New Poetry by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

New work by faculty member Gabrielle Calvocoressi appears in print and online in the “Poetry at the End of the World” themed podcast from Poetry Magazine:

Captain Lovell [“Dad calls her the Dowager but I call her Aunt G.”]

Dad calls her the Dowager but I call her Aunt G.
Aunt G. at the Polo Lounge. Aunt G. drinking gimlets
by the pool. Aunt G. asking about Babe even
though she’s the only one who sees her that much
anymore. She wears ten rings. Seven on her
right hand, which Dad calls the Seven Stars.
They make the glass seem like it’s going to crack.
…
Continue reading online at Poetry, and listen to the full podcast here.

 

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New Essay by Tony Hoagland

An excerpt of an essay by faculty member Tony Hoagland appears online in The Kenyon Review:

An Excerpt from “Idiom, Our Funny Valentine: Its Cunning, Its Romance, Its Power”

I am driving around Houston, listening to a sermon by one of our many local radio evangelists. Call him Pastor James. Brother James is telling an anecdote about himself. The punch line goes something like this:

And in that moment, looking at that shiny outboard 44 horsepower engine, and my little nine-year old daughter, I felt Jesus look into my heart and I said, “I am so busted. . . . ”

Big tender oohs and ahhs from the congregation; well deserved, too, wrought by the skill of a language-man. In this case, it is the particular genius of idiom that evokes my admiration. I am so busted, says the preacher, and the commonality between leader and flock is instantly evoked, renewed, and reestablished; the playing field leveled, the airwaves bathed in human warmth and intimacy. Time to pass the collection plate.

Most idiom has the contradictory status of seeming, on the one hand, like exhausted speech,—i.e., it is used frequently and thoughtlessly, while at the same time it is very much alive with tribal flavor and the energy of the contemporary. Idiom shares categorical boundaries with vernacular, slang, colloquialism, and jargon. It pervades our speech, but what is it really, and how does it function—as it surely does—in the environment of a poem? The very fact that it is used in poems challenges the supposition that all poetic language must be fresh and particular. Nonetheless, much of idiom’s sizzle comes not from its brand-new freshness, but its ripe familiarity.

…

Continue reading the excerpt online at The Kenyon Review.

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“20/20 Hindsight: What We Wish We’d Known As Younger Writers” by Steven Schwartz

A new talk by faculty member Steven Schwartz appears online:

Your first public performance.  Second grade.  A talent show, or a show and tell, you’re not sure which.  All you remember is that you do not just like Elvis Presley, you are Elvis.  You go around the house singing “Don’t be Cruel” and “Hound Dog.”  It’s 1958 and your parents are busy doing 1958 things like seriously discussing the possibility of building a bomb shelter and forbidding you to hula hoop in the house.

You’re convinced your version of “Hound Dog” will do Elvis proud.  Forget Elvis’s gold lame suit or pompadour with the killer stray lock down the forehead.  For your performance, you have only a starched white shirt that you wear to Hebrew school and hair so insistently curly it would survive a nuclear bomb, speaking of mutual assured destruction.

You unbutton the shirt to your breast bone, do the best you can with the curls so they look windswept and not like the orator Cicero with a laurel wreath on his head, and you belt it out.  The crowd, you have to admit, is rockin’  Or smiling encouragingly.  Or relieved not to be taking a spelling test.  No matter.  You’re in the zone, and yes, your eyes become heavy lidded like Elvis when you come to the second verse: “Yeah, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.”  And then.  Then.  It happens.  You look right at Irene Milligan.  She is a rather big-boned girl for second grade, formidable and blunt; her favorite expression is Stuff it, moron!  None of the boys dare tease or challenge her because she has a track record of compromising their masculinity by twisting their arms behind their backs until they cry “Master!” which she prefers to “Uncle.”

Irene is staring right at you; she is not entertained; she is not amused; she is not rockin’ or clapping her hands and swaying her head back and forth like your best friend, Warren, as if he is Ray Charles and blind.  In fact, her eyes are slitted, her arms crossed over her chest, her lips pursed with what you would have to say is unmistakable dissatisfaction.  You freeze; you stop right in the middle of your unaccompanied performance.  You return to your seat.  People are confused.  So are you.  You don’t know exactly what has happened to you but years later you will understand.  You have met her.  Or him.  Or they.  You have met The Critic.

…

Continue reading online. 

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C. Dale Young’s “Desaparecido”

New work by faculty member C. Dale Young appears online in Waxwing:

Desaparecido

People play games. They cannot help it. They play them long after they are age-appropriate. They play them because they play them. No one knows why. Haven’t you seen old women playing Cat’s Cradle or Duck Duck Goose? Haven’t you watched grown men playing Dodgeball, Tug-of-war, Punch-the-target, the pen-knife game? The ones where they shout out dares and exact various punishments? People play games, and the boys were no different.

