us she will never be a poet. I like conversations about poetry, and this site is my small contribution to those conversations.
3 SPECTACULAR POEMS