“Mineral Point” by Ernest Hilbert in the New Issue of Yale Review
Like Yale’s schools of music, drama, and architecture, like its libraries and art galleries, The Yale Review has helped give the University its leading place in American education. In a land of… Read More
“Mingus at The Showplace” by William Matthews
"A deliciously irreverent, classically minded poet . . . One of the wittiest and most heartbreaking American poets in the second half of the twentieth century." - Edward Hirsch… Read More
Books Read or Reread by Ernest Hilbert in 2014
Well, that's it. Another year swirls slowly around the drain, soon to be gone. Here is my annual roundup of books I somehow found the time to read over the past year.… Read More
Cleaver Magazine Selects Ernest Hilbert’s All of You on the Good Earth for its Small-Press Lover’s Shopping List
Many thanks to Cleaver magazine for selecting my latest collection of poems for their annual shopping list. Head on over to check out some of the other selections made by the poetry… Read More
“By the Time Everyone Shows Up, I’m Hammered”: Comedian Paul F. Tompkins on a Disastrous Christmas Party
You may know him from Best Week Ever or There Will Be Blood, but I used to stand behind the counter at a book store with him in the 1990s and got… Read More
Ernest Hilbert Reads with Daniel Tobin at the Cambridge Public Library
Ernest Hilbert Reads with Daniel Tobin, Thursday, November 13th at 6:30PM, Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, Hosted by Daniel Wuenschel, introductions by Bill Coyle… Read More
“Monster Party,” a Short Film Written and Directed by Louis Mansfield
Written & Directed by Louis Mansfield. A Federal Film Reserve Production. Music by Dan Dilemma Thomas. Produced by Christine McDermott… Read More
“The Jetty” by Daniel Tobin
“So refreshingly original and so much needed . . . Tobin opens new ground as he strikes inwards and downwards, unearthing interpretive treasures and, best of all, new kinds of questions.” … Read More
Mosh Pit at a Poetry Reading: Iron Reagan’s “Miserable Failure”
It's funny how poetry readings are used in movies, music videos, and televisions shows to establish a hushed, sanctimonious, precious atmosphere. Perhaps there's still something to that, which may explain why so… Read More
Dream Song 370 (“Henry Saw with Tolstoyan Clarity”) by John Berryman
"You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going… Read More
“Searingly bright with the clarity of madness”: Introducing Lovecraftian Perfumes . . . from Beyond (and Other Fun Cthulhu Things)
H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos, the product of a fertile imagination, profound depression, and mounting paranoia, have taken many forms in popular American culture since the 1920s, most notably since the 1980s, when an… Read More
“Parent’s Pantoum” by Carolyn Kizer
“Her poetry is intensely, splendidly oral, wanting to be read aloud, best of all to be read or roared by the lion herself.” - Ursula K. Le Guin… Read More
1969 Film of Shirley Jackson’s Chilling Short Story “The Lottery”
For many decades, Jackson's short story "The Lottery" was taught in high school English classes, typically under the rubric (or textbook chapter, if you will) of "Irony." I don't know if they… Read More
“Gerard Manley Hopkins” by Leontia Flynn
"Exact and casual and formally adept, a bit like an Irish (and female) Frank O'Hara, and not a bit like anyone else." - Adam Phillips… Read More
“The ‘Buried Book'” by Meredith Bergmann
Meredith Bergmann is a sculptor whose public commissions include the Boston Women’s Memorial, the Labor Memorial for the Massachusetts State House, and the September 11th Memorial for NYC's Cathedral of St. John… Read More
“Langston Hughes’s Grandma Mary Writes a Love Letter to Lewis Leary Years after He Dies Fighting at Harper’s Ferry” by Erica Dawson
“Dawson draws an especially timely self-portrait. She generates great energy by pulling at the impossible and sometimes pleasurable tangles of what is constant in us, and what is disposable in the… Read More
“Red Eyes” by The War on Drugs
The War on Drugs performs "Red Eyes" at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, Spain.… Read More
Jonathan Creasy Interviews Ernest Hilbert for New Dublin Press, Part One, Plus a New Poem, “Caligulan,” with Audio
Jonathan Creasy, an editor at New Dublin Press, conducted a comprehensive, long-form interview with me over the course of several months. The first installment has been published, along with a new poem,… Read More
E-Verse Autumn Equinox at Fergie’s Pub!
Featuring Iain Haley Pollock, author of Spit Back a Boy, Kate Gale, author of The Goldilocks Zone, and Quincy R. Lehr, author of Heimat, hosted by Ernest Hilbert… Read More
“Heal” by Strand of Oaks
"From the first bars of HEAL, the exhilarating melodic stomp of ‘Goshen ‘97’ puts you right into Tim Showalter’s fervent teenage mindset. We find him in his family’s basement den in Goshen,… Read More
“London Bridge” by Kate Gale
Kate Gale is the Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of The Los Angeles Review, and President of the American Composers Forum, Los Angeles. She teaches in Low Residency MFA programs… Read More
“Second Line” by Iain Haley Pollock
"Beyond the bracing intelligence in these poems, beyond the surges of joy and trouble, beyond the poet’s awe in this split second, he plunges with imagination into the timeless work of loving… Read More
“Pines” by Callie Siskel
Callie Siskel lives in Baltimore and teaches creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, where she earned her MFA in poetry in 2013. Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the… Read More
Ernest Hilbert’s Poem “Martini” Reprinted in Modern Drunkard Magazine
My poem “Martini,” inspired in part by The Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic by the perfectly named Barnaby Conrad III (also inspired in part by martinis). It first… Read More
Lend a Hand in the Creation of Orison Books
Orison Books, a non-profit literary press "focused on the life of the spirit from a broad range of perspectives," is the latest brainchild of North Carolinian poet and editor Luke Hankins. Watch… Read More
Ernest Hilbert and Beth Greenberg in the Valley
Here's a nice little article about New York-based opera director Beth Greenberg at the Crested Butte Music Festival in Colorado and her work with me, including her visit to my graduate course… Read More
“Seen From Space” April Lindner
April Lindner is the author of two poetry collections, This Bed Our Bodies Shaped (Able Muse) and Skin, winner of the Walt MacDonald First Book Prize from Texas Tech University Press. … Read More
“Psalm” by Joshua Mehigan
"Joshua Mehigan’s Accepting the Disaster is the rare new book of poetry that is entirely alive, entirely aloft. No allowances have to be made for these darkly lucid, sad, and humane poems;… Read More
“Carrion Birds Wheeling Overhead”: New E-Verse Drink for the Summer: Introducing, the Black Sabbath
On my recent trek through Scotland I found myself seated in the back room of a small pub in the northeastern village of Huntly, in Aberdeenshire. I learned of the latest drink… Read More