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
“Remember the Telephone Book” by Geoffrey Nutter
Geoffrey Nutter was born in Sacramento, and attended San Francisco State University and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He is the author of The Rose of January (Wave Books, 2013), Christopher Sunset (Wave… Read More
“Mill at Romesdal” by Richard Hugo
"Richard Hugo was a poet of the Pacific Northwest, yet his renown attests to a stature greater than that of most "regional" poets. He is noted for the tight, rhythmic control of… Read More
“Foxhunt” by Ted Hughes
"The rural landscape of Hughes’s youth in Yorkshire exerted a lasting influence on his work. To read Hughes’s poetry is to enter a world dominated by nature, especially by animals. This holds… 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
Number 14, from the Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Robert Temple
We make our way midst flowers, vine leaves, fruit . . .… Read More
“Coming to This” by Mark Strand
“On practically every page, one can be dazzled by Strand’s language.” - Village Voice… Read More
“Early Elegy: Headmistress” by Claudia Emerson
“Like the estranged lover in one of her poems who pitches horseshoes in the dark with preternatural precision, so Emerson sends her words into a different kind of darkness with steely exactness,… Read More
“Wanderers”: A Short Film About Deep Space Exploration by Erik Wernquist, Narrated by Carl Sagan
"Wanderers is a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations… Read More
“Urania” By Ruth Pitter
Ruth Pitter (1897-1992) lived a life of quiet dedication to her art not unlike that of her more famous contemporary, Elizabeth Jennings, who wrote the introduction to a Selected edition of Pitter's… Read More
“387” by Edward Clarke
Edward Clarke tutors visiting students in English literature at St Catherine’s College, Oxford University, UK. He has published work in the Wallace Stevens Journal and contributed to Essays and Reflections on John… 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
“Irish Bar, Philadelphia” by Justin Quinn
Justin Quinn has lived in Prague since 1992. His most recent collection is Close Quarters (Gallery, 2011) and he has translated the work of Czech poets, including Ivan Blatny, Petr Borkovec and… Read More
“Why Regret?” by Galway Kinnell
“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.”… Read More
“Childlessness” by Karl Kirchwey
“Art is the medium by which Kirchwey’s art most often reifies the past—an undertaking of moral gravity, since so much of what he finds is perennial cruelty and violence. Yet what time… Read More
“HELL NO, The Sensible Horror Film” by Joe Nicolosi
"Imagine a realm where the most horrifying terrors of the underworld emerge to wreak bloody vengeance upon any who . . . hey, let's get out of here. "… 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
“The Death of a Cat” by Louis MacNeice
Born in Belfast Frederick Louis MacNeice was an outsider almost from the beginning. His family moved to Carrickfergus, County Antrim, soon after his birth. His father, John Frederick MacNeice, although a minister… 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
“Song at the Turning of the Tide” by Jon Stallworthy
Jon Stallworthy (M.A. and B.Litt. Oxford) is Senior Research Fellow at Wolfson College of Oxford University, where he is an Emeritus Professor of English Literature. He is also former John Wendell Anderson… 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
“40th Anniversary Edition” by Michael Robbins
"Michael Robbins is our contemporary poet laureate for beautiful sins of language..... The Second Sex is a confident, skillful work that will make readers reconsider poetry." -- The Millions… 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