The Beat

Matt Broaddus

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 09:15:00 -0400

Matt Broaddus is the author of Deeper the Tropics and Temporal Anomalies. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Annulet, Denver Quarterly, and The Paris Review. He lives in Colorado and serves as an Advisory Poetry Editor for The Paris Review.

Links:

Matt Broaddus' website

"'Blue Prints' and Other Poems" at Changes

"The Seal of Approval" at American Poetry Review

"The Sun Is a Disembodied Thought: An Interview with Matt Broaddus" at Poetry Daily

"These Lit Particulars: On Matt Broaddus’ Deeper the Tropics" at Cleveland Review of Books

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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Shuly Xóchitl Cawood

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:15:00 -0400

Shuly Xóchitl Cawood teaches writing workshops, doodles with Sharpies and acrylic paint, and is raising two poodles and a dwindling number of orchids. Her books include Something So Good It Can Never Be Enough (Press 53, 2023) and Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning (Mercer University Press, 2021), winner of the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Sun, and Rattle.

Links:

Shuly Xóchitl Cawood's website

"Poem in Which I Fail to Teach My Dog How to Fetch" at The Sun

Two Poems at Have Has Had

Interview and four poems at Does It Have Pockets

Video: Cawood reading her poem "You Are Not a Cat"

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Arlene Keizer's Poems for Beauford Delaney

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 15:45:00 -0400

Arlene Keizer, an Afro-Caribbean American poet and scholar, writes about the literature, lived experience, theory, and visual culture of the African Diaspora. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, she later earned an MA in English and Creative Writing (Poetry) at Stanford University and a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Black Subjects: Identity Formation in the Contemporary Narrative of Slavery (Cornell UP), and her poems and articles have appeared in African American Review, American Literature, The Kenyon Review, Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, PMLA, Poem-a-Day, TriQuarterly, and other venues. Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black, her collection of poems about the African American painter Beauford Delaney, won the 2022 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize and was published in 2023 by the Kent State University Press. She is a professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

Links:

Arlene Keizer

Arlene Keizer’s page at Pratt Institute

Interview with Arlene Keizer at Speaking of Marvels

“Canopy” in Poem-A-Day

Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black at Kent State University Press

Beauford Delaney

Bio and artwork at Knoxville Museum of Art

Bio and Artwork at the Smithsonian

Bio and artwork at Studio Museum in Harlem

Artwork at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

“Beauford Delaney in Knoxville” at Knoxville History Project

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Chris Barton and Peter Gizzi

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 13:30:00 -0400

Chris Barton is the author of the poetry chapbook A Finely Calibrated Apocalypse, published by Bottlecap Press in 2024. His writing has appeared in Epiphany, Peach Magazine, The Plenitudes, Hotel, and elsewhere. From 2016 to 2019, he co-hosted the Electric Pheasant Poetry in Knoxville, TN.

Peter Gizzi grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His many books of poetry include Artificial Heart, Threshold Songs, In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987–2011 and Archeophonics, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. His book Fierce Elegy, published in 2023, won the T. S. Eliot Prize. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Links:

Read "our free trial lives," "last supper," and "the bafflement" by Chris Barton

Read "In Defense of Nothing" by Peter Gizzi

Chris Barton

A Finely Calibrated Apocalypse by Chris Barton (Bottlecap Press)

"2 Poems by Chris Barton" in Peach Magazine

"Ouroboros as a Treat" in The Plentitudes

"Three Poems" in Potluck Magazine

Peter Gizzi

Bio and poems at The Poetry Foundation

Bio and poems at Poets.org

"Peter Gizzi Talks About His Work" (YouTube Video--T.S. Eliot Prize)

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Charles Douthat and Robert Frost

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 12:50:00 -0400

Charles Douthat is a poet, retired litigator, and visual artist. Born and educated in California, he practiced law for many years in New Haven and began writing poems during a long mid-life illness. His first collection, Blue for Oceans, received the PEN New England Award, as the best book of poetry published in 2010 by a New England writer. Concerning Douthat’s newest book, Again, the poet Alan Shapiro writes, “This book is impossible not to love.” Douthat lives in Weston, Connecticut, with his wife, the artist Julie Leff.

Robert Frost was born in 1874 in San Francisco. When he was just ten years old, his father died, and Frost’s family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts to live with his paternal grandparents. Though Frost attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, he never earned a formal degree. He spent much of his twenties and thirties farming and teaching. In 1912, he moved, with his wife and children, to England where publishers were more receptive to his work. But he moved back to the States in 1915 after the start of the First World War. He lived for the rest of his life mostly in Massachusetts and Vermont. Robert Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes and the Congressional Medal of Honor. He died in Boston in 1963.

Links:

Read "Polk Street" and "Mercy" by Charles Douthat

Read "After Apple-Picking" by Robert Frost

Charles Douthat

Charles Douthat's website

"Charles Douthat Unbound," Authors Unbound podcast

"A Few Minutes After Nine" in The Los Angeles Review

"The Planting" in The Nature of Our Times

"Grounds" in Leon Literary Review

Robert Frost

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Bio and Poems at The Poetry Foundation's website

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Matthew Minicucci and Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 13:00:00 -0400

Matthew Minicucci is an award-winning author of four collections of poems including his most recent, Dual, published in 2023 by Acre Books. His poetry and essays have appeared widely in various publications, including American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, the Kenyon Review, Poetry, and The Southern Review. His work has garnered numerous awards including the Stafford/Hall Oregon Book Award and the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, along with fellowships from organizations including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the National Parks Service, and the James Merrill House, among others. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Blount Scholars Program at the University of Alabama.

Brigit Pegeen Kelly was born in 1951 in Palo Alto, California. Her first book, To the Place of Trumpets, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize and was published in 1987. Her poems appeared in Best American Poetry, The Nation, The Yale Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and others. She won awards and fellowships from the Poetry Society of America, the Whiting Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets. Her third book, The Orchard, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Kelly taught at the University of California-Irvine, Purdue University, Warren Wilson College, and the University of Illinois. She died in October of 2016, in Urbana, Illinois.

Special thanks to Boa Editions, Ltd, for permission to record Brigit Pegeen Kelly's poem "Song," which appeared in her book Song, and "Brightness from the North," which was published in The Orchard.

Links:

Matthew Minicucci

Matthew Minicucci's website

Bio and poems at The Poetry Foundation

"Nostalgia" at poets.org

Two poems in Poetry Northwest

Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Bio and poems at The Poetry Foundation

Bio and poems at poets.org

"Dead Doe" in The Kenyon Review

Reading at Breadloaf Writers' Conference

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Sara Pirkle and Anya Krugovoy Silver

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 15:15:00 -0400

Sara Pirkle is a Southern poet, an identical twin, a breast cancer survivor, and a board game enthusiast. Her first full-length collection of poetry, The Disappearing Act, won the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry and was published by Mercer University Press in 2018. In 2019, she was nominated for Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry, and in 2022 she was shortlisted for the Oxford Poetry Prize. She also dabbles in songwriting and co-wrote a song on Remy Le Boeuf’s album, Architecture of Storms, which was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album category. Pirkle's poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, the Best of the Net Anthology twice, and the Independent Best American Poetry Award. She earned a PhD in English from Georgia State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Georgia College & State University. She is an Associate Director of Creative Writing at The University of Alabama.

