“No more water, fire next time.”
Poems come into fruition exactly when they need (and want) to. I suppose, like everything else in our lives, poems are products of the Law of Cause & Effect. If I have my students practice writing thesis statements, I’m making a cause. The effect will (hopefully) be an improvement in [...]
Archive for July, 2009
29 Jul
Thesis Diary #3: On the Fire This Time
28 Jul
MFA Thesis Diary #2
I spent a large portion of last semester trying to think of a hip concept for my manuscript. I wasn’t trying to be gimmicky, or thinking about how to “sell” my project. Rather, I thought a clear concept would provide me with a clear vision & keep me motivated. It’s worked in the past but [...]
24 Jul
Collin Kelley Interview: After the Poison & On to Venus
Collin Kelley is the author of three poetry collections and his first novel, Conquer Venus, comes out next month. He blogs regularly at Modern Confessional and was nice enough to answer some questions about the process, the internet, and identity politics.
I know you love American Idol so, to start things off, how would [...]
21 Jul
of Drama Queens & Incendiary Women: a few queer poems
I need to do this more often. One of the goals of this blog is to introduce you, my lovely readers, to queer poets you haven’t slept with read, as of yet. Here’s some work by poets from all over the place, now & then, gay & lesbian.
D.A. Powel: “confessions of a teenage drama queen” [...]
20 Jul
MFA Thesis Diary #1
This September, I will start my 2nd year in the MFA program at Rutgers University – Newark, which is to say, I will be neck-deep in the process of writing my thesis. All programs are different, I know, but at RN, the thesis (for poets) is a collection of 45-60 polished poems.
Thanks to professors like [...]
19 Jul
Still the King & other links.
Check out my review of Jericho Brown’s Please. And please (pun intended) forgive the typo in the third sentence. Seriously, it’s haunting my dreams.
My roommate Jaime Karnes has a story AND an interview in the current issue of Storyglossia. You go, girl!
Daniel Pritchard wrote an insightful review of D.A. Powell’s Chronic.
Addriene Rich is profiled as [...]
19 Jul
Of Past Lifetimes
By chance today, I found a packet of poems rife with comments. This was no ordinary packet. My senior year at Western Kentucky University, I asked Dr. Tom Hunley to comment on this packet & help me decide which poems should be included in my application to the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark. I’m so thankful [...]
13 Jul
Rich Villar Interview: Continued
And because you know I have to throw a little glitter in here, are there some gay Latino/a writers that I should put on my poetry playlist?
Wow. That’s such a huge question because Latino/a writing would be so profoundly different without our gay writers. Whole anthologies have been put together: one that springs to mind [...]
12 Jul
Rich Villar on Nuyorican Poetics & Waterboarding Dick Cheney
This is the first part of my interview with poet Rich Villar. He directs Acentos, an organization dedicated to supporting latino/a writers. He also looks great in a fedora.
I often start off with a question that allows the poet to write a wild bio… so, how would you introduce yourself to Dick Cheney?
Rich Villar is [...]
