Silberblatt, Harrison, Armantrout, et. al.
Neil Silberblatt on ‘Hagstrom’: As a result of several surgeries in 2016 – to remove cancerous tumors from my colon, then to remove much of that tubing, and then to reconnect what remained of that tubing – my abdomen now resembles a scarred landscape. For the longest time post-surgery, I could not bear to survey that landscape. This poem –
Grae, Starzinger & Brehm, et. al.
Tanya Grae on “The Path of Non-Attachment”: A few months after Hurricane Andrew hit, some people began calling it Saint Andrew. As a Category 5, it caused such total destruction that insurers wrote checks for the maximum policy value of homes and their contents. Everything people owned, new again, as if nothing happened. Of course, that wasn’t the case
Buckley, Friman & Barbarese et. al.
Christopher Buckley on “Post-Structuralism” Well, my title is freighted with irony, of course . . . never a subscriber to Derida, deconstruction, and the theory-driven. Hence the glib line from the ‘50s TV game show, What’s My Line, with John Daly, celebrity crew— Bennet Cerf, Arlene francis, and Dorothy Kilgallen—and the mystery guest signing in. Linguistically, logically in literature, I
Jollimore, Newell, Cooley et. al.
Troy Jollimore on ‘Synecdoche’: Roger Ebert once said that no great film is depressing; only bad films are depressing. I agree with him, or thought I did until I saw Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. This challenging, despairing, thoroughly bleak film is undeniably depressing, undeniably brilliant, undeniably great. It is depressing and exhilarating at one and the same time. Quite an
Lea, Skloot, Pankey, et. al.
Eric Pankey on ‘Melancholia’ and “Trouble in Mind’: These two prose poems, as with most the prose poems I have written over the past twenty years, were written to prompts generated by my graduate students in a course on the history of the prose poem. We read poems by Bertrand, say, or Stein, or Baudelaire, discuss their innovations upon the form.
Lehmann, Kenney, Withiam, et. al.
Nin Andrews on ‘Soul Mate’: Years ago, I heard a speech by the late Tibetan lama, Gehlek Rimpoche (Allen Ginsberg’s teacher), in which he made fun of the American interest and love of the concept of reincarnation. He wasn’t sure he believed in reincarnation himself, but he said that if it happens, he was pretty sure that it’s nothing like
Culhane, Dow, Nazarene, et. al.
Brian Culhane on “The Immortality Ode” Often, I turn to solo piano music for inspiration, with the great Bill Evans always high on my list. I owe this poem to him, as it came into being when I began one of his recordings and pictured his hands above the keyboard, waiting to enter the melody. That image, in turn, led
Clinton, Sholl, Aronson, et. al.
Robert Clinton on “Caroline” The woman Caroline was entirely different from the woman described in the poem “Caroline,” except insofar as she was attentive to her property and fond of the poet. The poem with its deceptions happened very quickly. I didn’t want to make an anti-Caroline, and I’m glad that, although nothing in the poem happened as written, everything
Berdeshevsky, Schwartz, Lindsay, et. al.
Margo Berdeshevsky, for AS THE LAND LISTENS : This is—the long distance call. I’ve been listening all my life. Days of death throes for love or democracy, not only in America, but worldwide. Dire intentions and cruelties of the powerful, globally. In America, some grand new voices, many of them, women, demanding life. After the end… after the beginning… But
DeNiord, Donnelly, McPherson, et. al.
Chard DeNiord on ‘The Other’ As a great admirer of Walt Whitman’s use of his transpersonal self—that “I” that is also other—throughout much of his work, I have for years attempted, often in vain, to find expression for my own transit to the other in a way that makes sublime sense; in a way that captures the personal as well
Pastan, Meinke, Dickow, et. al.
Hank Lazer on N33P14 and N33P29 The two poems/pages included in Plume 88 are from my ongoing Notebooks project – a little more than twelve years of exploring the possibilities for an improvisatory (no drafts) shape-writing. These two are from the 33rd notebook. With each page, I mark the location in time and place. The first of these, in Honolulu
