Watch a conversation with Allison Peters Quinn:
Curator talk: Allison Peters Quinn – 11.03.14
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She tries on her voice, which sounds like cigarettes,
pubic sweat, brown spittle lining a sax bell
the broken heel on a drag queen’s scarlet slings.
Your kind of singing.
– Patricia Smith, “Prologue — And Then She Owns You”
Watch Patricia Smith read some of her work:
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.
Then it is autumn in the body.
Your hands are cold.
Then it is winter and we are still at war.
– Kevin Prufer, “In a Beautiful Country”
Listen to an interview with Kevin Prufer on New Books in Poetry:
They wanted him to stop kicking like that–
it made their eyes corkscrew, drilled the sun in the sky
so light dumped out like blood from a leak.
The boy in the trunk wouldn’t die.
– Kevin Prufer, “There Is No Audience for Poetry”
Read an interview with Kevin Prufer from the Kenyon Review:
Kevin Prufer | Kenyon Review Conversations
Kevin Prufer’s newest books are In a Beautiful Country (Four Way Books, 2011) and National Anthem (Four Way Books, 2008). With D. A. Powell, he recently edited Dunstan Thompson: On […]
I wanted to do the right things.
Pull the spit back into my mouth.
Scrape the gum-chewed secretes
off the bottoms of the chairs.
Drag the dumb, go-along laughs
out of the air.
– Marc Smith, “i wanted to be”
Watch Marc Smith read some of his poetry:
Poster for Marc Smith & Tony Fitzpatrick at the Poetry Center of Chicago, 2011.
The pensive Daddy-O, cool on the patio,
Stares at the silver moon
Blowin’ out a why?
But the silver moon laughs
Dancin’ with the dipper spoon
Says, “Nobody’s gonna catch
The spirit in the sky.”
– Marc Smith, “Daddy-O on the Patio”
Watch Marc Smith on TEDx Talks – LUC:
Custom made poster of Marc Kelly Smith’s poem, “My father’s coat”
Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.
– Jack Prelutsky, “Be Glad Your Nose Is on Your Face”
Watch an interview with Jack Prelutsky:
Peer pressure
During junior high, Jack Prelutsky believed that poetry was hazardous to his health. Watch this video clip to find out why.
It wasn’t the kind either that would retreat after a tall glass of water, two aspirins or even a mug full of busy tea steamed for several hours. It was like the devil from hell inside him want to come out, but the walls of his throat it seems, were just too narrow.
– Patricia Powell, “A Small Gathering of Bones”
Continue reading this novel excerpt⇒
Listen to Patricia Powell’s 2001 reading for the Poetry Center of Chicago:
Read this interview with Patricia Powell from Project Muse:
Project MUSE – An Interview with Patricia Powell
Click for larger view View full resolution The following dialogue took place on paper in March, 1996: Faith Smith gave a list of questions to Patricia Powell, and she wrote her responses and sent them to the editor of Callaloo.
My touch is on the highest mast.
It cries at four in the morning
For a lantern to be lit
On the rim of the world.
– Charles Simic, “The Body”
Listen to Charles Simic’s 2001 reading for the Poetry Center of Chicago:
Vintage poster of Russell Edson and Charles Simic giving a joint reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.
They want to hear something heroic and poetic, and I tell them that I was just another high school kid who wrote poems in order to impress girls, but with no ambition beyond that.
– Charles Simic, “Why I Still Write Poetry”
Read this interview with Charles Simic from the Paris Review:
The Art of Poetry No. 90
Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, on May 9, 1938. His early childhood was, inevitably, dominated by the Nazi invasion, and some of his most powerful poems derive from memories of this period. In “Two Dogs,” for instance, he recalls watching the Germans march past hi…
Watch Charles Simic read some of his work:
The other one dreaming
flutter, come and whisper
two green girls all deep and meaning
unseen mountains always moving.
– Cecilia Pinto, “Green Girls Villanelle”
Watch Cecilia Pinto read her work:
Listen to and read Cecilia Pinto’s short story, “Cups,” on the New Ohio Review:
New Ohio Review
Winter Online Exclusive
We all scream, most of us inside.
Outside is another world.
A neighbor fills her television dinner
With too much pepper and screams.
– James Schevill, A Screamer Discusses Methods of Screaming
Kiss my cheek and think cul-de-sac,
think normative fence, think, my love,
of all the stars where better versions are breathing,
where the soft-focused-wanted me slowly wakes.
– C. Russell Price, “Our Love Transcends Sexuality & Gender & Time & Place; Translation: Not Now, Not Ever”
Watch C. Russell Price’s 2024 reading with Teresa Dzieglewicz at the Chicago Poetry Center:
C. Russell Price begins at 41:47 minutes.
C. Russell Price reading at the Six Points Reading Series for the Poetry Center of Chicago
Listen to C. Russell Price, with Valerie Wallace, read for the Poetry Center of Chicago’s Six Points Reading Series:
When I call him after a proper cry in the office supply closet,
he asks what is drowning me today, as if memory is a growing leak,
as if he could offer some Oprah level shit.
– C. Russell Price, “Why Can’t My Heaven Be A Mobile Home Park In A Carolina Where I Have Big Hair and Work Reception at My Husband’s Tattoo Parlor?”
Listen to C. Russell Price read their poem “Apocalypse with Eyeliner”
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