Wenthe, Thorburn, Rhone Fancher, et. al.
William Wenthe on “Fairy Tale”: This poem is part of a recently completed book manuscript, titled Auspices, which refers to an ancient practice of divining the future by the observation of birds. In the book, I’m seeking legitimate grounds for happiness, in the face of the dire portents for the earth, and for ourselves, that we must live with. “Fairy Tale”
Halpern, Woloch, Lippman, et. al.
Daniel Halpern on “50 KILOS, c. 1939”: I thought I would write about this poem because it’s a poem I thought could work as a poem when I heard it on Scott Simon’s NPR Weekend Edition show. It amazed me to hear of someone so committed to their art they would do what this young musician did when he was
Smith, Bathanti, Hartman, et. al.
Ron Smith on “Brasserie” and “An Annunciation of Blue”: I think “Brasserie” is about friendship, about the heart-breaking fragility of our friends and our links to them. Rereading it now, I think that it’s also about our almost inevitably painful desire to feel at home in the world of our fragile friendships, a world full of our artifacts—our arts, in
Weaver, Mort and Threefoot, et. al.
Elizabeth Weaver on “What Was Left Out,”: This poem started after a period of time when I hadn’t been able to finish anything new for quite a while. It was summer, just a few months into the pandemic, and Lynn Melnick was conducting an online poetry workshop. I don’t remember the exact writing prompt that she gave us, but it had to do with
Lea, Ackerman, Stanton, et. al.
Sydney Lea on Seven Slovene Poets Special Feature: I’ve had a long association with Slovenia by way of pure serendipity. In 1992, when I had a Fulbright to Budapest, my family befriended another American family, whose male adult worked for the U.S. State Department. Ten years later, I was teaching at a small college called Franklin in Lugano, Switzerland, and
Vasantkumar, Laichas, Clark et. al.
Chris Vasantkumar on “I Can’t Tell if the Light…”: Parts of it might read as surrealism but this poem is true to life. Having just moved, during a break in the pandemic into a new rental–tumbledown, mcm, squatting at the edge of a green defile, resembling, I imagined, the more bohemian and down-at-heel days of Laurel Canyon, we found that
Culver, Berdeshevsky, Cader, et. al.
Ralph Culver on “October, and the sun burnishes”: More than anything else, “October, and the sun burnishes” is a poem of grieving. Grief, it seems to me, is generally pretty straightforward and uncomplicated, and I hope the reader finds the poem to be the same. Of course, our relationships with the objects of our grieving can be, and often
Voisine, Bassiri, Woloch, et. al.
Connie Voisine on Translating Patron Henekou: Patron Henekou’s Jazz et autres prières (Jazz and Other Prayers) engages with the late 20th and early 21st-century American poetic consideration of the personal as political, or as Henekou says, his is a personal poetry firmly located in the embodied self, where “sensuality turns to challenge us both as a political concern, a social fact, and the wear
Freeman, Sholl, Aizenberg, et. al.
Jan Freeman on “Eating the Madeleine”: This poem began percolating when I was walking by a walled-in garden in the village of Auvillar two years ago. It brought back memories of the rose arbor where I played Mean Mother with neighbors when I was a child. Which opened into thoughts about the solitude of children, and the need to be
Smith, Purpura, Zwart, et. al.
Ron Smith: a prose piece on his poem “August 3rd”: Stroke The August 3rd events in my poem happened many, many years ago. I recorded them the same day they took place (as I discovered last year in the notebook I cannot locate since we have recently moved). I copied the entry out long hand, then typed it up, filling
Ulku, Buckley, Warren, et. al.
Alpay Ulku Regarding “On Reading with an Open Heart”: Since my piece in this issue is non-fiction, I felt like I should write a poem instead for the Poets and Translators section. But I was feeling a tad lazy I guess, so I fed it to ChatGPT 3.5, as that version is free. Below is my prompt and its response.
Camp, Pedone, Pindyck, et. al.
Lauren Camp on “Honest Orbit”: The poem came out of time I spent as Poet-in-Residence at Lowell Observatory, talking to the astronomers and looking through telescopes. In all meanings of the phrase, I was over my head. I was not just trying to understand the origins of the universe, but also the passion the scientists felt for their discipline. Science
