I first heard Sarah Trembath speak at a literary conference in Arlington, VA. I was new to the literary world, and this particular panel was focused on the different ways to publish long-form work. … [Read more...]
“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind”: Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Alchemy and Individuation by William Bishop
It is my intention, in reading together literary critics, artists, and theorists, to show how the development of Shakespeare’s conception of his own subjectivity develops over the course of his sonnet … [Read more...]
Clara B. Jones interviews poet Reuben Jackson
Each month I attend a poetry reading at Zed's Cafe in Silver Spring, MD. Reuben Jackson, poet, jazz scholar, educator, and archivist, was the featured speaker on October 4th and, before he had … [Read more...]
A conversation with poet Meaghan Quinn
Meaghan Quinn is a poet of the body and the spirit, combining both subjects in poems which celebrate the deeper struggles of being human. I met Quinn at the Bennington College Writing Seminars while … [Read more...]
My Coleridge: On Five Poems by Sara Coleridge
‘Passion is blind not love: her wondrous might’ Passion is blind not Love: her wondrous might Informs with three-fold pow’r man’s inward sight: – To her deep glance the soul at large … [Read more...]
Love, Unforseen Poetry, and Other Radical Reforms: An interview with the Bulgarian poet Gueorgui Konstantinov
Born in Pleven, Bulgaria, in 1943, Gueorgui Konstantinov graduated from the University of Sofia majoring in Bulgarian Philology in 1967. Since then, he has been employed as an Editor in the Literary … [Read more...]
Robin Coste Lewis and A New Kind of New York
As a young girl I hated Girl Scouts. It was yet another popularity contest that I was on the losing end of, with little payoff beyond the ability to say I’d “hiked” through another bitter Syracuse … [Read more...]
Talking writing with award-winning author Courtney Zoffness
Courtney Zoffness writes fiction and nonfiction. She won the 2018 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the American Literary Review Fiction Prize, the Arts & Letters Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and … [Read more...]
”Curious and Not Un-poetical Imaginings”: A Forgotten Specimen of Victorian Cannabis Writing
“Imagination is the dream of the Unconscious.” —Benjamin DeCasseres During the 19th century, even as explorers journeyed to the last dark recesses and remote wastes of the world, and as … [Read more...]
Our Ironic Conditions are Shooting Back at Us: A Conversation with Vanessa Blakeslee
Vanessa Blakeslee's latest book, Perfect Conditions: stories (Curbside Splendor, 2018), is the winner of the 2019 IPPY Silver Medal for Short Story Fiction, finalist for the Foreword Reviews’ 2018 … [Read more...]
D.H. Lawrence’s Pansies, Nettles, and More Pansies: A Jeremiad
D.H. Lawrence is certainly most well known for his novels such as The Rainbow, Sons & Lovers, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover. Works such as these were important in helping to further … [Read more...]
Visions, Symbols and Intertextuality: An Overview of William Blake’s Influence on Allen Ginsberg
In a compilation of his personal journals, The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice,1 Allen Ginsberg recalled a particular event, which had a strong impact on his career and on his spiritual approach to … [Read more...]
Frenchness Versus Frenchiness: Laforgue’s Translations and the “Wordly” Estate of Whitman
I, too, am not a bit tamed . . . I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world. Walt Whitman, 1855 Leaves of Grass 1848 - New Orleans: this may have been when … [Read more...]
Walt Whitman at 200: Essays and Poems
May 31, 2019 marks the 200th birthday of poetic great Walt Whitman. To commemorate the occasion, EM presents four essays and a selection of poems. Frenchness Versus Frenchiness: Laforgue’s … [Read more...]
Remembering the Truth Dentist: Heathcote Williams by Jay Jeff Jones
Heathcote Williams (1941-2017) was an English poet, playwright, actor, and visionary anarchist. He authored the bestselling, investigative book-length poems Whale Nation, Sacred Elephant, and … [Read more...]
Bespoke Books: An interview with Jason Stoneking
Celia Galey recently caught up with Jason Stoneking in Paris, to talk with him about his current series of unique, handwritten, Bespoke Books. The interview is transcribed here. Celia: So first I … [Read more...]
A Conversation with Risa Denenberg
Risa Denenberg is a Pacific Northwest poet and publisher. We met during her launch of slight faith at Imprint Books in Port Townsend, Washington. She slipped a free copy into my hands, her … [Read more...]
At Liberation’s Heart: A (Self) Portrait of Victor Serge
“I have undergone a little over ten years of various forms of captivity, agitated in seven countries and written twenty books. I own nothing . . . . Behind us lies a victorious revolution gone astray, … [Read more...]
Notes on the Uses of the New Lyric “You”
“It is helpful to change one’s habits to address a root cause” — S. Brook Corman1 Over the last few years, I have been noticing an increasing use of the pronoun “you” in lyric poems, when … [Read more...]
At the Intersection of Linguistics and Literary Criticism: Objectivist Methodology in the Creation of Metalanguage(s) in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s La Jalousie
In his essay on Robbe-Grillet, “Objective Literature: Alain Robbe-Grillet,” Roland Barthes says of objectivism in practice that objects exist “without heredity, without associations, and without … [Read more...]
