A guest in another’s house, I am admiring, marveling at his taste, her taste, or I am simply curious, noticing a peculiarity of the house or the housekeeping, discovering some device I wonder how I’ve done without. I appreciate the... Continue reading

A guest in another’s house, I am admiring, marveling at his taste, her taste, or I am simply curious, noticing a peculiarity of the house or the housekeeping, discovering some device I wonder how I’ve done without. I appreciate the... Continue reading

In yesterday’s elliptical post, I was thinking persistently about how reading an anthology, like any one of the Best American Poetry volumes, introduces various crises of knowledge and confidence—how an anthology forces me to change. As one poem is different... Continue reading

Once I started to get poems published, my grandmother would ask to see a poem. Always she’d say: That’s not poetry: it doesn’t rhyme. * People say this: Now that’s poetry. Think Crocodile Dundee: That’s not poetry. Now that’s poetry.... Continue reading

Yesterday, I sat down to the phone in my office to call a poet I very much admire (however quietly) to see if an essay he’d sent to Copper Nickel was still available. Generally speaking, Dean Young’s sentiment about the... Continue reading

I’m relocating to Atlanta in a few weeks. The plan is to work on a book—cultural studies meets poetics—about the ways contemporary art thinks about Civil Rights History. I’m shipping a few boxes, but mostly I have to limit myself... Continue reading

Last week, my wife and I snuck away into the mountains. I packed only one book. The plan was to read the land—penstemon, aster, Indian paintbrush, lupin, aspen, lodgepole, spruce—and come back to the books and e-mails and blogs after... Continue reading

The blog, so often, is about now. But I am here, as Terrance Hayes writes, “because I never could get the hang of time.” • I wanted to begin my stay as guest blogger by pulling off the shelf Best... Continue reading