I realize that my writings are my masks as well, verbal masks I offer my country as mirrors.
– Carlos Fuentes, Interview with the Paris Review
Continue reading this interview with Carlos Fuentes⇒
Watch Carlos Fuentes speaking with Charlie Rose:
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Carlos Fuentes (1928 – 2012) entrevistado por Charlie Rose, Lunes 21 de Febrero 2011 Carlos Fuentes (1928 – 2012) interviewed by Charlie Rose on Monday February 21st, 2011
It seems to me that it’s in the poetry of language, what we call the prose style, and also finding the poetry of an individual character in his or her personality that brings on this sense of uniqueness.
– Leon Forrest
In his Saturday woodcraft classes,
During the war, to tall John Bina
We were equally poets, who taught us
To make ducks, guns, or dowels from wood.
– Roland Flint, “First Poem”
Continue reading this poem in Roland Flint’s book, “Easy”⇒
Listen to Roland Flint’s 1994 reading with Garrison Keillor at the Poetry Center of Chicago:
Roland Flint begins at 21:50 minutes.
Any day’s writing may be the last,
He’s reminded at 2 in the morning,
Making this year’s last Italian
Notes, before readying his machine
And self to get aboard the bigger
Machine and fly, Dio Volente, home.
– Roland Flint, “Prayer”
Watch an interview with Roland Flint:
The craft of Roland Flint
The late poet Roland Flint speaks with Linda Pastan during his 1999 service as Maryland Poet Laureate. A former professor at Georgetown University and author of seven books of poetry, Flint talks of his last collection, Easy, with the poet Pastan. They discuss the irony and “reverberation” of the title poem after Flint reads it.
The only part of bodybuilding I’ve ever done is with my hand and my pen.
– Jules Feiffer
Listen to an interview with Jules Feiffer:
Read this interview with Jules Feiffer from The Atlantic:
A Conversation With Jules Feiffer
The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine.
Daylight perforates siding despite
the battered armor of license plates–
corroded colors, same state: decay,
their dates the only history
of whoever tilled the soil
– Stuart Dybek, “Scythe”
Listen to Stuart Dybek’s 1994 Poetry Center reading with Mark Doty:
Stuart Dybek begins at 33:37 minutes.
On a brick street slicked
by a reddish, spiritual neon,
I thought I saw you again,
bareheaded in damp weather.
I recognized the shape
of your breath in the cold.
– Stuart Dybek, “Vigil”
Read this interview with Stuart Dybek by Poetry Center of Chicago’s own Danielle Susi:
http://www.americanmicroreviews.com/interview-with-stuart-dybek/
The garments worn in flying dreams
were fashioned there–
overcoats that swooped like kites,
scarves streaming like vapor trails,
gowns ballooning into spinnakers.
– Stuart Dybek, “Windy City”
Listen to Stuart Dybek read his work with Sandy Marchetti at the Poetry Center of Chicago’s 2015 Six Points Reading Series:
Stuart Dybek begins at 16:42 minutes.
Stuart Dybek reading for the March installment of the Poetry Center of Chicago’s Six Points Reading Series.
It’s the metallic hour
when birds lose perfect pitch.
On a porch, three stories up,
against a copper window
facing the El,
a woman in a satin slip,
and the geraniums she waters,
turn to gold.
– Stuart Dybek, “Angelus”
Check out this On the Fly interview with Stuart Dybek:
Writers On the Fly: Stuart Dybek
Stuart Dybek is the author of three books of fiction: “I Sailed With Magellan”, “The Coast of Chicago”, and “Childhood and Other Neighborhoods”. Both “I Sailed With Magellan” and “The Coast of Chicago” were New York Times Notable Books, and “The Coast of Chicago” was a One Book One Chicago selection.
Suddenly the stairs seem to climb down themselves,
atomized plaster billowing: dust of 1907’s
rooming house, this year’s bake shop and florist’s,
the ghosts of their signs faint above the windows
lined, last week, with loaves and blooms.
– Mark Doty, “Demolition”
Listen to Mark Doty’s 1994 reading for the Poetry Center of Chicago:
Read this interview with Mark Doty from The Cortland Review:
http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/dec98/index.html
Wrapped in gold foil, in the search
and shouting of Easter Sunday,
it was the ball of the princess,
it was Pharoah’s body
sleeping in its golden case.
– Mark Doty, “Ararat”
Watch Mark Doty read his work at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival:
Mark Doty reading at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival
“The House of Beauty”
her eyes of camel and sand
of stars of flame in the dome of night
and speaks to her of a fertile oasis
as she draws the shade and shuts the door.
– John Dickson, “Fugue”
He had a term for people like this: temporal provincials – people who were ignorant of the past, and proud of it.
– Michael Crichton, Timeline
Listen to Michael Crichton and others on his early writing career:
It seemed to him, coming from his island, where until Friday arrived he lived a silent life, that there was too much speech in the world. In bed beside his wife he felt as if a shower of pebbles were being poured upon his head, in an unending rustle and clatter, when all he desired was to sleep.
– J. M. Coetzee, “He and his man” Nobel lecture
Continue reading J. M. Coetzee’s Nobel lecture⇒
Listen to J.M Coetzee’s 1998 Poetry Center reading:
Listen to an interview with J.M Coetzee on CBC Radio:
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Inside they hide bright walls.
Turquoise or lipstick pink.
Good colors in another country.
Here they can’t make you forget
– Sandra Cisneros, from “Curtains”
Listen to Sandra Cisneros read her work for the Poetry Center Reading Series:
Sandra Cisneros reads her poem, “Curtains,” at 33:31 minutes in the audio above.
They say I’m a beast.
And feast on it. When all along
I thought that’s what a woman was.
– Sandra Cisneros, “Loose Woman”
Check out this NPR interview with Sandra Cisneros:
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