The situation in the poem “Talking with the Sun” by Joy Harjo is simple enough: Harjo, a Native American woman poet, feels a close kinship with the sun. She is in New York on the fourth day after the birth of her fourth granddaughter. Traditionally, this is the day the child would be presented to […]
In the video below, you can watch my recent conversation with Saida Agostini, poet and President of Funders for LGBTQ Issues, about her new book, let the dead in (Alan Squire, 2022). It is a book deeply rooted in Black Queer female Guyanese American experiences, which, in this instance, translates into poems of magic, family, […]
Editorial Note: Isabella Sanchez interviewed Celia Lisset Alvarez for my Poetry Writing II course at The University of Tampa in Spring 2021. I find their conversation incredibly engaging and meaningful, and I’m grateful for them allowing me to share it here. Isa wrote the following introduction. Cuban American scholar and poet Celia Lisset Alvarez is […]
Editorial Note: In the Fall 2020 semester, Barbara Jane Reyes visited (by zoom) my class on Poetic Forms at the University of Tampa to talk about her latest book of poems, Letters to a Young Brown Girl—which, I believe, we were the first class ever to read. After our class conversation, Reyes generously sent me […]
“Those are the heaviest songs and they / Have to be pried from the earth with shovels of grief.” I know those songs. I know a life of pain, and grief, and suffering. I know what it’s like to sing a song for death when the rest of the world sings songs of falling-in-love. I […]
In this interview, Rilee Oien talks with the poet Natalie Giarratano about Big Thicket Blues. Giarratano, who won the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry, Leaving Clean, lives in Colorado with her partner, daughter, and dog. This conversation covers a number of topics, from specific poems in the book, to the poet’s childhood in Texas, […]
In this interview, Ireland Dempster talks with Marjorie Maddox about Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation, a captivating collection of poems exploring the human body’s physical, spiritual, and mental aspects. Describing her father’s unsuccessful heart transplant during the blizzard of 1993, Maddox walks the reader through her experience with losing her father and her journey of healing, often through surreal descriptions […]
I talked with Emily Jungmin Yoon (@EmilyYoon), poet, translator, and doctoral candidate in comparative literature at the University of Chicago, about her latest book, Against Healing: Nine Korean Poets—a tiny anthology of translations just out from Axis Press as part of a series on “Translating Feminisms.” Our conversation began by considering two related statements Yoon makes […]
In this interview, James Shaw discusses with Wendy Chin-Tanner her brand-new book of poems, Anyone Will Tell You. Their conversation covers fertility and infertility, motherhood, and the struggle of two miscarriages. They also unpack how Chin-Tanner’s experience writing a graphic novel influences her poetry, the role of nature in poetry, the practicing of keeping a […]
In this interview, Andrew Gillis asks the poet M.E. Silverman (@MESilverman_BLP and Blue Lyra Press) about his most recent book, The Floating Door, particularly regarding Silverman’s fascination with Zablon Simintov of Afghanistan, the thought process behind choices he made in his poetry, and how Jewish life in America compares to Jewish life in Afghanistan. Silverman also […]
Ravi Shankar’s just-published book The Many Uses of Mint presents new and selected poems from twenty years of his writing, including from the Norton anthology he co-edited Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. The poet Lisa Pegram and I recently sat down with Ravi over video chat to […]
Many people do not realize that Jesus was quoting directly from the Book of Leviticus when he said to love one’s neighbors as oneself. This context lends an important layer of meaning to his words. Often his saying is reduced to an encouragement to “be nice” to others. While not a bad admonish as far as it goes, that interpretation […]
Corrigan Literary Review 