Bodies, Political and Religious (on Leonard Cohen’s The Flame: Poems Notebooks Lyrics Drawings; Marilyn Chin’s A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems; Kazim Ali’s Inquisition; Del Samatar and Sofia Samatar’s Monster Portraits; and Li-Young Lee’s The Undressing)
IN Summer 2019
IN Summer 2019
Long ago, I took a workshop with a moderately well-known American poet. When we met in the student union for the half-hour conference I ’d paid extra for, he was visibly […]
Read MoreEvery biography—in a way, every book—invites readers to examine their own lives, the more we share with their subjects the more so. Jonathan Blunk’s James Wright: A Life in Poetry, […]
Read MoreIN Spring 2018
Almost by accident, not long ago I found myself living and teaching in the Baltic seaport town of Klaipeda, Lithuania, for several months. A few wealthy Mennonites from North America […]
Read MoreIN Fall 2017
IN Summer 2017
on Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue—An Interfaith Dialogue by Steven C. Rockefeller and John C. Elder
IN Spring 1993
IN Summer 1994
How Others Have Lived Here (on When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmerelda Santiago; Devotion: A Memoir by Miriam Levine; Edge Effects: Notes from an Oregon Forest by Chris Anderson; & Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World by Scott Russell Sanders)
IN Summer 1994
Can White Guys Write? (on Paper Trails: Essays by Michael Dorris; A Geometry of Lilies: Life and Death in an American Family by Steven Harvey; A Place That’s Known by Michael Pearson; and Inheritance of Horses by James Kilgo)
IN Summer 1995
IN Spring 1996
Does Style Make the Woman (on The Beacon Book of Essays by Contemporary American Women, edited by Wendy Martin; Wild Ride: Earthquakes, Sneezes and Other Thrills by Bia Lowe; Writing the World by Kelly Cherry; Field of Vision by Lisa Knopp; and Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and Places by Naomi Shihab Nye)
IN Winter 1996
Lullabies in Reverse (on Invisible Horses by Patricia Goedicke; Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum by Michael Waters; Trespasser by R. T. Smith; Stalking Joy by Margaret Benbow; & Heavy Grace by Robert Cording)
IN Fall 1997
Lives Worth Reading (on Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, edited by William Zinsser; Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life by bell hooks; Scratching the Woodchuck: Nature on an Amish Farm by David Kline; This Death by Drowning by William Kloefkorn; and Moses Unchained by Marilyn F. Moriarty)
IN Winter 1998
Position, Connection, Conviction (on Reluctantly: Autobiographical Essays by Hayden Carruth; What the Twilight Says: Essays by Derek Walcott; Twenty Questions by J. D. McClatchy; Stealing Glimpses: Of Poetry, Poets, and Things in Between by Molly McQuade; and After-Images: Autobiographical Sketches by W. D. Snodgrass)
IN Spring 2000
Handling the Truth (on The Lost Suitcase: Reflections on the Literary Life by Nicholas Delbanco; A Childhood in the Milky Way: Becoming a Poet in Ohio by David Brendan Hopes; The Night Gardener: A Search for Home by Marjorie Sandor; A Little Fling and Other Essays by Sam Pickering; & In Montaigne’s Tower by Hilary Masters)
IN Fall 2000
IN Winter 2000
This Point in Space and Time (on The Boy with the Thorn in His Side: A Memoir by Keith Fleming; Honky by Dalton Conley; Dreaming of Columbus: A Boyhood in the Bronx by Michael Pearson; Winning the Dust Bowl by Carter Revard; and Cidermaster of Rio Oscura by Harvey Frauenglass)
IN Summer 2002
Taste and the Open Door (on The Poetry Anthology, 1912-2002: Ninety Years of America’s Most Distinguished Verse Magazine, edited by Joseph Parisi and Stephen Young; Dear Editor: A History of Poetry in Letters: The First Fifty Years, 1912-1962, edited by Joseph Parisi and Stephen Young; and Poets of the New Century, edited by Roger Weingarten and Richard Higgerson)
IN Spring 2003
New Maps of the Territories: On Mennonite Writing (on Sweeter Than All the World by Rudy Wiebe; The Breath You Take from the Lord by Patrick Friesen; Now You Care by Di Brandt; Searching for Intruders: A Novel in Stories by Stephen Raleigh Byler; and The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life by Julia Kasdorf)
IN Winter 2003
What Do Poets Know? (on Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life, edited by Sharon Bryan and William Olsen; Open House: Writers Redefine Home by Mark Doty; The Vehement Passions by Philip Fisher; The Madness of Art: Interviews with Poets and Writers, edited by Robert Phillips; and The Healing Art: A Doctor’s Black Bag of Poetry by Rafael Campo)
IN Summer 2004
IN Fall 2004
Among the Erratics (on Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser; The Morning of the Red Admirals by Robert Dana; From the Meadow: Selected and New Poems by Peter Everwine; Tristimania by Mary Ruefle; The Orchard by Brigit Pegeen Kelly; Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems by Lola Haskins; Invisible Bride by Tony Tost; & Goldbeater’s Skin by G. C. Waldrep)
IN Winter 2004
Form and Range (on Fourteen on Form: Conversations with Poets by William Baer and Range of the Possible: Conversations with Contemporary Poets by Tod Marshall)
IN Spring 2006
Where Do We Discover What We Believe? (on Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil by C. D. Wright; The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience by Ann Lauterbach; Poetry and What Is Real by Richard Tillinghast; Distant Reading: Performance, Readership, and Consumption in Contemporary Poetry by Peter Middleton; and The Extravagant: Crossings of Modern Poetry and Modern Philosophy by Robert Baker)
IN Summer 2006
Vision and Virtuosity (on Half/Mask by Roger Mitchell; Escaping the House of Certainty by Susan Ludvigson; My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again by Daisy Fried; Wind in a Box by Terrance Hayes; and This Clumsy Living by Bob Hicok)
IN Winter 2007
What We Notice, What We Know (on In the Mind’s Eye: Essays across the Animate World by Elizabeth Dodd; Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts and What Remains by Barbara Hurd; and Seven Notebooks: Poems by Campbell McGrath)
IN Spring 2009
Hard Books (on Jack Gilbert’s The Dance Most of All; April Bernard’s Romanticism; W. S. Merwin’s The Shadow of Sirius; Jim Harrison’s In Search of Small Gods; Nina Cassian’s Continuum; D. Nurkse’s The Border Kingdom: Poems; and Lucia Perillo’s Inseminating the Elephant)
IN Winter 2009
If Not Us, Who? (on Michael McClure’s Mysteriosos and Other Poems; Brenda Hillman’s Practical Water; Mark Nowak’s Coal Mountain Elementary; Kazim Ali’s Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities; Rachel Loden’s Dick of the Dead; and Brian Turner’s Phantom Noise)
IN Winter 2010
Patterns in the Welter (on Maggie Smith’s The List of Dangers; Hugh Martin’s So, How Was the War?; Lynn Shoemaker’s A Catch in the Throat of Allah; Josie Sigler’s Calamity; Lynn Wagner’s No Blues This Raucous Song; Tracy S. Youngblom’s Driving to Heaven; Peter Filkins’ Augustine’s Vision; Hildred Crill’s The Upstairs Hammer; & Philip Metres’ The Abu Ghraib Arias)
IN Fall 2011
IN Summer 2013
IN Fall 2014
on City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology: 60th Anniversary Edition, edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
IN Winter 2015
IN Summer 2016