Anya Krugovoy Silver was born in Media, Pennsylvania in December of 1968, and she grew up in Swarthmore. The child of immigrants, her first two languages were German and Russian. She graduated from Haverford College, and she earned a PhD in literature from Emory University in Atlanta. In 1998, Silver and her husband began teaching at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. While pregnant with their son in 2004, she was diagnosed with and treated for inflammatory breast cancer. After five years of remission, her cancer returned as bone metastasis in 2010. She published four books of poetry and one book of criticism in her lifetime. She won the Georgia Author of the Year Award in 2015, and she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellow for Poetry in 2018, the same year in which she died. At the time of her death, she was in the process of editing her fifth book, Saint Agnostica, which was published in 2021 by Louisiana State University Press.

The following poems were recorded with permission from Louisiana State University Press:

Silver, Anya Krugovoy. “Blush” and “The Poem in My Childhood.” The Ninety-Third Name of God: Poems, Louisiana State University Press, 2010

Silver, Anya Krugovoy. “There’s a River.” I Watched You Disappear: Poems, Louisiana State University Press, 2014

Silver, Anya Krugovoy. “From Nothing.” From Nothing: Poems, Louisiana State University Press, 2016

Silver, Anya Krugovoy. “Being Ill.” Saint Agnostica: Poems, Louisiana State University Press, 2021

Links:

Sara Pirkle

Sara Pirkle's website

"Weighing the Options" in Delta Poetry Review

"Not Prometheus" in Eclectica

"Pretend You Don’t Owe Me a Thing" in Rattle

"Evolution of the Writing Process: A Conversation with Dr. Sara Pirkle Hughes"--University of Alabama

Anya Krugovoy Silver

Bio and poems at The Poetry Foundation

"Anya Krugovoy Silver, 1968-1018" in New Georgia Encyclopedia

"Reading Poetry in Illness," podcast episode at The SlowDown

"Anya Silver’s Heart-Wrenchingly Beautiful Last Poems," a review in The Christian Century

Anya Silver Archives in Image

Denton Loving Joins us Live for All Over the Page!

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 10:30:00 -0400

Recorded live, April 14, 2025. In celebration of National Poetry Month, Denton Loving joined us for Lawson McGhee Library's monthly book discussion group, All Over the Page.

Denton Loving is the author of the poetry collections Crimes Against Birds and Tamp, recipient of the inaugural Tennessee Book Award for Poetry. He is a co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf. His fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including The Kenyon Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Ecotone. His third collection of poems, Feller, is forthcoming in 2025 from Mercer University Press.

Links:

Denton Loving's website

"Loving Wins Tennessee Book Award," Lincoln Memorial University

"The Secret Signal to Wake," an interview and poems at Salvation South

"Two Poems by Denton Loving" at The Museum of Americana

"Tamp--Denton Loving" at Griffinpoetry.com

Video: WANA (Writers Association of Northern Appalachia) Live! Reading Series featuring Denton Loving

Jennifer Horne and Thomas Hardy

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 14:15:00 -0400

Jennifer Horne served as the twelfth Poet Laureate of Alabama from 2017 to 2021. The author of four collections of poems, Bottle Tree, Little Wanderer, Borrowed Light, and, most recently, Letters to Little Rock, she also has written a collection of short stories, Tell the World You’re a Wildflower. She is the author of a literary biography, Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author, described as “mesmerizing” and “a beguiling tale of madness and literature” by Publisher’s Weekly. She has edited or co-edited five volumes of poetry, essays, and stories.

Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England. Hardy is best known for his novels, including The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. His first book of poems, Wessex Poems, was published when Hardy was in his late 50s. He published seven more collections, and over 1,000 poems in his lifetime. In January of 1928, he died peacefully at his home in Dorchester, Dorset, England.

Links:

Jennifer Horne

A Map of the World (Jennifer Horne's website)

Bio and work at The Poetry Foundation

A review of Letters to Little Rock at Alabama Writers Forum

“Old Enough: Southern Women Artists and Writers on Creativity and Aging: Life-, Age-, and Art-Affirming Manifestos" at Southern Review of Books

"Two Poems by Jennifer Horne" at Deep South Magazine

Thomas Hardy

Bio and Poems at The Poetry Foundation

The Thomas Hardy Society

Cornelius Eady: A Reading and Conversation

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 17:00:00 -0400

Cornelius Eady is a Professor of English and John C. Hodges Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. From September 2021 to December 2022, he served as interim Director of Poets House in New York City. Eady published his first collection, Kartunes, in 1980. His second collection, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), was chosen as winner of the Academy of American Poets’ Lamont Poetry Award by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth. He has published eight other collections, including The Gathering of My Name (1991), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Brutal Imagination (2001), a National Book Award finalist; and Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (2008), nominated for an NAACP Image Award. In addition to his poetry, Eady has written musical theater productions, collaborating with jazz composer Diedre Murray. The two worked together on Running Man, a roots opera libretto that was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and Brutal Imagination, recipient of Newsday’s Oppenheimer Award. Eady is also a musician, and he performs with the literary band Rough Magic and the Cornelius Eady Trio, which recently released the album Don't Get Dead: Pandemic Folk Songs. (June Appal Recording, 2021). Eady has published five mixed-media chapbooks with accompanying CDs, including Book of Hooks (Kattywompus Press, 2013), Singing While Black (Kattywompus Press, 2015) and All the American Poets Have Titled Their New Books The End (Kattywompus Press, (2018). With poet Toi Derricote, Eady founded Cave Canem, a beloved nonprofit organization that supports emerging Black poets via a summer retreat, regional workshops, prizes, events, and publication opportunities. In 2016, Eady and Derricote were honored with the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on behalf of Cave Canem, and, in 2023, they won the Pegasus Award for service in the field of Poetry by the Poetry Foundation. Eady’s other honors include the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Links:

Bio and Poems at The Poetry Foundation

Bio and poems at Poets.org

"Poet Cornelius Eady on exploring the everyday lives of Black people in America"--PBS News Hour

Cornelius Eady Group website

"Emmett Till's Glass Top Casket" at the Poetry Society of America

Cave Canem

Cassandra de Alba and Amy Lowell

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 12:45:00 -0400

Cassandra de Alba has published several chapbooks including habitats by Horse Less Press in 2016, Ugly/Sad by Glass Poetry Press in 2020, and Cryptids, which was co-authored with Aly Pierce and published by Ginger Bug Press in 2020. Her work has appeared in The Shallow Ends, Big Lucks, Wax Nine, The Baffler, Verse Daily, and others.

Amy Lowell was born in 1874 in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was educated in private schools in Boston and at her home. Lowell’s first significant poetry publication came in 1910 when her poem “Fixed Idea” was published in the Atlantic Monthly. Two years later, her book A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass was published by Houghton Mifflin. She went on to write several other books of poetry, and she was a key figure in the Imagist movement led by Ezra Pound. She wrote a major biography of the poet John Keats, which was published in 1925, the same year in which she died. Lowell’s book What’s O’Clock won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1926.

