FEATURED
Ten Scenes From A Movie Called Mercy by Matt Bell
White Horse, Dark Rider by Nels Hanson
Waltzing Birds by John Minichillo & Katrina Gray
The Lobbers Share Thanksgiving Dinner as an Asteroid Hurtles Toward Earth by Sal Pane
The Dead Center of The Sun by Brad Green
It Made Him Stronger by Kevin Catalano
Tag Archives: Poetry
Assateague Shells: Notes Toward an Ecumenical Poetics
Adam Tavel
- We are not all on the same team, but we all play the same sport.
- The poet finds herself in a constant state of betrayal within a material culture that claims her art is the greatest form of human expression. The poet feels most alone among other poets. These ironies are both unfortunate and unavoidable.
- Poetry that champions fragmentation, obfuscation, and disassociation as goals rather than techniques will invariably grind against the basic integrity of language. It is amusing to note that this poetry is often written by people in their thirties who have read nothing from the 1930s.
- One can make a poem from debris, but debris alone is just debris.
- The poet whose chief aim is approval from the acade
Featured Writer: Sandy Longhorn
What brought you to the writing life?
I suppose I was born to the writing life. I’m the youngest of three girls, but we were all born very close together, leading me to often want to do things that weren’t quite age appropriate. While my sisters got to go and do all the ‘big girl’ things, I was left to observe and cultivate a sense of being an outsider looking in. That identity stuck with me even after I became a ‘big girl’ myself. Combine that with a love of reading and the writing naturally followed. Also, without being academically minded, our parents instilled us with a sense of curiosity and the ability to self-educate. We had a set of the World Book Encyclopedia from the early 70’s and whenever I pestered my mother with a question about this or that, she sent me to the World Books. I still remember spending endless hours flipping through those crisp pages. Continue reading
Interview: Callista Buchen
Your poem has an historical feel to it, as if it could be about “real” people and incidents. Can you comment on that relationship between poetry and “ real life”?
As reader, I’m not very interested in distinguishing between art and “real life,” or uncovering how “real life” informs a piece of writing. “Reality,” or what we define as real, is still necessarily a kind construction.
Good art, good writing, can create its own life, one that is just as real. I think the job of poetry is to locate and unravel truth, to question and change the very nature of reality and how we understand it. As a poet, I want to work on poetry that is first concerned with this truth, and I hope that in some way, regardless of any connection to “real life,” it always feels real and relevant. Continue reading
