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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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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A poem by alum Francine Conley (poetry, ’14) appears at The Collagist:

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A poem by alum Fay Dillof (poetry, ’15) appears in Shadowgraph Quarterly:

Now trees, that tree,

part dead, part red, where plums,

who knows when, the seasons exploding

into one another, will form

and then it’ll be

a competition: squirrels v the height

we reach on chairs. And the heart

is not the pit but the hard bite

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A poem by alum Noah Stetzer (poetry, ’14) appears at the  HIV Here & Now website, a 365-day countdown in poems to 35 years of AIDS on June 5, 2016.

But if you do not worship, you will immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire; and what god is there who can deliver you out of my hands?
—Daniel 3:15

Tied at my mouth, tongue knotted with my tongue,
this stone this knife this bitter herb—older
than Easter with rusty thumbnails digging
into the skin on the sides of my chest—
exhaled stale breath into my lungs, pushing
sand and hot and grit inside inflating
until I hovered halfway between floor
and ceiling my lips blistered with cold sores.

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