Links:

Cassandra de Alba

Cassandra de Alba's website

Three poems in Dear Poetry Journal

"Self-Portrait with Rabbit Ears and Seventeen" at Verse Daily

"Miniatures" in Ghost City

"End Times Fatigue" at Sweet

Amy Lowell

Bio and poems at Poetry Foundation

Bio and poems at Poetry.org

Mathias Svalina and Gerard Manley Hopkins

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 10:30:00 -0400

Mathias Svalina is the author of seven books. His most recent, America at Play (published by Trident Press), is a collection of absurdist instructions for children's games. His poetry collection Thank You Terror was published earlier this year, and his first short story collection, Comedy, is forthcoming soon. Svalina was a founding editor of Octopus Books. He’s led writing workshops in universities, libraries, community spaces, and in prison. Since 2014, he has run a dream delivery service, traveling around the country to write and deliver dreams to subscribers. Through the Dream Delivery Service, Svalina has worked with the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, the Poetry Foundation, the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson.

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in the London suburb of Stratford Essex in 1844. He studied classics at Balliol College in Oxford and theology at St. Beuno’s College in North Wales. He was ordained in 1877 as a Jesuit priest, and he served in London, Oxford, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Stonyhurst. He also taught classics at Stonyhurst College and Greek literature at University College, Dublin. During his lifetime, most of Hopkins’ poems were read by only a few friends. In 1889, Hopkins died of typhoid fever, and he was buried in Dublin, Ireland. Hopkin’s first collection, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, was published in 1918.

Links:

Read "Terrible Baby" by Mathias Svalina at The Tiny

Read "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection" by Gerard Manley Hopkins at Poets.org

Mathias Svalina

Mathias Svalina's website

Bio and poem at Poets.org

"Mathias Svalina-Dream Delivery Service" video at by JustBuffaloLit

Mathias Svalina reads from "Thank You Terror" at the Silo City Reading Series

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Bio and poems at Poets.org

International Hopkins Society's website (poems, bio, study guides, video, etc).

Photo Credit: Dean Davis

Jos Charles

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 16:00:00 -0400

Jos Charles is author of the poetry collections a Year & other poems (Milkweed Editions, 2022), feeld, a Pulitzer-finalist and winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series selected by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions, 2018), and Safe Space (Ahsahta Press, 2016). She teaches as a part of Randolph College's low-residency MFA program and resides in Long Beach, CA.

Links:

Jos Charles' website

Bio and Poems at Poets.org

a Year & other poems and feeld at Milkweed Editions

Two poems at The Adroit Journal

Five poems at Frontier Poetry

Amish Trivedi

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 16:45:00 -0400

Amish Trivedi is the author of three books. His most recent is FuturePanic (Co•Im•Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. Trivedi earned an MFA from Brown University and a PhD in English and Critical Theory from Illinois State University. He's an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Delaware.

Links:

Read this episode's poems (along with several others):

"Green Boots" at The Brooklyn Rail

"Watch the Corners" at Black Sun Lit

"Number Nine" and "Dying" at The Kenyon Review

Amish Trivedi's website

Amish Trivedi above/ground press AWP offsite reading 2023

Anna Laura Reeve: A Reading and Conversation

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 18:00:00 -0400

Anna Laura Reeve is the author of Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility (Belle Point Press, 2023). Winner of the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Salamander, Terrain.org, and others. She lives and gardens near the Tennessee Overhill region, traditional land of the Eastern Cherokee.

Links:

Anna Laura Reeve's website

Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility at Belle Point Press

"Sara Moore Wagner on Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility," a book review at Still

"Look at Everything" and "Children of Asylum Seekers" at The Racket

"Playing the Washboard" and "Sprouting Wand" at Canary

"Desire" in Josephine Quarterly

Zachary Schomburg and Gertrude Stein

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Zachary Schomburg is a poet, painter, and a publisher for Octopus Books, a small independent poetry press. He earned a BA from the College of the Ozarks and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska. He is the author of six books of poems including, most recently, Fjords vol. 2, published by Black Ocean in 2021 and a novel, Mammother, published by Featherproof Books in 2017.

Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1874. She attended Radcliffe College and Johns Hopkins Medical School. In 1903, she moved to Paris where she eventually began writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She became an influential figure in the worlds of art and literature, and her home became a gathering place for artists and writers like Henri Matisse, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Max Jacob. She died near Paris in July of 1946.

Links:

Read "The Cliff Floats Low" at Sixth Finch

Read "Tender Buttons [Apple]" at Poets.org

Zachary Schomburg

Zachary Schomburg's website

Bio and bio at Poetryfoundation.org

"Moving a Plane Around a Living Room: In Conversation with Zachary Schomburg" in Timber

Two poems at Jellyfish

Gertrude Stein

Bio and poems at Poetryfoundation.org

"Gertrude Stein - Author & Poet: Mini Bio" from Biography

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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A Reading and Conversation with Linda Parsons

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 14:45:00 -0400

Poet, playwright, and essayist Linda Parsons is the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, Baltimore Review, Shenandoah, and others. Her sixth collection, Valediction, contains poems and prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Links:

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

"Poet Linda Parsons Launches Her Latest Work, 'Valediction'" in Inside of Knoxville

"Valediction: Poems and Prose" in Southern Literary Review

"Travels with My Father" in Still: The Journal

Two poems at Terrain.org

"Therapy Dog" at Verse Daily

Two poems at Vox Populi

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Rate & review on Podchaser

Todd Davis

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 13:30:00 -0400

Todd Davis is the author of seven books of poetry. His most recent collections are Coffin Honey and Native Species. His book Ditch Memory: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from Michigan State University Press in August of 2024. He has won the Midwest Book Award, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Bronze and Silver Awards, the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Editors Prize, and the Bloomsburg University Book Prize. His poems appear in such journals and magazines as Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, North American Review, Orion, Southern Humanities Review, and Western Humanities Review. He is an emeritus fellow of the Black Earth Institute and teaches environmental studies at Pennsylvania State University’s Altoona College.

Links:

Read "For a Stray Dog near the Paper Mill in Tyrone, Pennsylvania" in 32 Poems

Read "Burn Barrel" at Broadsided

Ditch Memory: New and Selected Poems, forthcoming in August 2024

"A Nature Poet Grapples with Life at the Edge of the Climate Crisis," an interview in Allegheny Front

Todd Davis' website

Bio and Poems at the Poetry Foundation

Two poems in North American Review

Three poems at Terrain.org

"Salvelinus fontinalis," a video poem

Podcast archive for Notes from the Allegheny Front

Iliana Rocha and Delmira Agustini

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 14:15:00 -0400

Iliana Rocha earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. She is the 2019 winner of the Berkshire Prize for her book The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez (Tupelo Press). Her first book, Karankawa, won the 2014 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Best New Poets anthology, Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, Latin American Literature Today, and many others. She has won fellowships from CantoMundo and MacDowell. She serves as Poetry Co-Editor for Waxwing Literary Journal, and she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee.

Delmira Agustini is considered one of the most important South American poets of the 20th century. She was born to upper-middle-class parents in Montevideo, Uruguay in October of 1886. She began writing poetry at the age of 10, and her first major work, El Libro Blanco, was published in 1907, when she was just 20 years old. She went on to publish several other books that were well-received by writers and critics.

Links:

Read "Still Life," "Houston," and "Landscape with Graceland Crumbling in My Hands"

Read "Explosión" in Spanish and English

Iliana Rocha

Iliana Rocha's website

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation's website

"The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez" in New York Times Magazine

"Mexican American Sonnet" at Poets.org

"Three Poems" in Latin American Literature Today

“like the building that reflects his death in every window: A Conversation with Iliana Rocha about The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez” — curated by Tiffany Troy in Tupelo Quarterly

Delmira Agustini

Bio and "The Vampire" at Poets.org

Six Poems by Delmira Agustini (translated by Valerie Martinez) at Drunken Boat

Harold Whit Williams

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:15:00 -0400

Harold Whit Williams is a poet and longtime guitarist for the indie rock band Cotton Mather. He's the recipient of the 2020 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, the 2014 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize, as well as multiple Pushcart nominations. Williams is currently cataloging the KUT Radio Collection for the University of Texas Libraries, all the while writing, recording, and performing his solo music under the moniker Daily Worker.

