In yesterday’s blog, I was talking about Poetry Citizenship—an idea I should probably do more to articulate—and one of the things that kept lurking at the edges of both the post and the conversation about the post was the question... Continue reading

A minor blogosphere dust-up over reading fees has made me think a lot about the economy of money and attention—particularly as it relates to poetry. The blog battle went something like this—The New England Review had announced that it would... Continue reading

It's official! Striking Surface is out!! Thank you to Ashland Poetry Press for publishing it! Thank you to Sarah Wells & Stephen Haven for being amazing editors and managers. Thank you to Elton Glaser for picking it! Thank you to... Continue reading

The morning that August Wilson died, I was teaching Joe Turner’s Come and Gone to undergraduates. None of my students had heard about Wilson’s death, and when I mentioned it to them, I did sadly. But my sadness was the... Continue reading

Welcome back from the weekend! In honor of John Giorno, I'm starting the week with my sound poetry experiments. His signature recording style was his work being read by a male voice, followed by the same poems being read by... Continue reading

OK, a few final thoughts to wrap up my week of blogging. Thank you everyone for reading these posts! I’ll see you back up on BAPBlog in the Fall when my book Striking Surface (winner of the Richard Snyder Prize... Continue reading

My friend Linda Neiberg was a close friend of Rachel Wetzsteon, and I asked her to write something about Rachel. Linda is a Renaissance scholar and a Renaissance woman, someone I admire greatly. Thank you Linda! It's a wonderful piece.... Continue reading

A few years ago, I was working at an arts center for an afternoon. I’d been infuriated by a slew of editorials coming out against special high schools for Queer youth. One had been by a young man who had... Continue reading

A few years ago, I was talking to a poet a few years older than me who was telling me about a conversation she’d had with a poet a full generation older than us. After her highly acclaimed first book,... Continue reading

I owe a debt to Cher. It’s quite possible that every gay man owes a debt to Cher, but I’ll only speak of mine, since it’s the one I know best. In 1999, I was in a bad place. I’d... Continue reading

When I was 16, I read “13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?”—mostly because it promised to be about me, and since there was no sociology class in my high school, I thought I should give it a go. Yes, I... Continue reading

I was at a reading a few months ago, where a friend was reading from his new memoir. I’ve known him for a number of years as a poet. He’s been subject to a Lucy Grealy-like sequence of surgeries for... Continue reading