The latest features, essays, interviews from our contributing writers and editors.
“That’s one reason to write poems under fire: to register a human reaction to dehumanizing circumstances. And that’s one reason to translate: to preserve and convey those vital human responses.” –Boris Dralyuk
We talked about Bernadette Mayer, experimental writing, and courting uncertainty.
“The constant translations and riffs were my attempts to understand my father.”
“The page, for me, is all about the power of return.”
“The moment we give up showing a different way of being with language and the imagination, we have lost.”
“What are ways of looking deeply, at a photograph or other archival filament, that allow us in the present to re-enter the past?”
“The important thing is that the work conveys felt truth.”
“They’re talking about real stuff, and sometimes it’s funny and sometimes you’re not sure you should be laughing, and poetry also so often lives in that same kind of in-between, uncomfortable space.”
“The dark, for me, is always a place of brimming; even when it is anguishing and unbearable. . .”
“In the field, looking and listening, I am never not a little bewildered.”—an essay by Hai-Dang Phan