Links:

Read “Early Recordings: Volume 1;” “Caught by the Indian Summer Train;” and “Participation Trophy”

Harold Whit William's website

Daily Worker at Radio Gurl Records

"Holding out for Nothing" music video by Daily Worker

"Premonitions at a Funeral" and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" at JuxtaProse

Four poems at The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature

"Blues Dreams," winner of The Mississippi Review Poetry Prize

Follow Harold Whit Williams on Facebook

Denton Loving and D.H. Lawrence

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 11:30:00 -0400

Denton Loving is the author of Crimes Against Birds (Main Street Rag) and Tamp (Mercer University Press). He is also the editor of Seeking Its Own Level: an anthology of writings about water (MotesBooks). He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. His work has appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, The Kenyon Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Threepenny Review, and Ecotone. He is a co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf.

D.H. Lawrence was born in 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire in England, and he died in 1930 at Vence in the south of France. Though Lawrence is best known for his novels—he’s the author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and nearly a dozen others—he also published short stories, plays, essays, criticism, and more than a dozen collections of poetry.

Links:

Read "Copperhead," "Foundation," and "Hurtling"

Read "Humming-Bird"

Denton Loving

Denton Loving's website

"Five Poems by Denton Loving" at Salvation South

"Three Poems by Denton Loving" at Harvard Divinity Bulletin

"Under the Chestnut Tree" at Ecotone

Video: WANA (Writers Association of Northern Appalachia) Live! Reading Series featuring Denton Loving

Review of Tamp at Southern Review of Books

D.H. Lawrence

Bio, Poems, and Prose at The Poetry Foundation

Bio and Poems at Poetry.org

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Rate & review on Podchaser

Hank Lazer

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 15:30:00 -0400

Hank Lazer has published thirty-four books of poetry; his latest books are P I E C E S, When the Time Comes, and field recordings of mind in morning. In 2014, he retired from the University of Alabama after 37 years as a professor and an administrator. He continues to teach innovative seminars on Zen Buddhism and Radical Approaches to the Arts for the University of Alabama's Blount Scholars Program. In 2015, Lazer won The Harper Lee Award, Alabama’s highest literary award for lifetime achievement.

Read "Duncan Farm November Meditation" and section 8 from The New Spirit

Hank Lazer's website

Recordings at PennSound

Interview on Bookmark with Don Noble

Eleven poems at Plume

Five poems at Interim

"'Furnishings in the House of the Voice': An Interview with Hank Lazer

by Lisa Russ Spaar"

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Rate & review on Podchaser

Jenny Sadre-Orafai

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 13:05:00 -0400

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is a poet and essayist and the author of Dear Outsiders and three other poetry collections. Her poetry has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Cream City Review, Ninth Letter, and The Cortland Review. Her prose has appeared in The Rumpus, Fourteen Hills, and The Los Angeles Review. She co-founded and co-edits Josephine Quarterly and teaches creative writing at Kennesaw State University.

Links:

Read "Occupation Interview," "Tragedy Lesson," and "Souvenirs for Locals"

Jenny Sadre-Orafai's website

Three Poems at $

"I Become More Animal When I'm Grieving: A Conversation with Jenny Sadre-Orafi" at The Rumpus

Video: "Hard Hat Reading: Jenny Sadre-Orafai" at Poets House

Video: "Jenny Sadre-Orafai reads at the SAFTA Reading Series"

"In Their Own Words: Jenny Sadre-Orafai on 'Queen of Cups'" at Poetry Society of America

Josephine Quarterly

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Anna Laura Reeve and William Shakespeare

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 10:30:00 -0400

Anna Laure Reeve was born and raised in Knoxville, and she earned a Master of Arts in Literature & Poetry Writing from the University of Tennessee. Her poems have appeared in Terrain.org, Jet Fuel Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and many others. She recently won Beloit Poetry Journal’s Adrienne Rich Award, and she was a finalist for the Heartwood Poetry Prize and the Ron Rash Award in Poetry. Her book Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility was recently published by Belle Point Press. She is an assistant editor of Juke Joint, a literary magazine based in Jackson, Mississippi.

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, most likely in April of 1564. When he was 18, he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children. Shakespeare made his living as an actor and playwright, and his works include 38 plays in addition to 154 sonnets and various other types of poetry. Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616.

Links:

Read an early version of "Tennessee Red Cobb" at Appalachia Bare

Read "Méniére's Disease" at The Racket

Read "Look at Everything" and "Children of Asylum Seekers" at The Racket

Read "That time of year thou mayst in me behold (Sonnet 73)" at Poets.org

Read "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes (Sonnet 29)" at Poets.org

Anna Laura Reeve

Anna Laura Reeve's website

"Poets in Conversation: Anna Laura Reeve" at Beloit Poetry Journal

Two Poems from Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility by Anna Laura Reeve at ACM

"Motherhood Unshorn: A Review of Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility" at Literary Mama

William Shakespeare

Bio and poems at Poets.org

"Shakespeare's Life" at Folger Shakespeare Library's site

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Pauletta Hansel and Edna St. Vincent Millay

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 14:00:00 -0400

Pauletta Hansel is the author of nine collections of poetry, including her latest book Heartbreak Tree. Her work has been featured in Oxford American, Rattle, American Life in Poetry, and Poetry Daily, among others. Hansel was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate, and she was the 2022 Writer-in-Residence for The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine in 1892. Along with her many books of poetry, Millay published plays, a libretto called The King’s Henchman, and she wrote short stories for popular fiction magazines under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

Links:

Read "I Take My Mother with Me Everywhere" and "After"

Read "Postcard from Age 60" at Braided Way

Read "Recuerdo" at The Poetry Foundation

Pauletta Hansel

Pauletta Hansel's website

"The Road" at Poetry Daily

"The City" at Appalachian Review

"May 1, 2020" in The Oxford American

"Palindrome" at Still: The Journal

Video: "Meet our 2022 Writer-In-Residence" Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Bio and poems at The Poetry Foundation

Bio and poems at Poets.org

The Millay Society's Audio Archives

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Gary Metras and Simon Perchik

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 13:00:00 -0400

Gary Metras is a retired high school English teacher and college writing instructor. His poems have appeared in America, The Common, Poetry, and many others. Metras has published eight books, including his latest called Vanishing Points. His book Marble Dust is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. Metras was the founder, editor, and letterpress printer of Adastra Press, a venture that for forty years specialized in limited editions of poetry chapbooks. In 2018, Metras was appointed the inaugural Poet Laureate of Easthampton, Massachusetts.

Simon Perchik's poems have appeared in The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and many others. He was born in 1923 in Paterson, New Jersey. During World War II, he joined the Army Air Corps, flew 35 missions overseas, and reached the rank of first lieutenant. Thanks to the GI Bill, Perchik attended New York University where he earned a bachelor’s degree and a law degree. He practiced law for 25 years before becoming an assistant DA for Suffolk County and its first environmental prosecutor. He was a prolific writer, and he published more than thirty books of poetry. A November 2000 issue of Library Journal called Simon Perchik “the most widely published unknown poet in America.” Perchik died on June 14, 2022, in New York City.

