“From the Balcony on Heavy Metal Tribute Night at the Trocadero” by Ernest Hilbert
"Per Contra began publication as an online quarterly in the fall of 2005. Our name indicates our intention to offer more than one way of looking at the world. You can… Read More
“dirty martini” by Ryan Eckes
"Ryan Eckes' VALU-PLUS continues his incisive, wry, sincere, & gorgeous examination of the city- landscape. In Eckes' work, the city—Philadelphia, specifically—cannot be contained, but is well lived in & observed & explored.… Read More
“The Lion for Real” by Allen Ginsberg
"Ginsberg is both tragic & dynamic, a lyrical genius, con man extraordinaire and probably the single greatest influence on American poetical voice since Whitman." - Bob Dylan… Read More
“Dummy, 51, to Go to a Museum, Ventriloquist Dead at 75” by May Swenson
"Swenson was a visionary poet, a prodigious observer of the fragile and miraculous natural world." - Priscilla Long… Read More
Sir Alec Guinness Reads T.S. Eliot’s Poetry
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," The Waste Land, and Four Quartets were recorded in association with The Arts Council of Great Britain and the British Broadcasting Corporation. "Journey of the… Read More
“Black Ice and Rain” by Michael Donaghy
"A linguistic musician, a literary musician. Every poem is a marvel." - Simon Armitage… Read More
“New Order of the Ages” by Rick Mullin
Rick Mullin’s latest Collection, Stignatz & the User of Vicenza is published by Dos Madres Press, Loveland Ohio. His other books published by Dos Madres are the booklength poem Soutine (2012), the… Read More
Ernest Hilbert and Stella Sung’s New Opera, The Book Collector, to Premiere Friday, May 20th
My second opera with composer Stella Sung, The Book Collector, will be performed by the Dayton Opera on Friday, May 20th, with a matinee on Sunday May 22nd. The opera incorporates physical… Read More
“To My Mother” by George Barker
"His work was passionate, intellectually challenging and highly original, his language incantatory and often hypnotic. There are echoes of Blake, Housman, Verlaine and Barker's contemporary, Dylan Thomas. " - Peter Wilby… Read More
“Hit, Run” by Dawn Manning
Dawn Manning is a writer, photographer, and rogue anthropologist living in the Greater Philadelphia area. Her awards include the Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, the Edith Garlow Poetry Prize, and the San Miguel Writer’s Conference Writing… Read More
Making a Modern Opera: Behind the Scenes of the Adaptation of The Scarlet Letter by Composer Lori Laitman and Librettist Dave Mason
"Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is America’s first great tragic novel. Published in 1850, the work immediately caught the country’s attention and has never lost its grip. The story could easily be… Read More
“Blustery” by Neil Shepard
Neil Shepard’s sixth and seventh books of poetry were published in 2015: Hominid Up, by Salmon Poetry (Ireland), and Vermont Exit Ramps II (poems and photos) by Green Writers Press (Vermont).… Read More
“Zeug-o-Matic” by Kate Light
Kate Light, who died unexpectedly in April 2016, was a librettist, lyricist and poet in New York City. She was an alumna of the Eastman School of Music, Hunter College, and the… Read More
“Dream Song 105” by John Berryman
“A major achievement . . . [Berryman] has written an elegy on his brilliant generation and, in the process, he has also written an elegy on himself.” - A. Alvarez, The Observer… Read More
John Betjeman Interviews Philip Larkin in a 1964 Episode of the British Television Program Monitor
John Betjeman interviewing Philip Larkin in a 1964 episode of Monitor, which was a flagship arts program on British TV during the 1950s and 1960s. Larkin reads "Church Going," "Toads Revisited," and… Read More
“Mirror” by Mark Strand
“He is not a religious poet on the face of it, but he fits into a long tradition of meditation and contemplation. He makes you see how trivial the things of this… Read More
“Lines Written in Early Spring” by William Wordsworth
“Wordsworth’s poetry is great because of the extraordinary power with which he feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple elementary affections and duties.”… Read More
“That Old Black Hole” by Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog
From the album Feel the Void. … Read More
“Calmly We Walk through this April’s Day” by Delmore Schwartz
"[Delmore Schwartz] was the prisoner of his superb intellectual training, a victim of the logic he respected beyond anything else. He was of the generation that does not come easily to concepts… Read More
“Pills” by Eliza Callard
Eliza Callard spends most of her time reading, writing, and trying to keep pace with her cystic fibrosis. She lives in the house she was born into with her wife and… Read More
Ernest Hilbert’s Poem “Kite” Set to Music by Composer Christopher LaRosa
Ernest Hilbert's poem "Kite" was set to music by Christopher LaRosa for a commission by cellist Sara Wilkins. The result is a beautifully unsettling short work scored for soprano and cello. It… Read More
The Audubon Dream, a Short Opera by Karen E. Peace with Libretto by Ernest Hilbert’s Student Laura Stuckey
One of my former Art of the Opera Libretto students, Laura Stuckey, developed the one act libretto written for my course into a short opera with composer Karen Peace called The Audubon… Read More
Excerpt from “Wiped Out” by James Matthew Wilson
James Matthew Wilson is the author of Four Verse Letters (Steubenville UP, 2010), a chapbook of poems, and Timothy Steele: A Critical Introduction (Story Line Press, 2012). His poems, essays, and reviews… Read More
“Time is a Horse” by Christine Gelineau
Christine Gelineau is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently Crave (NYQ Books, 2016), which has just been released. Her poetic sequence Appetite for the Divine was the Editor's… Read More
“Once by the Pacific” by Robert Frost
"I have to say that my Frost is not the Frost I seem to perceive existing in the minds of so many of his admirers. He is not the Frost who confounds… Read More
“Visible Spectrum” by Ernest Hilbert
“There are books of poetry that, if only readers could be induced to pick them up, might change their minds for good about the supposed incomprehensibility, preciousness, and irrelevance of modern poetry.… Read More
“Neil deGrasse Tyson” by Christopher Bullard
Chris Bullard is a native of Jacksonville, FL. He lives in Collingswood, NJ. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Wilkes University. Kattywompus Press published his… Read More
“I-89 STOWE/WATERBURY (Exit 10: Route 100)” by Neil Shepard
Neil Shepard’s sixth book of poetry, Hominid Up, was published by Salmon Poetry (Ireland) in January 2015. His seventh book, Vermont Exit Ramps II, a full collection of poems and photographs, was… Read More
“Verses upon the Burning of our House” by Anne Bradstreet
"She is a holy seductress, our grandmother of American literature. She is our reluctant revolutionary, passionate pilgrim, tenth muse; and above all--our first published poet." - Annabelle Moseley… Read More
“Dick’s Island” by David Sanders
David Sanders is the general editor of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and the founding editor of Poetry News in Review. His poems and translation have appeared in numerous journals and magazine.… Read More