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Essays and Comment

  • The Empty Bowl: Metaphor as Meaning by Michael Simms

    As English teachers, we know our job is to explain to students that a metaphor is a figure of speech in which an image stands for an idea.
    Plume Issue #155 July 2024

  • The Literary Fragment, Black Humor, and the Ampersand: Three Short Essays by Peter Johnson

    I want to talk about the “literary fragment.”
    Plume Issue #154 June 2024

  • Villanelles and the Art of Anguish by Maggie Dietz

    J’ay perdu ma tourterelle; I lost my turtledove; I have lost my turtledove: Est-ce-point elle que j’oy? Is it not she that I hear? Isn’t that her gentle coo?  J
    Plume Issue #153 May 2024

  • “The End” an essay by Heather McHugh

    I'm drawn to seacoasts, where you see so many ways at once.
    Plume Issue # 152 April 2024

  • Uncovering What Is Brave: A Remembrance of Brigit Pegeen Kelly by Joy Manesiotis and Maxine Scates

    Brigit Pegeen Kelly lived her life day to day, like most of us do.
    Plume Issue #151 March 2024

  • Sexy Beast: The Song of Solomon by Barbara Hamby

    Barbara Hamby combines exemplary exegetical skills with colorful commentary in her analysis of the biblical poem, The Song of Songs in her essay  titled “Sexy Beast, The Song of Solomon.”
    Plume Issue #150 February 2024

  • On Reading with an a Open Heart by Alpay Ulku

    The Cold War was very much a presence and so was the Second World War.
    Issue #149 January 2024

  • Why I Write; An essay by Dorianne Laux

    I am still hard at work on this project of the self.
    Issue #148 December 2023

  • Girl Talk: How a Sumerian Princess Jumpstarted Poetry by Barbara Hamby

    When I was a girl, I’d fantasize about the lives of biblical women—Queen Esther, Ruth, Jezebel, Bathsheba, the Queen of Sheba, Mary Magdalene.
    Issue #147 November 2023

  • Rhythm Benders: The Musicality of American Poetry by Michael Simms

    A poem is rooted in the rhythms of pulse, breath and movement.
    Issue #146 October 2023

  • Emanuel’s Elegies: “Something about art/ And its opportunities” by Deborah Bogen

    Emanuel’s Elegies: “Something about art/ And its opportunities” Lynn Emanuel is the author of three books of poems, none of which can be described simply as “a collection of poems.” They are poems making an argument, a triptych with a project. What that project is has been the subject of inquiry, essay and interview, a discussion complicated not only by

    Issue #145 September 2023

  • Conjuring the Last Gleeman by Steve Kuusisto

    There's a curious essay by Yeats called "The Last Gleeman" wherein he details the life of a Dublin street poet named Michael Moran.
    Issue #144 August 2023