Links:

Read "The Engagement" and "Lint" at The Poetry Foundation

Read "Another Winter"

Read "3" and "482"

Gary Metras

"April 6, 2022" at One Art

"Two Poems by Gary Metras" at Flyfishing and Tying Journal

"Art Maker: Gary Metras, Poet" at Daily Hampshire Gazette

"In Studio: Gary Metras" by Easthampton Media (via YouTube)

Simon Perchik

"Simon Perchik, Poet" in The Easthampton Star

"Five Poems" at the Poetry Foundation

Poems at Poetry Northwest

Poems at Plume

"Two Untitled Poems" at The Inflectionist Review

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Sara Moore Wagner and H.D.

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 15:00:00 -0400

Sara Moore Wagner is the winner of the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors Prize for her book Swan Wife and the 2020 Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize for Hillbilly Madonna. She has published two chapbooks, Tumbling After (Red Bird Chapbooks) and Hooked Through (Five Oaks Press). She won the 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award, and she was a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, Beloit Poetry Journal, Waxwing, The Cincinnati Review, Nimrod, Rhino, and others. Wagner's book Lady Wingshot, based on the life of Annie Oakley, won the Blue Lynx Prize and is forthcoming in 2024.

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) was born in 1886 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and she grew up in Upper Darby near Philadelphia. She attended Bryn Mawr and the University of Pennsylvania. H.D. published numerous books, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, essays, and translations. The publication of her collected and selected poetry helped to establish her as a major poet of the 20th century. H.D.’s work is revered by countless writers and critics, and she’s often thought of as a poet's poet and one of the key figures of the Imagist movement. She died in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1961.

Links:

Read "Purity Test"

Read "Captivity Narrative"

Read "Legend Says"

Read "Leda"

Sara Moore Wagner

Sara Moore Wagner's website

"Anti-Pastoral" at Sixth Finch

"Passing It On" at Waxwing

"Girl as a Deer Shedding the Velvet" at The Inflectionist Review

"Embracing the Half-Wild Creature: A Conversation with Sara Moore Wagner" at The Rumpus

"Sara Moore Wagner on 'Getting My Body Back'" at Poetry Society of America

H.D.

Bio and poems at The Poetry Foundation

Bio and poems at Poets.org

"H.D.: American Poet" in Britannica

"Radical Freedom: Poets on the Life and Work of H.D." Live from the IceHouse Tonight (YouTube)

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Derek N. Otsuji and George Herbert

Tue, 30 May 2023 14:00:00 -0400

Derek N. Otsuji is the author of the book The Kitchen of Small Hours, which won the Crab Orchard Review Poetry Series Open Competition. He was also awarded the 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His poems have appeared in The Southern Poetry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Threepenny Review, The Bennington Review, Harpur Palate, Missouri Review Online, and many others. He is an associate professor of English at Honolulu Community College.

George Herbert was born in 1593 in Montgomery Castle, Wales. He attended Westminster School and then Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained as a priest and became the rector at Bemerton. He died in 1633 of consumption at the age of forty.

Links:

Read "Among the More Innocent Touristic Amusements of the Old Waikiki"

Read "Two Boys One Fish Two Eyes" in Rhino

Read "Virtue" by George Herbert" at The Poetry Foundation

Derek N. Otsuji

Derek N. Otsuji's website

"How She Loves Music" in Pleiades.

Two Poems at Terrain.org

Video: "Interview with Derek Otsuji, Author of The Kitchen of Small Hours"

"Theatre of Shadows" at The Poetry Foundation

George Herbert

Bio and poems at the The Poetry Foundation

Bio and poems at Poets.org

"George Herbert: British Poet" in Britannica

Video: George Herbert - a Welsh-born poet, orator, and priest

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Maurice Manning Joins Us Live for All Over the Page!

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 13:00:00 -0400

Recorded live, April 10, 2023. In celebration of National Poetry Month, Maurice Manning joined us for Lawson McGhee Library's monthly book discussion group, All Over the Page. Hear Manning read his poems and talk about his book Bucolics. Manning also discusses more recent work including his new podcast, The Grinnin' Possum.

Maurice Manning has published seven books of poetry. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, won the Yale Younger Poets Award, and his fourth, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches Transylvania University.

Links:

The Grinnin' Possum Podcast: Poetry Music History with Maurice Manning

Eight Bucolics in VQR

Bucolics XXII, XXXV, and LVIII at Art and Theology

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

Article in Garden & Gun

Interview at Plume

Manning reading at the Sewanee Writer's Conference (Video)

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Lyn Hejinian: Four Poems from The Book of a Thousand Eyes

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 14:00:00 -0400

In this episode, Lyn Hejinian reads four untitled poems from The Book of A Thousand Eyes.

Lyn Hejinian is a poet, translator, editor, and scholar whose literary career has been long associated with Language writing. Hejinian is the author of over twenty-five volumes of poetry and critical prose, the most recent of which are Tribunal (Omnidawn Books, 2019), Positions of the Sun (Belladonna, 2019), and a revised edition of Oxota: A Short Russian Novel (Wesleyan University Press, 2019.) Fall Creek, her latest long poem, is forthcoming from Litmus Press. A book of critical essays titled Allegorical Moments: Call to the Everyday will come out in Fall 2023 (Wesleyan University Press), and The Proposition, a critical edition of Hejinian’s uncollected early work, is forthcoming from the University of Edinburgh Press (spring 2024). She is the editor of Tuumba Press, the co-director (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets, and co-editor (with Jane Gregory and Claire Marie Stancek) of Nion Editions, a chapbook press. She lives in Berkeley, California.

(Photo by Doug Hall)

Links:

Read four poems from The Book of a Thousand Eyes

Brief Interview and more at Omnidawn Press

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

Readings, Talks, Q&As, and Lectures at PennSound

Hejinian's books reviewed by Publishers Weekly

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Jim Minick and Robert Frost

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 14:30:00 -0400

Jim Minick is the author of two books of poetry, Her Secret Song and Burning Heaven. In addition, he’s published: Finding a Clear Path, a collection of essays; The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family, which won the Southern Independent Booksellers Association’s award for nonfiction; and Fire Is Your Water, a novel that won the Appalachian Book of the Year Award. Minick’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Tampa Review, Shenandoah, Orion, Oxford American, and The Sun. His latest nonfiction book, Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas, is forthcoming next month, and his latest poetry manuscript, The Intimacy of Spoons, is forthcoming in 2024. He serves as Coeditor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.

Robert Frost was born 1874 in San Francisco. Though Frost attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, he never earned a formal degree. As a young writer, Frost didn’t have much luck publishing in American literary magazines. He spent much of his twenties and thirties farming and teaching. His first book wasn’t published until he was nearly 40 years old—and after he'd sold his New Hampshire farm and moved to England where publishers were more receptive to his work. Frost soon moved back to the U.S. where he lived in Massachusetts and Vermont, and he went on to win four Pulitzer Prizes and the Congressional Medal of Honor. He died in Boston in 1963.

