Maurice Manning answered your questions. Carl Phillips did too. Enjoy!

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Smartish Pace Poem on Poetry Daily

Maurice Manning's poem "Going Back to Bimble" appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 20, and re-appears at Poetry Daily. Read the poem here. Thanks Poetry Daily! [ read more ]

Matt McBride & Amy Woolard Nominated for Best New Poets

Smartish Pace nominated Matt McBride's poem "Cities of Advertisers" and Amy Woolard's poem "A Girl Gets Sick of a Rose" for the 2013 Best New Poets anthology. SP is proud ... [ read more ]

Piotr Gwiazda, Smartish Pace Reading

Piotr Gwiazda reading for Smartish Pace at KGB Bar in New York City on December 1, 2012. Intro by Stephen Reichert. Music by Luna. Photographs by Deb Schwartz. 

Interview with Aaron Poochigian

Traci O’Dea (Associate Editor, Smartish Pace): How has translating Sappho affected your own poetry?

Aaron Poochigian: I had always wanted each line of my poetry to be songlike and ravishing. Now, after having lived with Sappho for about two years, I have a better sense of what that means. But I should be more specific about her influence. Many of Sappho’s poems give the reader the impression that he or she is eavesdropping on a private conversation, as in the following fragment:As you are dear to me go find a youngerBed as your due.I can’t stand being the old one any longer,Living with you.I now readily slip into the conversational mode in my own work. Sappho, in fact, is credited with pioneering the “personal” in poetry, partly because she gives the reader this window into the intimate. She also makes frequent use of what I call “choral” expression—that is, the speaker as a first person plural “we” representing a group of people. I now often write poems in “group voices.” Perhaps the poem “The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis” is the best evidence of her influence on my work.     The Marriage ... [ read more ]

Another World Instead

For William Stafford readers, the long awaited release of Another World Instead offers insights into the shaping of one of America’s most prolific poetic voices. From 1937-1947 arrives a collection of Stafford’s virtually unpublished poems that examines, as the title depicts, the author’s tenacious quest for envisioning a new way of life beyond a war he decried. At this volume’s core are impressions of what it was like to be a conscientious objector to World ... [ read more ]