A poem by alum Jayne Benjulian (poetry, ’13) appears at Cider Press Review:
What was the word I can’t remember,
what words did I know at nine ?
Plenty with a father like mine. His sister
cornered me. Was it the stone
room, it had a porch door
a stranger could come in, was Mother
alive I can’t remember who slept
upstairs, I turned the knob to the attic
door, it was cold, it was hot, I looked
through the box, I smelled her cashmere clothes,
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KCRW’s Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt recently interviewed alum Brian Blanchfield (poetry, ’99) about his new book of essays titled Proxies. Topics discussed include sex, solidarity, poetry, precariousness, and tumbleweed chandeliers:
Click here to find what you need to know: ALUMINI CONFERENCE AND 40th ANNIVERSARY
An essay by alum Rachel Howard (fiction, ’09) appears at OZY:
County fairgrounds in a Central Valley farm town. Same men she sees at Thrifty’s, at Perko’s, same would-be rock-star mustaches and boot-cut jeans, same swagger, except instead of Coors Light, they’re swinging pink teddy bears like freshly shot game for the girls with blue eye shadow. Forget them. Her date is in the stroller. Cotton candy stands hold out clouds of pink sugar like the peonies lining church aisles that she’s seen in wedding magazines. The air smells of cow dung and fried cornmeal. Rides that run in endless circles glitter, and teenagers screech. She nudges the stroller wheels over power cords held down by electrical tape, slowing at each crossing, noting thick blades of grass trampled into mud, thrilled to be taking such care.
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Alum Rose McLarney (poetry, ’10) takes her place this summer as the 40th resident poet in Robert Frost’s home. Rose will live in Robert Frost’s home on 158 Ridge Road for six to eight weeks this summer and will give featured readings at The Frost Place’s Conference on Poetry and Poetry Seminar, as well as at Dartmouth College and other venues in the region.
An interview with Rose and poems appear here.
Two poems by alum Daye Phillippo (poetry, ’14) appear in the Adirondack Review:
Perspective
Across three brown fields and as many roads,
a round white barn and its square white house,
the barn, thimble-sized from here. Above these
the sky going on and on for miles, the way
Winslow Homer in the French countryside,
painting Cernay la Ville perhaps en plein air, his sky,
summer blue and cumulous, most of the canvas.
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Two poems by alum Noah Stetzer (poetry, ’14) appear at Beltway Poetry Quarterly:
There is a Balm in Gilead®
This red one’s twice a day to even out
your heart; the white one’s only once a day
for kidney and the yellow just once too
for your liver because the big horse pill
of three meds in one—beware trinities—
brings a mitigated kind of healing.
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Alum Lynette D’Amico (poetry, ’13) interviewed fellow alum Robert Thomas (poetry, ’02) about his new novel Bridge. The interview appears in Fiction Writers Review:
Lynette D’Amico: You’ve previously published two books of poetry, Door to Door (Fordham University Press), Winner of the 2002 Poets Out Loud Prize, and Dragging the Lake (Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series). Some of the sections in Bridge were previously published as poems— “The Gift” and “Catchy Tunes” were in Poetry—did you originally conceive the project as poetry?
Robert Thomas: I think for me there are really two questions: one is poetry vs. fiction, and the other is poetry vs. prose. It’s actually hard for me to remember how I originally conceived the project, but I know the first draft was prose. That doesn’t necessarily say much about my conception, though, as I’ve often written first drafts of poems in prose. In fact if any poets are suffering from writer’s block, I think one strategy worth a try is writing in prose. I’ve always found prose liberating even if the final version of a piece is in verse.
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A short story by alum Ian Randall Wilson (poetry, ’02) appears at Hollywood Dementia:
It wasn’t just a job you left but a way of life. Lunches at a certain grade of restaurant expensed, and many colleagues and celebrities. It came to Jeffrey that he had been fired from the collective us, a place of order with its numbered parking spaces and assistants purchasing his favorite pens, to take on the solitary I. I am by myself, he thought many times afterward. An unemployed entertainment attorney in a town full of counsel. I am no longer negotiating for either side.
His first day unemployed he rose at his usual time of 4:30 AM, put on workout clothes and went to the gym. His trainer was waiting. Trainers were part of the style. Trainers also cost a thousand a month. The gym itself was five hundred a month which included valet parking, unlimited sweat towels during the workout and little bottles of water to maintain proper hydration during exercise.
An interview with alum Rick Bursky (poetry, ’03) appears at the Pine Hills Review:
It seems like you’ve done everything. You’re a poet, a photographer, a director, a producer, a playwright. Is there one specific genre or medium you’ve always dreamed of working in that you haven’t yet touched?
Years ago, I wrote a play, Prayers for the Invisible Men. It was performed in an off-off-Broadway theater. Once was enough for that. And the truth is, it was a poem that really go out of hand. There was also a time, years back, when I thought of writing a screenplay. Hey, I live in Los Angeles. But I came to my senses. Los Angeles doesn’t need another screenwriter.
I sometimes play with the idea of writing creative nonfiction about poetry. I have a manuscript titled Ironmongery. In that book, I explain everything in the world. For instance, I have a short piece about fog. Most people will tell you fog is a cloud touching the ground. But I tell the truth about fog—it’s unresolved poetic thought. Yeah, I better stick to poetry.
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