Links:

Read "The Oven-Bird"

Read "Diminished" at Still: The Journal

Read "The Collar” and "Still Dark"

Jim Minick

Jim Minick’s website

"Why Birds" at Salvation South

"Whale Light" at The Ekphrastic Review

"Good Dirt" and "Stress Test" at Cutleaf

Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas at Bison Books

Robert Frost

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Bio and Poems at The Poetry Foundation's website

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Monica Mody and Michael Madhusudan Dutt

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 14:00:00 -0400

Monica Mody was born in Ranchi, India. She holds a PhD in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including Ordinary Annals, and two full-length books, Kala Pani, a cross-genre work, and Bright Parallel, which is forthcoming from Copper Coin. Her writing has won awards including the Sparks Prize Fellowship, the Zora Neale Hurston Award, and a Toto Award for Creative Writing. Her work has been published in Poetry International, Indian Quarterly, Almost Island, Dusie, The Fabulist, and anthologies including Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing and The Penguin Book of Indian Poets.

Poet and dramatist Michael Madhusudan Dutt was born in Bengal, India. He studied several languages and was well-versed in English and European literature. In 1861, Dutt published the epic poem Meghnadbadh Kabya, which is, perhaps, his most famous work. Between 1858 and 1874, Dutt penned at least nine plays, including three translations. He is known for his experimentation with verse forms, introducing blank verse in Bengali literature and the sonnet in Bengali—through a reconstruction of both Petrarchan and Shakespearean forms.

Links:

Read "Glass House--Anthropocene" and "That I exist only as a speck on your bloodshot eyes but I am willing to sweat"

Read "Sonnets" by Michael Madhusudan Dutt

Monica Mody's website

"What Was Alive" at Yes Poetry

Interview with Mody at Poetry Mini Interviews

Mody reads from Ordinary Annals at Periodicities' Virtual Reading Series (Video)

"Homing Instinct" at The Other Side of Hope

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Erin Elizabeth Smith

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 13:30:00 -0400

Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Executive Director for Sundress Publications and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. Her third full-length poetry collection, Down, was released in 2020 by Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Guernica, Ecotone, Mid-American, Tupelo Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, and Willow Springs, among others. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and is now a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Tennessee. She is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Links:

Read "Alice Gives Advice to Dorothy"

Read "February in Knoxville" and other poems by Smith at Menacing Hedge

Erin Elizabeth Smith's page at Sundress Publications

Two poems by Erin Elizabeth Smith at The Los Angeles Review

Three poems by Erin Elizabeth Smith at The Superstition Review

"Plating the Poem, Reclaiming the Story: A Conversation with Erin Elizabeth Smith"

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Bernard Clay and Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr.

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 15:45:00 -0400

Bernard Clay was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and he spent most of his childhood and high school years there. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Kentucky, and he is a member of the Affrilachian Poets collective. His work has been published in Appalachian Heritage, The Limestone Review, Blackbone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets, and various other journals and anthologies. His book English Lit was published by Old Cove/Swallow Press in 2021. He lives on a farm in eastern Kentucky with his wife Lauren Kallmeyer, an herbalist who serves as the director of Kentucky Heartwood's Forest Council.

Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr. was born on February 2, 1861, in Bardstown, Kentucky, and he died in Lousiville, Kentucky in 1949. When he was just eight years old, he had to leave school to help support his family. At the age of 22, Cotter returned to his formal education and eventually served for more than fifty years as a teacher and administrator in several Louisville schools. In 1891, he married Maria F. Cox; they had three children, including his eldest son, Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr., who was also a talented poet and playwright. According to Oxford Reference, Joseph Cotter Sr. provided an important “voice during one of the most difficult eras of African American history, and he was a man who backed his words with action in building the African American community.”

Links:

Read "Mr. Nap's Fight" and "Appalachian Smitten"

Read "Dr. Booker T. Washington to the National Negro Business League"

Bernard Clay

Bernard Clay's website

English Lit reviewed in Southern Review of Books

Bernard Clay reading at the historic Western Library of the Louisville Free Public Library

Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr.

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Bio and Bibliography at the Carnegie Center--Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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GennaRose Nethercott

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 12:45:00 -0400

Just in time for Halloween! GennaRose Nethercott reads two spooky entries from the imagined bestiary 50 Beasts to Break Your Heart.

GennaRose Nethercott is a writer and folklorist. Her work has appeared in The American Scholar, Bomb Magazine, Pank, The Literary Review, and others. Her first book, The Lumberjack’s Dove, was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series, and her debut novel—the modern fairytale Thistlefoot—was published last month. She tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow) and composing poems-to-order on an antique typewriter with her team The Traveling Poetry Emporium.

Links:

Read "Yune" and "Yslani," along with other entries from 50 Beasts to Break Your Heart, at Bomb

GennaRose Nethercott's website

GennaRose Nethercott on All Things Considered

"Three Poems" at Pank

Thistlefoot reviewed in Kirkus Reviews

The Lumberjack’s Dove reviewed in Berkely Fiction Review

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Juan R. Palomo

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 13:00:00 -0400

Juan R. Palomo is the author of Al Norte (Alabrava Press 2021). Born in Grafton, North Dakota to migrant-worker parents, Palomo grew up in South Texas and several midwestern states. He received a bachelor’s degree in art education from Texas State University and a master’s in journalism and public affairs from American University. He was a reporter, columnist, and editorial writer for The Houston Post; he covered religion for the Austin American-Statesman; and he wrote a column for USA TODAY. His poems have appeared in The Acentos Review, The Sonora Review, The Account, and others.

Links:

Read "The Day They Do Not Show Up" and "Life & Death in Marathon, Texas"

juanzqui: Views and Ramblings by Juan Ramon Palomo

“Al Norte by Juan R. Palomo is an Homage to a Family Drifting in Colors” by Anthony Isaac Bradley in Infarrealista Review

“Speed Queen, North Dakota 1983” and “Noise” at Acentos Review

“A Shy One” and “His Future” at The Account

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Andrea Carter Brown and John Keats

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 13:30:00 -0400

Andrea Carter Brown was born in Paterson, New Jersey. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Mississippi Review, and many others. She is the author of September 12, which recently won the 2022 IPPY Silver Medal in Poetry from the Independent Publishers Group. Her other titles include the The Disheveled Bed, Domestic Karma, and Brook & Rainbow. Her poems have won the Five Points James Dickey Prize, the River Styx International Poetry Prize, and the PSA Gustav Davidson Memorial Prize. She was a founding editor of the poetry journal Barrow Street, and, since 2017, she has been Series Editor of The Word Works Washington Prize.

