The body is important. And yet, the body dies. It seems such an obvious thing, death, and yet we live in a society that has somehow shunned death, as if it were some misbehaving Amish, which, by our disapproval, will somehow fall into line with our desires. But what are our desires? Do we even […]
Prose
Desirae Matherly: No Discourse to Her Beauty: A Tragic Proem in Thirty-Two Acts
(It began with a disagreement. We dithered over Fortinbras, Claudius, who of them made the better Prince: Reference Machiavelli, read strategy, but Hamlet’s line? . . . snuffed out.) With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.–Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins […]
Nathalie Anderson: Review of Teresa Leo’s The Halo Rule
Teresa Leo’s The Halo Rule centers on a paradigmatic situation familiar in our culture: the woman who ventures to open herself to love, to a man, to commitment, and the man who holds back, holds out, withholds. The archetype embodying this paradigm features Narcissus – so fixated in self-regard, in self-absorption, that the woman whom […]
Jason Schneiderman Interview with Molly Peacock and David Lehman
October 2009 – January 2010 An Interview with David Lehman, Editor of Best American Poetry and Molly Peacock, Editor of Best Canadian Poetry in English. Conducted by Jason Schneiderman. Jason: Molly, David; I’m awed by how much you both do to promote poetry. David, you’ve been editing Best American Poetry for over two decades. Molly, […]
Molly Peacock: The Diva
D was done with it and it meant everything. Done with demands, denial, the drama of hope. D hadn’t lived all his decades for nothing. Devotion? Spare me, D thought. D was closing doors. Click-click—done. When they were all shut behind him, there opened a corridor of woods. And another thing I’m done with, D […]
David Lehman: Ode to Punctuation
A poem without punctuation is female. – Pauline Ambrozy The comma is female, The exclamation point male, The semi-colon is fem bi-curious sub 29 Virginia. The apostrophe is prosperous, possessive (femme) The colon looks both ways before crossing the street (m). The fast-running dash can’t make up his mind about the curvaceous question mark lurking […]