Dorianne Laux, interview by Hélène Cardona
photo by John Campbell Dorianne Laux’s most recent collection Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected (W.W. Norton, 2019) has been hailed by Kwame Dawes as “a tour de force, a work of striking beauty and humanity—a work for its own time.” The Washington Post writes that “Laux shows us how to endure hardships without losing humanity and
Frannie Lindsay
Frannie Lindsay’s fifth volume, If Mercy, was released by The Word Works in 2016. Her work appears in Best American Poetry 2014, Ted Kooser’s column American Life in Poetry, and Poetry Daily, and was awarded the Missouri Review prize. She is a classical pianist. Nancy Mitchell is a 2012 Pushcart Prize winner and the author of two volumes
Mark Wunderlich
Mark Wunderlich’s most recent volume of poems, The Earth Avails, was published in 2014 by Graywolf Press, was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, and received the Rilke Prize from the University of North Texas. His other books include Voluntary Servitude also published by Graywolf, and The Anchorage, which received the Lambda Literary Award. He has received fellowships from
Terese Svoboda
NM: I’m intrigued with these innovative new poems. It’s remarkable how each use unique and singular stylistic inventions to track a consciousness as it struggles to orient itself in rapidly shifting physical, psychological and cultural landscapes as a result of loss, the aging process and as technological virtual reality seems to supplant our actual, tangible one. Although it appears to
Angela Ball
Angela Ball directs the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her sixth book of poetry, Talking Pillow, was recently published by University of Pittsburgh Press. She currently lives in Hattiesburg with her two dogs, Miss Bishop and Scarlet. Amy Beeder: The poems that appear in this issue of Plume often contain—and sometimes begin with—quoted
Gerry LaFemina: A Video Interview and New Poems
Photo credit Laura Byrnes My hometown of Salisbury, Maryland hosted Gerry Lafemina as poet-in-residence for Poetry Week, April 5-9, 2018. At the end of a whirlwind week of TV and radio interviews, readings and workshops throughout the community, Gerry graciously agreed to come for dinner and an interview with me for Plume ‘s very first video interview. Click on
Robin Behn “Fiddle Tune Poems”
Fiddle Tune Poems In writing these Fiddle Tune Poems, I was influenced by each tune’s sound—its rhythms, major or minor key, its melody and phrasing—that creates an underlying mood, and also by the images or narratives suggested by the names of the tunes. The poems take their titles from the tunes that inspired them. They stand on their
Norman Dubie: That fraught moment where the old Zen master talks while washing his ass in a bowl of morning tea…
NM: Hi Norman. Thank you for talking with us at Plume and sharing your lovely, mysterious, and deeply interesting poems; it’s an honor. You’re one of the most revered and beloved elders of the poetry tribe who blazed a trail and held the light for so many early in their writing careers, including my friend and Plume Review Editor, the
Lawrence Raab: The Life Beside This One
NM: I’ve been enjoying your wonderful poems featured here from your new book The Life Beside This One. I’m intrigued with the implications of the title—the “Beside” as in the companionable life which accompanies this one, or “Beside” as in place of this one. LR: I’ve always been interested in the idea of what one’s life might have been