John Keats, one of the greatest of the Romantic Poets, was born October 31, 1795 in London. He published just three volumes before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25. Some of his poems are among the most anthologized in the 20th Century, including “To Autumn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

Links:

Read “After the Disaster: Fragments,” “Ars Poetica,” “To the Dust,” and other poems at andrea carterbrown.com

Read "When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be" by John Keats

Andrea Carter Brown

“An Interview with Andrea Carter Brown"

September 12 book launch

Brown’s poem "The Rock in the Glen” featured in an episode of Poems on Air

“Poet Mary Mackey Interviews Poet Andrea Carter Brown”

John Keats

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Bio and articles on John Keats at the British Library

“The Cockney Romantics: John Keats and His Friends,” a lecture by Johnathan Bate

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Linda Parsons and William Butler Yeats

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 05:30:00 -0400

Linda Parsons holds a BA and an MA in English from the University of Tennessee. She's the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. Parsons has published poems in The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, The Chattahoochee Review, Southern Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, and Shenandoah, among others. Her fifth poetry collection is Candescent, which was published by Iris Press in 2019. She has received grants from the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Knoxville Arts Council, was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2011, and she’s won the Tennessee Writers Alliance award in poetry, among other awards and honors.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was born in Dublin, Ireland. In addition to writing poetry, Yeats was also a playwright; he wrote 26 plays that were performed by the Irish Literary Theatre. He was politically outspoken, and, beginning in 1922, he served six years as a senator in the Irish Free State. He’s considered by many to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Links:

Read "Midsummer"

Read "Everywhere and Nowhere at Once"

Read "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

Linda Parsons

Candescent at Iris Press

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

Two poems at Terrain.org

"Therapy Dog" at Verse Daily

Two poems at Vox Populi

William Butler Yeats

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Hear more W.B. Yeats poems at The Poetry Archive

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Matthew Wimberley and Herman Melville

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 12:15:00 -0400

Matthew Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s the author of Daniel Boone's Window and All the Great Territories. Wimberley has won the Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book Award, the Weatherford Award, the William Matthews Prize, and his work was chosen for the 2016 Best New Poets Anthology. He's an Assistant Professor of English at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina.

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York City. He's best known as the author of novels like Moby Dick and White-Jacket, along with short fiction including “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno.” However, Melville spent decades writing poetry exclusively, and critics have ranked him, alongside Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, as one of the best poets of the 19th century.

Links:

Read "And So It Ends with the Cry of a Nuthatch on the First Day of Spring"

Read "Shiloh: A Requiem"

Matthew Wimberley

"The Celebrated Colors of the Local Sunsets" at Poets.org

“Tabula Rasa” in Rattle

“Elegy at Night” in The Paris-American

Three poems in Blackbird

Four poems in Narrative

“’If There Is Anything to Show You:’ An Interview with Matthew Wimberley”

Herman Melville

Bio and poems at Poetryfoundation.org

Bio and poems at Poets.org

“Herman Melville: American Author" at Britannica.com”

"Herman Melville at Home" in The New Yorker

Music is by Chad Crouch

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Amelia Martens and Marianne Moore

Wed, 25 May 2022 09:00:00 -0400

Amelia Martens is the author of four chapbooks and the full-length collection The Spoons in the Grass are There to Dig a Moat. Her work has appeared in The Indianapolis Review, Cream City Review, Diode, Southern Humanities Review, Plume, Southern Indiana Review, and many others. She serves as the Associate Literary Editor for Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art and she co-curates the Rivertown Reading Series in Paducah, Kentucky.

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was born near St. Louis, Missouri, raised in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and she graduated from Bryn Mawr College. Early on, she worked as a schoolteacher and as an assistant at The New York Public Library. From 1925 to 1929, she was the editor of The Dial, an influential literary magazine. Her Collected Poems, published in 1951, won the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Links:

Read "The Apology" and "The Secret Lives of Cows"

Read "A Jelly-Fish"

Amelia Martens

Amelia Martens’ website

“Amelia Martens, a Natural Born Poet,” Something from Nothing podcast at WKMS

Four poems at The American Journal of Poetry

Two poems at Plume

Two poems at Diode

Three poems at Tenderbox

Marianne Moore

Poems and bio at the Poetry Foundation's website

Poems and bio at Poets.org

“In Praise of the Difficult: On Marianne Moore, Defiant Poet of Complexity” at LitHub

"NYPL's Marianne Moore: Writing Her Way Onto the Shelves" at NYPL.org

Marianne Moore documentary from the Voices and Visions series (on YouTube)

Music is by Chad Crouch.

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Ashley M. Jones and Phillis Wheatley Peters

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 12:30:00 -0400

Ashley M. Jones is Alabama's first African American Poet Laureate, and she's also the youngest. Her books are Magic City Gospel, dark // thing, and REPARATIONS NOW! She teaches creative writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and also at the Low Residency MFA program at Converse University.

Phillis Wheatley Peters was abducted in West Africa and brought to Boston where she was sold as a slave when she was around seven year old. Her first and only book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773. She was in poor health for most of her life, and she died in her early thirties. According to the Smithsonian Institute, she was the “first American slave, the first person of African descent, and only the third colonial American woman to have her work published.”

Links:

Read the poems

Think of a Marvelous Thing / It’s the Same as Having Wings at Inspicio Arts

"Harriet Tubman Crosses the Mason-Dixon for the First Time" at Oxford American

"On Being Brought from Africa to America" at poets.org

Ashley M. Jones

Ashley M. Jones’ website

Jones’ Bio and Poems at the Poetry Foundation

“Alabama's First Black Poet Laureate Takes A Personal Approach To 'Reparations” on NPR

Interview with Ashley M. Jones at The Reckon

“How to Become a Poet: A Conversation with Ashley M. Jones” at The Rumpus

Phillis Wheatley Peters

Bio and Poems at the Poetry Foundation

“The Multiple Truths in the Works of Enslaved Poet Phillis Wheatley” by Drea Brown

Phillis Wheatley Historical Society

Wheatley’s Bio and Poems at Massachusetts Historical Society Collections Online

Music is by Chad Crouch.

Rate & review on Podchaser

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

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Joyelle McSweeney; Season 2 Intro.

Fri, 25 Mar 2022 15:30:00 -0400

Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, stories, novels, essays, translations, and plays. She has won The Pushcart Prize, The Fence Modern Poets Series Award, and The Leslie Scalapino Prize for Innovative Women Performance Artists. With Carmen Maria Machado, she was the guest editor of Best American Experimental Writing 2020. With Johannes Göransson, she co-edits the international press Action Books and teaches at the University of Notre Dame.

Links:

Read today’s poem at BOMB: “Two Poems by Joyelle McSweeney”

Joyelle McSweeney’s Website

Bio and Poems at the Poetry Foundation

Poems at Poets.org

“Kingdom” in The New York Times Magazine

“Joyelle McSweeney’s Poetry of Catastrophe” in The New Yorker

“A Poetry Reading by Joyelle McSweeney in conversation with David Baker and Kendra Sullivan”

Action Books, Edited by McSweeney And Johannes Göransson

Janet McAdams

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 13:00:00 -0400

Janet McAdams is the author of the novel Red Weather and the poetry collections Feral and The Island of Lost Luggage, which won an American Book Award. Her chapbook of prose poems Seven Boxes for the Country After won the Wick Chapbook competition and was published in 2016. She teaches at Kenyon College, where she is the Robert P. Hubbard Chair in Poetry.

Links:

Read "Thanatoptic"

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

"Lie" at Poem-a-Day

Interview at Shenandoah’s website

"______and the Elders” at Southern Humanities Review

Jesse Graves

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 03:30:00 -0400

Jesse Graves is a Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at East Tennessee State University. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, and other literary magazines and anthologies. He has published four books of poetry and his book Said-Songs: Essays on Poetry and Place is forthcoming from Mercer University Press in 2022. Graves received his PhD in English from the University of Tennessee and his MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. He has won the Book of the Year in Poetry Award from the Appalachian Writers’ Association and the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing.

