Warren Wilson MFA Program alumni Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr. (poetry, ’09) and Ross White (poetry, ’08) have been selected by Matthew Dickman for the Best New Poets 2012 Anthology.
Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., “Albania” (nominated by Beloit Poetry Journal)
Ross White, “Ocean Quahog”
Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.
Ross White
Alumni RJ Gibson (poetry, ’11) and Mike Puican (poetry, ’09) both have poems appearing in Issue 56 of The Cortland Review, complete with audio recordings:
Immersion Method
RJ Gibson
Now that your wife’s moved out
you’ve papered your house, downstairs and up
with yellow Post-It Notes. Each object’s tag bears
its name in French. You’re living in the world
you know, yes, but also the world you don’t know yet.
Aren’t we all.
Yours is a world where the kitchen range
is powered by gaz. Your cabinets, drawers are full
of fourchettes, couteaux, cups, et cuillères...[Keep Reading]…When He’s Dead
Mike Puican
he can finally stop wondering whether God exists or if
he’ll ever have the nerve to hug his father. He no longer
has to say, “A part of me feels uncomfortable with the Democrats.”
Finally he can stop thinking about what he should have said
in the custody hearing, how he shouldn’t have been so flip
to the court-ordered psychologist. He can stop daydreaming
about the tree of heaven that grows 15 feet each year
even though the Polish lady cuts it to the ground each spring, …[Keep Reading]…
Faith S. Holsaert (fiction ’82): Faith’s poem “The Flood” appears in the Women Writing Nature issue of Sugar Mule:
The Flood
after Lucille Clifton
We said
it was the tree of lifewe thought
rising the new way was not lucifer but venus in the morning caught like a star
in the branchesno …
coiled into the shadow at the trunk’s foot scales
shine like kaddishand even the
solitary child
the hope of our mornings
is drawn from her book
is walking in the dog hot day
her hair smoothed as if ironed
the hum of cicadas
the two eyes under the foot bridge the corn silk limp
heat lightning
hell sulfur
just as the gob pile gives
the water fills the holler
from enclosing ridge
to enclosing ridge
Catherine Barnett (poetry, ’02): Catherine’s poem “Categories of Understanding” appears as the August 6th edition of Poetry Daily:
I’m studying the unspoken.
“What?” my son asks.
“What are you looking at?”
But there is no explaining,
I can only speak the way light
falls, the way the cotton sheet
lays itself over his sleeping or resting
or dissolving body, touching him with
its ephemera, its oblivion.
Catherine is the author of The Game of Boxes (2012, Graywolf).
Laurie Saurborn Young (poetry, ’08): Laurie was recently interviewed in The Collagist:
“Draught” was the product of cabin fever and fantasies of rain, during a long, hot Texas summer. There are no day trips out of the heat—no way to escape—so I spent much of those four months inside. It’s like deep winter but in a bright and sunny hell. Rain was a memory. What it sounded like on the roof, I no longer knew. All I could hear were bells. Though that may have been an air-conditioning-induced hallucination.
As well, the poem is about dreaming—it could be read as an Ode to Dreams I Would Rather Have. Most of my dreams are about falling from nervous heights. I’d rather dream about Nietzsche and rabbits and leaves. And water...[Keep Reading]…
Laurie is the author of Carnavoria
Scott Challener (poetry, ’08): Scott’s poem “Leaving” was recently selected to be part of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s “Words from the Walk” program. It was mounted on a glass plaque and installed on Boston’s Harborwalk, where it will remain on display until Spring 2013.
Leaving
Dazzling, the whiteness of the harbor
the masts appearing
first in the sun-spray like needlesof ghostly metronomes: bodiless larghettos
in their own time emerging
a nocturne of hidden snowsthat landscape the sea…
and if you sit long enough on a rock
late into the afternoon growingcold under the awning
of a dream, staring, hearing them,
your mind may beginto glide and you find you
are standing, beginning the walk
home, moving among open sounds.
The plaque also credits Grub Street, a Boston writing center directed by faculty member Christopher Castellani, for its role in selecting the poem.
Alumna Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara (fiction, ’01), current director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, gets at the real issues behind the recent Chick-fil-A controversy in a recent article for the Huffington Post.
Still, as gay minister in the South, I’ve been puzzled by the national media frenzy surrounding this story. Here in the South we are, sadly, used to hearing anti-LGBT rhetoric — from business leaders, politicians and preachers. It’s hardly news, it’s hardly surprising and it’s hardly ever the whole story.
As a CEO and private citizen, Mr. Cathy has the right to voice his beliefs on gay marriage (or any topic). And people have the right to disagree or agree and make consumer choices accordingly. Chick-fil-A is not the issue here. The real issue is that in 29 states, Mr. Cathy, or any employer, has the right to fire employees simply for being gay or lesbian. In 34 states, employers can fire people because of their gender identity...[Keep Reading]…
Lucy Anderton (poetry, ’05): Lucy’s poems “I’m sorry I have to put it this way, but,” and “Toward the single point of slipping” appear in the fall 2012 issue of Beloit Poetry Journal.
You can also listen to Lucy reading some of her poems online at Spoken Word Redux.
R. Dwayne Betts (poetry, ’10): Dwayne’s poem “Post Racial, or Why My Timberlands Are Still Unlaced” appears in the latest issue of TriQuarterly:
Post Racial, or Why My Timberlands Are Still Unlaced
troubled by
news reports
about what Obama’s
candidacy means,
his sleight
of hand mastery
of invisibility, a skill
that lets him be
black and post black
on the same stage—
…[Keep Reading]…
Dwayne is the author of A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison
Joe Schuster (fiction ’91): Joe will be attending the Sewanee Writers Conference as a Walter E. Dakin Fellow. He is the author of The Might Have Been: A Novel
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