The Poet’s Ear April 15, 2013: We’ve all heard it said that a given poet has (or doesn’t have, as the case may be) an “ear.” This is not the same thing as having a distinct “voice.” Although both terms are centered around the notion of speech, “voice”—oddly—does not usually have much to do with the actual sound of the voice, but rather with the set of [...] by K. Silem Mohammad

Don’t Wax the Poem April 1, 2010: Maybe all poets are nerds or they wouldn’t be poets. But not all poets write nerdy. Some are suave, which can be a good thing. Some are elegant in an elegant way. Nerds can be elegant in a backwards way, by retaining their bumps and inelegances, bumptious idiosyncrasies, a being-in-life at least as much as in-literature. There’s plenty to [...] by Daisy Fried