…

Continue reading online.

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New Essay by Liam Callanan

A new essay by faculty member Liam Callanan appears online in Medium:

In Paris, tracing the path of ‘The Red Balloon’

Seconds into my first attempt to play Hangman with my then-young daughter, I suddenly saw the game’s gruesome stakes for what they were: guess wrong, and see your dad draw a man’s neck snapping. So on the fly, I invented the game of Sleeping Man, his gallows now a reading lamp, the whole of him slowly obscured as incorrect guesses led to sheets, a blanket, a pillow, slippers. Years later, my daughter found the real game in an activity book, and then she found me. Dad, she said, eyes wide, our game? He doesn’t sleep—he dies.

…

Continue reading online. 

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Jennifer Grotz featured on Poem-A-Day

Faculty member Jennifer Grotz’s poem, “The Whole World Is Gone,” was the Poem-A-Day feature from Poets.org on February 4, 2014:

The Whole World Is Gone

Driving alone at night, the world’s pitch, black velvet

stapled occasionally by red tail lights

on the opposite highway but otherwise mild

panic when the eyes’ habitual check

produces nothing at all in the rearview mirror,

a black blank, now nothing exists…

 

Continue reading online.

 

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Poems by Larry Levis

Previously unpublished poems by faculty member Larry Levis appear online in Poetry: 

Make a Law So That the Spine Remembers Wings

So that the truant boy may go steady with the State,
So that in his spine a memory of wings
Will make his shoulders tense & bend
Like a thing already flown
When the bracelets of another school of love
Are fastened to his wrists,
Make a law that doesn’t have to wait
Long until someone comes along to break it.
…

Continue reading online. 

Twelve Thirty One Nineteen Ninety Nine

First Architect of the jungle & Author of pastel slums,
Patron Saint of rust,
You have become too famous to be read.
…

Continue reading online.

Ocean Park #17, 1968: Homage to Diebenkorn

What I remember is a carhop on Pico hurrying
Toward a blue Chevy,
A crucifix dangling from its rearview mirror
That jiggled as the driver brushed
A revolver against it, in passing, before tucking it
Behind his back & beginning to joke with her.
…
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“Recall the Carousel” by Laura Kasischke

A new poem by faculty member Laura Kasischke appears online in Poetry:

Recall the Carousel

Recall the carousel. Its round and round.
Its pink lights blinking off and on.
The children’s faces painted garish colors against
an institutional wall. And the genetics. The
We won’t be here too long  …    Do not step off  …
The carousel? Do you recall? As if
we were our own young parents suffering again
after so many hundreds of hours of bliss.
…
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The Year I Didn’t Kill Myself by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Faculty member Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s new entry for The Best American Poetry blog appears online:

Pain

A few weeks ago my left hip gave out. Maybe “gave out” isn’t the right term. A few weeks ago the pain I’ve been having on the right side of my back for about a year inexplicably moved itself, in its entirety to my left. It wasn’t the same kind of pain. It was sharp and involved nerves and all of a sudden I had a pronounced limp. Sitting was very hard, which made writing hard. Standing hurt after a few minutes. I finally understood why people say nerve pain is the worst. I’d wake in the night and it would feel like my leg was on fire. That’s not quite accurate. I would wake in the night and feel like having been set on fire and allowed to burn for awhile my lower leg was now being peeled to the bone with the same attention and care you would use to acquire a sliver of the finest parmesan.

I’m saying this in past tense because the pain is slightly better right now. I’ve started physical therapy and I’ve been seeing the acupuncturist. Today my acupuncturist said, “We can treat the pain or we can work into the foundation.” And then my physical therapist said, “I think you’ve had this issue for years and the pain is just bringing it to light.” Which is not so different from what Dr. Ng said in San Francisco to me all those years ago. “Very old,” he said. “Very old pain.” And then he smiled at me and meowed like a cat. Which was something he did a lot and always made sense at the time.

…

Finish reading online at The Best American Poetry.

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Caitlin Horrocks in The Kenyon Review Online

A new piece by faculty member Caitlin Horrocks, “The Glory of the Bad Idea,” is published as the first 75th Anniversary essay for the series, The Kenyon Review Credos:

Whatever we do on the page, those of us who are both writers and teachers of beginning creative writing generally find ourselves emphasizing orthodoxies in the classroom: that someone or something should change. That characters should be round, or that stories need characters at all. That desire + obstacle = conflict = plot. We want students to get a grip on what a “literary” short story is, and then we want to help them write one with only the minimum required amount of pain and suffering.

…

Finish reading this essay and others at The Kenyon Review Online.

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