Featured Selection

  • Contemporary Faroese and Danish Poetry

      I’ve been back in my home state of West Virginia for a couple of years now. One friend tells me that she can hear me “slip back into my drawl” when I talk to my dog, Sarge. At a lunch meeting recently, the man across the table put down his fork mid-sentence, gave me a quizzical look, and said,

    Issue #75 October 2017
  • Three Contemporary Russian Poets

      Viacheslav Kupriyanov, Dmitry Kuzmin, and Aleksandr Kabanov, Trans. by Alex Cigale Translator’s Note After hearing with an acceptance from Danny for the following selection of contemporary Russian poetry, I had taken to calling the three Russian poets I have the distinct pleasure to present in Plume this month “the Special Ks,” by which I light-heartedly mean that this coincidence, of their

    Issue #74 September 2017
  • Pablo Neruda: New Translations

    Sarah Green, Tomás Q. Morín, and David Young   “Soul Arborist”: Two Translations of Pablo Neruda’s THE HEIGHTS OF MACCHU PICCHU David Young (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2015) Tomás Q. Morín (Copper Canyon, 2014) Interviewed by Sarah Green               When I heard that both David Young and Tomas Morin had Macchu Picchu translations coming

    Issue #73 August 2017
  • No Small Wonder: Klaus Merz

    Translated and with an Introduction by Marc Vincenz           “And if you have an eye for it, you’ll discover the expansive in the minuscule, and vice versa…. That is the vision that I have attempted to develop an entire lifetime.  Or rather, worldliness when urbanity requires it. It is imperative to embrace both close

    Issue #72 July 2017
  • Romanian Poets: Adela Greceanu, Angela Marinescu, Svetlana Cârstean, Radu Vancu, Ioan Es. Pop

    Introductions by Tara Skurtu and Margento:   Tara Skurtu: Romanian poetry is more than alive and kicking. I discovered this in the fall of 2013, when I first traveled to Romania and serendipitously landed in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu the week of an international poetry festival. I was there on a poetry fellowship and had expected to spend two

    Issue #71 June 2017
  • Amit Majmudar: The Valentine’s Day Sutra

          The Valentine’s Day Sutra     1.] Before I read this Sutra aloud to you, a word about its magic. Don’t worry—it’s all white magic, since this Sutra gets its magic from love.   It’s said that if you read any three passages aloud to the one you love on a night when it seems like you

    Issue #70 May 2017
  • Sydney Lea: “To neighbor”

        NM: Hey Syd! It’s great having this opportunity to chat with you; thank you. As I like to approach the poems in the Featured Selections with as few pre-conceptions as is possible, I avoid reading any biographical material before hand. In your case it was a more of a challenge, as your reputation as an award-winning poet, novelist,

    Issue #69 April 2017
  • Robert Lowell: New Selected Poems

                          In his time, Robert Lowell achieved unquestionable stardom. The author of twelve collections, countless translations, adaptations from Greek plays, and an original drama, he won the Pulitzer in 1947 for his second book, Lord Weary’s Castle, and again in 1973 for his penultimate collection The Dolphin (one of three

    Issue #68 March 2017
  • David Lehman: On Stevens, Windows, and Poems in the Manner Of

    Photo Credit: Stacey Harwood   NM:  David thanks so much for agreeing to chat with us on the eve of the publication of your new book Poems in the Manner Of, which Scribner will publish in spring 2017. You know, I don’t think I’m aware of any living poet who so thoroughly inhabits poetry and its milieu, as you seem

    Issue #67 February 2017
  • Bill Knott: I AM FLYING INTO MYSELF

    I AM FLYING INTO MYSELF: BILL KNOTT’S SELECTED POEMS   I met Bill Knott in late 1968, or in early 1969, at William Corbett’s house, a gathering place for poets in Boston’s South End. I’d read Knott’s highly acclaimed first book, The Naomi Poems, from Big Table, in the spring of 1968. It was published under the pen name of

    Issue #66 January 2017
  • Linda Pastan: The Secret Giver

                            NM: Hi Linda. I’ve long admired how seamlessly and beautifully your poems weave the natural world into human context with startling effect. For example, in the lovely “A Name” from PM/AM New and Selected Poems you write There are as many names underfoot as leaves in October: they

    Issue #65 December 2016
  • Brian Swann: “I THINK I WOULD RATHER BE/ A PAINTER”

    “I THINK I WOULD RATHER BE/ A PAINTER” The short essay “Poem and Prose-Poem: Ancient and Wild” needs no introduction. It simply consists of thoughts that have rattled around in my head for some time. But I would like to say something about my art work. Over the years, I’ve published drawings in journals such as

    Issue #64 November 2016