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

Poet(s) currently taking questions: None.

Archives:

SP Poet Aliki Branstone named MO Poet Laureate

Aliki Barnstone, of Columbia, was appointed by Gov. Nixon as Missouri’s new Poet Laureate. Barnstone is Professor of English in the Creative Writing program at the University of Missouri. A ... [ read more ]

Poet Carson Cistulli Talkin' Baseball

Smartish Pace poet Carson Cistulli is all things to all people. If all the things people care about are poetry and baseball, that is. Listen here to Carson on the ... [ read more ]

Campbell McGrath, Smartish Pace reading

Campbell McGrath in the Smartish Pace Reading Series at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, on March 10, 2012. Intro by SP Associate Editor Clare Banks. 

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 ]

AWP

2/9/2017 (8:00am) -- 2/11/2017 (5:00pm)

Washington, DC

Visit table 334 for our new issue, t-shirts, treats...and 3 free books of poetry with every purchase (lots of great titles)! We look forward to meeting you!

Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems

The poet inclined to write about the family dog had better manipulate language like a MOMIX contortionist or offer the truly unexpected if he hopes to create great poetry – and Robert Wrigley does. From the stolid boy who knows his dog is as good as dead when the farmer arrives with a gutted chicken to the quiver of the dog’s ears as the girl holds him down and commands the pet to say he ... [ read more ]