Links:

Read "In a Familiar City" and "Sage Grass Brushing Against My Shins"

Jesse Graves’ website

Interview with Linda Parsons at Chapter 16

YouTube reading through West Virginia Wesleyan MFA Program Summer Reading Series

A collection of Jesse Grave’s poems available online

Poet-to-Poet Interview: A Conversation with Jesse Graves and Rita Sims Quillen, hosted by Johnson City Public Library

Bruce Alford

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Bruce Alford’s work has appeared in the African American Review, Imagination & Place Press, The Comstock Review, and elsewhere. He teaches poetry at Louisiana State University. Before working in academia, he was an inner-city missionary and journalist.

Links:

Read "from Alford's Devotional"

Bruce Alford’s website

Poems at SickLit

“Perfect” at Storm Cellar

Review of Terminal Switching at Alabama Writers Forum

Robert Penn Warren

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Robert Penn Warren is primarily known as the author of the great American novel All the King’s Men, but he’s also a well-respected poet, and was the USA’s first Poet Laureate. He grew up in Guthrie, KY, and then crossed the state line to go to high school in Clarksville, TN. In 1921, he began his studies at Vanderbilt University and joined a group of poets who called themselves the Fugitives. He went on to publish over 40 books, and he is the only writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry.

Links:

Read "Vision" and other poems by Robert Penn Warren at Poets.org

Biography and poems at the Poetry Foundation

Online Resources (Library of Congress Web Guide)

Chris Tonelli

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Chris Tonelli is a founding editor of the independent poetry press Birds, LLC; co-director of the NC Book Festival; and author of five chapbooks and two full-length collections of poetry, most recently Whatever Stasis (Barrelhouse Books, 2018). He works in the Libraries at NC State and is the co-owner of So & So Books in downtown Raleigh, where he lives with his wife, Allison, and two kids, Miles and Vera.

Other Links:

Read "Wide Bird" and "Pluto" by Chris Tonelli

Bio and links at Birds, LLC

Interview at NaPoWriMo.net

from “A Test of Company” at poets.org

Adelaide Crapsey

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Adelaide Crapsey is best known as the inventor of the American cinquain. She was born in 1878 in Brooklyn, NY, and she grew up in Rochester. In 1903, she began to show symptoms of tuberculosis which would eventually take her life in 1914. In spite of her illness, Crapsey attended the American Academy’s School of Classical Study in Rome, and then eventually returned to the U.S. to teach at Smith College. Shortly after her death, her first book of poems was published. It was called simply Verse.

Links:

Read "Amaze" and "Niagra" by Adelaide Crapsey

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation's website

Adelaide Crapsey at Poets.org

Cinquain.org

Amy Wright

Mon, 24 May 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Amy Wright is the author of three books of poetry and six chapbooks. Wright’s essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, Brevity, and elsewhere. She has been awarded two Peter Taylor Fellowships to the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop, an Individual Artist Grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission, and a fellowship to Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her nonfiction debut, Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round, is forthcoming in 2021 from Sarabande Books. She teaches at Austin Peay State University.

"Habitat" is used with permission by the author.

Links:

Read "Habitat" by Amy Wright

Amy Wright’s website

Forthcoming book: Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round by Amy Wright

"Yam Weevil” at Verse Daily

“Prey,” an essay at Kenyon Review Online

Review of Cracker Sonnets and interview at New Books Network

Prince Bush

Mon, 10 May 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Prince Bush is an MFA student at Western Kentucky University. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including The Cincinnati Review, Cream City Review, Poet Lore, Pleiades, Puerto del Sol, and others. He was a 2019 Fellow at Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets and an Erastus Milo Cravath Presidential Scholar at Fisk University. 

"Lithium" first appeared in Pleiades; "On Truth" first appeared in Sporklet. Both poems are used with permission by the author.

Links:

Read "Lithium" and "On Truth" by Prince Bush

Prince Bush’s Website

“Middle of Protesting” at Rattle

Poems at Softblow

Poems at Counterclock

Music:

"Just A Memory Now (Instrumental)" by Chad Crouch is licensed under CC

BY NC 4.0 with modifications

David Baker

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 14:00:00 -0400

David Baker is the author and editor of 18 books, including 12 books of poetry. His most recent book is Swift: New and Selected Poems, published by W. W. Norton. Baker teaches at Denison University and he frequently serves on the faculty of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College. He is the Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review.

"Swift" is used with permission by the author.

Links:

Read "Swift" by David Baker

David Baker’s Website

"Poetry That Bears Witness to a Changing Natural World,” a review of Swift: New and Selected Poems in The New Yorker

Interview at Tupelo Quarterly

Poems and Essays at Virginia Quarterly Review Online

Swift: New and Selected Poems at Amazon.com

David Baker reading at CornellCast

Music:

"Just A Memory Now (Instrumental)" by Chad Crouch is licensed under CC

BY NC 4.0 with modifications

Tyler Mills

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Tyler Mills’ poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Guardian, The New Republic, and others. She’s published two books and has two chapbooks forthcoming. Mills teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and she edits The Account, an online literary magazine. Look for Tyler Mills’ books in our online catalog or call us at the Reference Desk at Lawson McGhee Library.

Today's poem, "Oak," appeared in the January 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine. You can read the poem on the Poetry Foundation's website or in the links below.

Links:

Read "Oak" by Tyler Mills

Tyler Mills’ website

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

“The Poetic Half-Life of One Family’s Nuclear History: Tyler Mills on Her Grandfather's Role in the Bombing of Nagasaki” in Literary Hub

Review of Hawk Parable at Publishers Weekly

Poems at Pinwheel

Poems in Blackbird

Introduction, reviews, and visual art at Tupelo Quarterly

Music:

"Just A Memory Now (Instrumental)" by Chad Crouch is licensed under CC

BY NC 4.0 with modifications

Cintia Santana

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Cintia Santana’s work has appeared in the Best New Poets 2020 anthology, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, and many other literary journals. She was awarded fellowships from CantoMundo, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She teaches literary translation, as well as poetry and fiction workshops in Spanish, at Stanford University.

Links:

Read "Ode to the J" and "[F]"

Cintia Santana’s website

Interview at The Kenyon Review

Poems at Kenyon Review Online

“Kintsugi” at Harvard Review Online

Poems at Beloit Poetry Journal

“Plosive” (visual poem) at Pleiades

Music:

"Just A Memory Now (Instrumental)" by Chad Crouch is licensed under CC

BY NC 4.0 with modifications

Maurice Manning

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Maurice Manning has published seven books of poetry. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, won the Yale Younger Poets Award, and his fourth, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Be sure to look for books by Manning in our online catalog.

Links:

Read "One View of Time" by Maurice Manning

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

The Grinnin' Possum Podcast: Poetry Music History with Maurice Manning

Article in Garden & Gun

Interview at Plume

Manning reading at the Sewanee Writer's Conference (Video)

Music:

"Just A Memory Now (Instrumental)" by Chad Crouch is licensed under CC

BY NC 4.0 with modifications

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Introducing: The Beat

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Subscribe to this feed for an upcoming poetry podcast produced by Knox County Public Library. It’s called The Beat.

David Orr, a poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review, describes a common idea that some people have about poetry—that understanding it "is like solving a calculus problem while being zapped with a cattle prod." Or maybe worse, we hear people give (again quoting David Orr) "testimonials announcing poetry’s ability to derange the senses, make us lose ourselves in rapture, dance naked under the full moon, and so forth." We’ll try to avoid all of that.

Each show will introduce a new poet and you’ll get to hear poems being read aloud by the poets themselves, usually. The first episode of “The Beat” will air in a couple of weeks. Please tune in for the show, and subscribe.