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I was not far enough out, and simply waving, not drowning April 25, 2011: Is poetry a domesticated art? Are we drowning in it? Or are we in fact not drowning enough? This is what I’m thinking as I peer out into a green ravine in the Druid Hills area of Atlanta. There is all this writing, but it seems very little gets said. And then we have the strand of thinking that says, well, it’s very difficult to say nothing [...] by

Cooper writes a poem April 25, 2011: WHY I AM NOT A TODDLER By Cooper Bennett Burt I am not a toddler, I am a baby. Why? I think I would rather be a toddler, but I am not. Well, for instance, Nathan is starting a drawing. I drop in. "Sit down and have a snack," he says. I snack; we snack. I look up. He has pirates in it. "Yes, it needed pirates there." "Oh." I go and [...] by

It’s Easter? Cue the strings, pass the Kleenex and fetch my pen. April 24, 2011: I'm an insanely musical person, with an astounding memory for songs no one in their right mind should retain. Yep, I've got a clutch on the standards, from Gene Pitney to Wilson Pickett, Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers to Badfinger, "Strange, I Know" to "Muskrat Love." I don't only recognize both Top 40 smashes and dusty obscure little ditties, [...] by

Je t’aime, asshole: Notes Towards a European Ghazal April 20, 2011: Typed up my post, then it vanished.  An account of meeting Agha Shahid Ali. I wrote it on my home blog, pressed the wrong key and it was gone.  Then I came here, wrote it out again, from scratch - what the poet said at night, on a loading dock at Wells College, about the ghazal - and now, once again, it is gone.  Where did it go? Perhaps [...] by

What’s Missing April 18, 2011: Great poems adapt to our needs over a lifetime of reading them. Philip Larkin’s “Aubade,” written in his last decade of life, and arguably one of his greatest poems, has come to mind again and again as I read through my colleague’s posts, reminding me of what seems to be an almost a seismic shift in the American poet’s relation to work. [...] by

The Wife of Pontius Pilate April 17, 2011: I know we are supposed to be in conversation here — but sometimes it is hard to resist the pull of the tangential, the whispered aside, the minor character, the unsettling dream that seems to come out of nowhere and color the whole day. Easter is huge in Greece — much more important than Christmas — and everyone here is gearing up for [...] by

“Middle Passage”–Robert Hayden April 15, 2011: Robert Hayden wrote “Middle Passage” in the nineteen forties, when, he said, no one was really writing about these subjects. To hear him read this poem is to experience the strange way that poems echo sounds I have already heard. I am making my way back to Hayden. And it occurs to me that the echoes I hear in Hayden betray what cannot be [...] by

So, uh, what are you wearing? April 15, 2011: My friend Jen Olsen works at Random House as an ebook managing editor, and she is an excellent reccomender of films that, while not always good, are always good to see. The other day, she pointed out that Netflix is streaming Starting Out in the Evening, a slow-paced and well-acted (if not superbly written, and somewhat tackily scored) film [...] by

Rojo Que Te Quiero Rojo April 11, 2011: Gillian Conoley’s prompt has stayed with me since she first posted the question about the poet’s palette. It merits a more creative approach to a response. Since my forthcoming book is called Black Blossoms I guess the answer is an easy one for me: my palette’s colors are dark, always have been--black, blood-red, bruised blue. The lens, [...] by

There are times April 11, 2011: when I fear there is no new way to describe how I feel about my children. There are occasions, such a this morning, when my youngest son recited the first poem he’d memorized to me that I felt—I felt… How does the mind work? I wonder, as I watch him. He is inwardly and outwardly focused, concentrating in a relaxed way. The poem moves [...] by

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