This is what you’ve longed for,
drops tapping the shinges
and the silent flowering of each word
printed on the page before you.
– Leslie Ullman, “Don’t Sleep Yet”
Watch Leslie Ullman read some of her poetry:
When the sun peeks through the almost constant coloud cover, especially in early mornings, we are surround by white peaks, whole walls of white that make me feel I’m at a remote northern reach
– Leslie Ullman, “Altitude: Essay”
Before you leave her, the woman who thought you lavish,
whose body you led to parade without a blush
the touching vulgarity of the nouveau-riche
– Mona Van Duyn, “Advice to a God”
Read this article honoring Mona Van Duyn from the Beltway Poetry Quarterly:
Andrea Carter Brown on Mona Van Duyn
In the spring of 1992, the Library of Congress broke precedent, naming Mona Van Duyn its first female Poet Laureate.
From a new peony,
my last anthem,
a squirrel in glee
broke the budded stem.
I thought, where is joy
without fresh bloom,
that old hearts’ ploy
to mask the tomb?
– Mona Van Duyn, “Sonnet for Minimalists”
Listen to Mona Van Duyn read some of her poetry:
Watch Scott Turow read some of his work:
Read this interview with Scott Turow from BookPage:
Scott Turow
Write what you know. While writers are told that every day, a writer’s work is naturally that much better if what they know is pretty cool stuff. In Scott Turow’s latest book, Personal Injuries, the best-selling legal thriller writer takes what he knows his personal experience as a prosecutor in a major judicial corruption probe […]
Watch Scott Turow discuss how his political views influence his work:
If you hear gunfire on a Thursday afternoon,
it could be for a wedding, or it could be for you.
Always enter a home with your right foot;
the left is for cemeteries and unclean places.
– Brian Turner, “What Every Soldier Should Know”
Watch Brian Turner read some of his poetry:
If a body is what you want
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
– Brian Turner, “Here, Bullet”
Audio recording of the Poetry Center Reading Series featuring Tom Raworth, Diane di Prima, Kimiko Hahn, Eugene Gloria, Patricia Smith, Luis Rodriguez, Robert Bly, Brian Turner, Bruce Weigl, Tyehimba Jess, A. Van Jordan, Arielle Greenberg, Billy Corgan, Franz Wright, Czeslaw Milosz, Louise Glück, and Alicia Ostriker.
Buy this audio recording featuring Brian Turner⇒
It begins simply with a fist, white-knuckled
and tight, glossy with sweat. With two eyes
in a rearview mirror watching for a convoy.
The radio a soundtrack that adrenaline has
pushed into silence, replacing it with a heartbeat,
his thumb trembling over the button.
– Brian Turner, “2000 lbs.”
Watch Brian Turner discuss his experiences and influences for his poetry:
Listen to Studs Terkel’s 1995 reading for the Poetry Center of Chicago:
Sample Studs Terkel’s interview with Toni Morrison on his radio show:
Read this interview with Studs Terkel:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Terkel/
On Monday, Miss Francis told her sixth grade class that she was getting married soon. The class was very happy for her, and they asked her lots of questions about her wedding plans. They never once mentioned the Civil War.
– James Tate, “Shiloh”
Broadside of James Tate’s poem, “Shiloh.”
Read this interview with James Tate from the Paris Review:
The Art of Poetry No. 92
James Tate, ca. 1965. Photograph by Elsa Dorfman James Vincent Tate was born on December 8, 1943, in Kansas City, Missouri. He was educated at Kansas State College and at the University of Iowa, where he was still a student when his first book, The Lost Pilot (1967), was…
Eventually we must combine nightmares
an angel smoking a cigarette on the steps
of the last national bank, said to me.
I put her out with my thumb. I don’t need that
cheap talk I’ve got my own problems.
– James Tate, “Fuck the Astronauts”
Watch James Tate read some of his poetry:
It floats toward you:
a mother, a fish,
something without breath,
shiny, washed smooth
as the skin of a leech.
– Mary Swander, “In A Dream”
Listen to Mary Swander’s 1996 reading for the Poetry Center of Chicago:
Watch Mary Swander read some of her poetry:
Aspen, oak, Kentucky-Coffee-Bean trees,
Dead leaves shaped like mouths falling
From the limbs. A silence descending
With the evening spreads across the
Arched backs of the rocks, their bellies
– Mary Swander, “Dutton’s Cave”
Watch this interview with Mary Swander:
The casket under the rose
in the funeral paror is not
where you live, my mother.
– Lucien Stryk, “Rooms”
Listen to Lucien Stryk’s 1995 reading for the Poetry Center of Chicago:
Hungry-eyed fogies,
gargoyles in full cry
above the ruck and tumble
– Lucien Stryk, “Gargoyles”
Vintage poster of Two Midwest Poets: John Knoepfle and Lucien Stryk reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.
This time of year I kneel on my jacket. The ice
is almost solid. The groaning has ended. There is
an inch of fresh snow. A bush has turned to glass.
– Gerald Stern, “Did I Say”
Read this interview with Gerald Stern from The Rumpus:
http://therumpus.net/2010/11/the-rumpus-interview-with-gerald-stern/
The second day of Eastern Standard
there is such a sound of bird croaking
it must be either blue jay whelps
or stiff crows just barely able to gasp
after a night of rotten sleeping.
– Gerald Stern, “Light”
Watch Gerald Stern read some of his poetry:
(image of cow, of horse
of cadaver or sleepy river
or a pure and less
than innocent love)
–Mark Statman, “Translating Garcia Lorca”
Read this interview with Mark Statman from Pif Magazine:
‘Mark Statman’ interviewed by Derek Alger
Mark Statman’s most recent books are the poetry collection, A Map of the Winds (Lavender Ink, 2013), and Black Tulips: The Selected Poems of Jose Maria Hinojosa (University of New Orleans Press, 2012). He is also the author of the poetry collection, Tourist at a Miracle ((Hanging Loose, 2010), as…
because the evidence
is elusive
or has grown
to illusion
I think to walk
will not tell me
what’s new
– Mark Statman, “one’s own better angels”
Watch Mark Statman read some of his poetry:
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