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Poet(s) currently taking questions: None.

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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 ]

Phillis Levin Smartish Pace Reading

Smartish Pace Reading Series at KGB Bar, New York City. October 4, 2008.

Interview with Natasha Trethewey

February 16, 2012Interview conducted in August 2011

Beyond Katrina blends personal and collective memories of an event that is not too long gone from the public eye, and is still current for those living on the Gulf Coast. What are the challenges of writing about something topical, even if it has personal resonance for you the writer?Natasha Trethewey: I think the biggest challenge that I faced with writing Beyond Katrina and that particular topic was that, as you said, it is in many ways ongoing for the people who are there, and it is also a thing of contested memory. Contested memory is the hardest part of it, because I found that I was dealing with people who wanted not only to be remembered, but people on the Mississippi Gulf Coast who felt like their story was being forgotten or being subjugated beneath the other story of New Orleans and the levee break. But I was also dealing with narratives from folks who wanted to remember the aftermath in different ways, I think, for political purposes. And so there was often a narrative of Mississippi as ... [ read more ]

Anterooms

Richard Wilbur seems an anomaly in today’s largely postmodern, elliptical, elegiac, multicultural poetical climate. His fidelity to structured form and meter, heavy reliance upon classical antiquity, optimism, and ivy-league background make him something of a throwback to the 1950’s when he first gained public recognition. If his harshest critics are to be warranted in saying that Wilbur did not venture much outside of his formal style and themes, then his new collection Anterooms provides plenty ... [ read more ]