Essays and Comment

A Hard Road by Charles Coe
In July of 2016, I was on my way to the Chautauqua Institution, a summer cultural resort in southwestern New York
Charles Coe Issue #110 October 2020
Out of Fresno—Poetry & “Career” by Christopher Buckley
Philip Larkin—one of the most popular British Poets among my generation in the US—replying to an interview
Christopher Buckley Issue #109 September 2020
Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems by Sydney Lea
Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems by Sydney Lea The editor of an online journal recently asked 25 poets to complete the following in one sentence: “Poetry is…” Here’s what I wrote: “Nowadays, poetry consists of units of language that their authors call poems, and can range from conventional forms to prose poems and include anything in between.”
Sydney Lea Issue #108 August 2020
It’s Called the Renaissance, You Know, or The Soul Sibling Report by David Kirby
“Lady and gentlemen,” said composer Dimitri Tiomkin in his 1955 Academy Awards acceptance speech
David Kirby Issue #107 July 2020
Rescuing Ourselves by Celia Bland
I have been touring the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, via an online iPhone film.
Celia Bland Issue #106 June 2020
“Getting Stabbed Kinda Takes the Fight Out of Ya” by David Kirby
This month’s essay on voice by David Kirby emanates the confidence and tone of an accomplished poet who is also a master teacher. Astutely aware of the collusion that occurs between sight and sound in effective “voice,” Kirby cites one poignant example after another of the audible magic he calls “direct speech”— speech he claims that “keeps talking” for reasons
David Kirby Issue #105 May 2020
“But They Have Dwindled,” Rethinking Wordsworth’s “Resolution And Independence” As A Modern Day Cautionary Tale by Chard DeNiord
In one of his most profound existential poems, “Resolution and Independence
Chard DeNiord Issue #104 April 2020
Flash Essays by Alfred Corn
Most of us have read Joyce’s Dubliners, which includes the story “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” but do we know what Ivy Day is in Ireland?
Alfred Corn Issue #103 March 2020
Essay on the Prose Poem by Charles Simic
I’m grateful to Peter Johnson for bringing Charles Simic’s brilliant, unpublished “Essay on the Prose Poem” to my attention. Although Simic wrote this essay ten years ago, twenty one years after he won the Pulitzer Prize for his book of prose poems titled The World Does Not End, it reads as freshly today as it did in 2010. Rife with
Charles Simic Issue #102 February 2020
Reading and Writing Outside Thebes: In Praise of Syntax by Kimberly Johnson
In 1939, at the queasy outset of the second World War, W. B. Yeats’s last published works appeared
Kimberly Johnson Issue #101 January 2020
BLURRED LINES, SOME THOUGHTS ON HYBRID, LIMINAL, AND PROSE POETRY
In his poem “In the Evening Air,” Theodor Roethke declares, “I’ll make a broken music or I’ll die.”
Chard DeNiord Issue #100 December 2019
SUMMER UNDID ME: GUERLAIN IMPERIALE (BEDROOM), 1853
Dear Reader, Fellow Perfume Testers and Collectors, Parfum Editors, Shunned Lovers Who Can No Longer Stand the
Elizabeth A. I. Powell Issue #99 November 2019

Essays and Comment

A Hard Road by Charles Coe

Out of Fresno—Poetry & “Career” by Christopher Buckley

Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems by Sydney Lea

It’s Called the Renaissance, You Know, or The Soul Sibling Report by David Kirby

Rescuing Ourselves by Celia Bland

“Getting Stabbed Kinda Takes the Fight Out of Ya” by David Kirby

“But They Have Dwindled,” Rethinking Wordsworth’s “Resolution And Independence” As A Modern Day Cautionary Tale by Chard DeNiord

Flash Essays by Alfred Corn

Essay on the Prose Poem by Charles Simic

Reading and Writing Outside Thebes: In Praise of Syntax by Kimberly Johnson

BLURRED LINES, SOME THOUGHTS ON HYBRID, LIMINAL, AND PROSE POETRY

SUMMER UNDID ME: GUERLAIN IMPERIALE (BEDROOM), 1853