I don’t know that I’ve mentioned it before, but as this blog has been getting increasingly personal, I might as well talk about the fact that for the last four years I’ve been plodding my way toward an MFA at USC — one class per semester, because I don’t have time for more than that. …
I just noticed again that the opening poem to my book, “The Body,” contains the phrase, “back east,” which I remember struck me as odd, even as I typed it out on the page. The poem was written in 2003, a full year before I would unexpectedly move from New York to California to start …
The half-life of irregular verbs is proportional to the square root of their frequency. –Erez Lieberman There’s a whole sect of poets who write in pursuit of immortality. This has always struck me as unrealistic — a touchingly human attempt at postponing the inevitable — but still, many proudly proclaim this as their goal. They …
The way this season is going, the Mets will probably lose tonight to Miguel Batista. A 37-year-old journeyman from the Dominican Republic with a putrid 6.26 ERA, Batista is often casually described as “one of the smartest man in baseball.” Why? Because he’s a published poet! He’s also written a novel, and is working on …
I’ve been reading a lot of formal poetry lately, thanks mostly – and perhaps surprisingly – to the upcoming Cowboy/Western issue. Cowboys love their meter and rhyme. Poetry sprung up 50,000+ years ago as a pneumonic device for people who hadn’t yet invented the ballpoint pen (not to mention the ball itself), and verse became …