Faculty member Stephen Dobyns’ poem “Determination” appears in the April 9th issue of the New Yorker. You can also read an interview about the writing of the poem.
Determination
Cabbage—the first word put down
with his new pen, a trophy pen,
like a trophy wife, not cheap,
absurd to use a ballpoint penfor a task like this, a challenge,
for which he’d also bought a new,
but ancient, rolltop desk recently
restored, with matching chair...[Keep Reading]…
Stephen is the author of Winter’s Journey
Warren Wilson faculty member Jennifer Grotz was recently interviewed for Puerto del Sol:
When did you begin writing poetry? How did you choose your genre?
JG: Well, as Pound said at the end of his career, “I did not enter into silence. Silence captured me.” That is, though it may sound melodramatic, I honestly feel as though poetry early on captured me—I never even considered another genre to write in, and though I do aspire to complete some significant prose at some point, it’s going to be a struggle, I think. The way I think most aligns itself with the way poems think and operate.
As for when I started writing, well, again, I can’t remember not making poems. My very first writings were scribbles, little extra lines and verses, into the large illustrated Bible my grandmother gave me as an infant. There was a lot of strange stuff I wrote—part letters, part diary, part poem—and then I discovered the poetry section of my school library, and, later, the public library. That’s where I began to read poetry—which, naturally, began to shape and strengthen my ability to write poems...[Keep Reading]…
Jennifer’s new poem, “Impressionist,” which she recently read at the MFA summer 2012 residency, is up at Plume Poetry:
Impressionist
Once it was declared awful because it was brilliant
and then it was so universally brilliant it became awful.
And then we only loved the way they broke their own rules,
“we” including me, but now I think of Monet every day...[Keep Reading]…
Jennifer is the author of the poetry collection The Needle
We’re proud to announce VQR’s spring 2012 special issue on American Poetry, which in addition to faculty member C. Dale Young’s poems (posted earlier this week) includes work by Warren Wilson faculty Debra Allbery, David Baker, A. Van Jordan, Alan Shapiro and Pimone Triplett, as well as alumnae Victoria Chang and Meghan O’Rourke:
Debra Allbery — Vinton County, 1965
David Baker — The Anniversary and Five Odes on Absence;
Song of Sanity (essay)
Victoria Chang — We Are Monica (Acrostic)
A. Van Jordan — Blazing Saddles
Meghan O’Rourke — At Père Lachaise and For Apollinaire
Alan Shapiro — Gravity and In Winter
Pimone Triplett — Real Estate and Census
Faculty member C. Dale Young‘s new poem “The Prodigal” and “Hush” appear in the Spring 2012 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review:
Hush
Anyone can kiss me. Anyone
can pin my face with two hands and
kiss me hard. As with much in life, it
has taken me a long time to understand this.
I study so many things: the way a hawk’s wingswhen stretched allow them to dry faster;
the way the extract of the foxglove reduces
the results of a failing heart, can alter vision
if taken in excess, something Van Gogh understood
without understanding the exact mechanism...[Keep Reading]…
C. Dale is the author of the poetry collection Torn
Warren Wilson faculty member Dean Bakopoulos‘ short story “Fall” appears online at The L Magazine:
That autumn, Charlie Theopolis and his wife Wendy Kim had both turned thirty-three and, quietly, they entered a new phase in their lives, one in which they both grew sick of everything—their apartment, their jobs, their clothes, each other. They blamed the city for their sickness: the stink of the subway, the gum on their shoes, the exorbitant cost of preschool and good produce, the germ-soaked vapors shimmering off the filthy sidewalks, and the fact that their dog had no good place to defecate. Charlie swore that he was starting to lose his hair because of the city. Wendy could not sleep and suffered from constant heartburn if she ate dinner after five o’clock. Their son Wilson, aged two, had developed a dairy allergy and a fear of sirens, and he woke up many times a night, shouting and crying over a passing ambulance or an errant car alarm. Even Lucky the Dog seemed afflicted. He had a dry, flaky coat and a bad hip...[Keep Reading]…
Dean is the author of the novel My American Unhappiness
Warren Wilson faculty members Christopher Bursk, Maudelle Driskell, Martha Rhodes and Daniel Tobin will read next week at the Frost Place’s Henry Holt Barn:
7/16 Daniel Tobin reads with Cynthia Cruz
7/17 Martha Rhodes and Christopher Bursk
7/19 Maudelle Driskell, Paula Bohince, Meg Kearney
All readings are scheduled for 8pm. For more information, visit the Frost Place website.
Warren Wilson faculty member Patrick Somerville recently spoke on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” about his character’s email correspondence with New York Times editor Ed Marks.
On July 2, TheNew York Times ran a review of author Patrick Somerville’s book This Bright River
. It was not a flattering assessment. Film and literary critic Janet Maslin described the starting point as “generic” and the destination as “soggy.”
When Somerville read the review, he realized the whole thing hinged on a factual error: Maslin mixed up two characters from the very beginning, confusing which one got hit in the head.
To clear up the mistake, Ed Marks, an editor at the Times, began an email correspondence with one of those characters, Ben, who has an email address set up by Somerville. Ben, through Somerville, and the editor developed what Somerville calls a “ghost relationship.”
NPR’s Neal Conan talks with Somerville about his Salon.com piece, “Thank You for Killing My Novel” and how people we never meet can change our lives...[Listen]…
You can listen to the interview at NPR’s website, or read a transcript here.
Warren Wilson faculty member C. Dale Young’s poem “Ruins” (which he read at last evening’s residency reading) appears in the summer 2012 issue of Quarterly West:
Ruins
The sand dotted with trash and detritus,
and out over the horizon the first hint of light
betrayed the coming sunrise, the Atlantic
not as wine dark as it had been an hour earlier.
One walks among ruins to remind oneselfthat progress is made at any cost. You
had come to the beach late the night before
because a man had promised you
he could walk on water, had promised
to show you this, you doubting Thomas...[Keep Reading]…
At Length magazine’s new feature, “Short Takes on Long Poems” will include contributions from a number of current and former Warren Wilson faculty members, as well as pieces about poems by past and current faculty members Reginald Gibbons, Brigit Kelly and Louise Gluck. The pieces will be posted in four “volumes” over the next two weeks. You can find links here as they become available, or visit the magazine’s website.
Monday, July 9
Dana Levin on Anne Carson
Michael Ryan on Emily Dickinson
Wednesday, July 11
Marianne Boruch on Ellen Bryant Voigt
Monday, July 16
Michael Collier on John Berryman
Katie Peterson on Robinson Jeffers
Lia Purpura on Reginald Gibbons
Wednesday, July 18
Reginald Gibbons on Thomas McGrath
Darcie Dennigan on Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Peter Cooley on Louise Gluck
Debra Allbery on Larry Levis
At Length magazine’s newest feature continues today with Marianne Boruch on Ellen Bryan Voigt:
Maybe a truly fine collection of poems means this in the end: you don’t need the book in hand to be moved, solaced, troubled, haunted by it. You might not even need words anymore.
Case in point: In Scotland as I write this, I stupidly forgot to bring my copy of Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Kyrie
to think through again, to write of as promised, however brief. So at first, I could only remember that long poem, a sequence of linked sonnets and semi-sonnets that concern the flu epidemic of 1918. Which is to say that minus the book itself, I could only close my eyes on this city of Edinburgh and see into those little square windows of Voigt’s sequence, into that stricken time...[Keep Reading]…
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