Note: This article first appeared in the print edition of the Press-Enterprise on Sunday, August 25, 2019, in the Inlandia Institute’s weekly column. Instagram poetry might be the most hotly debated topic in literature today. For the last few years, citing a boom in book sales, outlets like The Atlantic, the Guardian, and Publishers Weekly have regularly proclaimed …
Note: This article first appeared in the print edition of the Press-Enterprise on December 15, 2013, in the Inlandia Institute’s weekly column. Last month San Antonio, Texas, opened Bibliotech, America’s first bookless public library, which allows patrons to borrow inexpensive e-readers and download electronic books from home. For us writers and lovers of literature, the mission before us …
Note: This article first appeared in the print edition of the Press-Enterprise on February 1, 2015, in the Inlandia Institute’s weekly column. If you spend enough time around poets, you’re bound to hear grandiose claims about self-discovery and poetic epiphany. And it’s true, our favorite poems tend to be surprising, even to ourselves. There are prosaic explanations for …
Talk first given at the RochesterINK Festival Brunch Sunday, October 21, 2007 This talk might be subtitled, “Where Poetry Comes From,” because that’s what I’m most interested in. The best poems, the poems we want to reread and memorize and carry with us forever, are those that offer some kind of insight. They connect. …
Note: This article first appeared in the print edition of the Press-Enterprise on February 18, 2014, in the Inlandia Institute‘s weekly column. In the time it takes to read this sentence, 50 English instructors will write the word “cliché†in red ink in the margins of a student paper. The admonition to “Avoid clichés!†has almost become a …