There is no Frigate like a Bookto take us Lands away.– Emily Dickinson I find you in these sunless stacks.Your poems might be uncommonly fine —but your pages darken to brittlenessand you’ve never been checked out. Unlessyour anchor’s weighed and you proceedto find the harbor of another’s mind,nothing will come of the cargo in your hold.I […]
I am pleased to release my latest offering: The Subcutaneous Art: A Collection of Short Essays on Poetry “Poetry. I, too, dislike it.” Marianne Moore wrote that a century ago and it still lives, ubiquitous on T-shirts and coffee mugs. But it’s not really about liking or disliking poetry. Here’s the full quote: Like it […]
This is the second in our occasional series celebrating State Poets Laureate. It is adapted from a reading I gave at Bennington College in 2018 when the college was gifted the Stone House in which Robert Frost lived with his family and wrote from 1920-1940. It was here that he won the first of his […]
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As a welcome gift, I’ll send you my free, digital chapbook The Subcutaneous Art: A Collection of Short Essays on Poetry on signup.
This collection comes from my lifelong engagement with poetry—an obsession that has never let go. Together, we’ll explore questions like: What makes a poem, a poem? Can a poet be wrong on everything—and the poem still be right?
