Highlights from American Poet, Issue 36

Louise Glück in Conversation with Dana Levin James Galvin on James Wright and Poetry of Place Carl Phillips on Brigit Pegeen Kelly Donald Revell on Poetry and Purity John Koethe on Henri Cole Maureen N. McLane on Twisting and Turning Linda Bierds on Jonathan Thirkield Saskia Hamilton on William Cowper & Emily Dickinson Manuscript Study of Walt Whitman & Spring 2009 Notable Books For a Dollar: Louise Glück in Conversation Interviewed by Dana Levin, poet Louise Glück, recipient of the Wallace Stevens Award, discusses her latest collection, A Village Life, and answers questions related to teaching, audience, and cultural import. On the web at: www.poets.org/lgluc The Poetry of Place: James Wright's "The Secret of Light" James Galvin looks at the work of James Wright, stating: "[Many of these poems] are self-annihilated descriptions of actual surroundings and show a remarkable sense of ease in relation to uncertainty." On the web at: www.poets.org/jgalv The Surreal Is No Less Real: Brigit Pegeen Kelly Carl Phillips discusses the work of Brigit Pegeen Kelly: "...her poems are like no one else's—hard and luminous, weird in the sense of making a thing strange that we at last might see it..." On the web at: www.poets.org/cphil The Art of Violent Concision: Henri Cole John Koethe delves into Henri Cole's newest collection: "Blackbird and Wolf contains some of the most truthful poems in modern American poetry." On the web at: www.poets.org/hcole Twisting and Turning: From the Poets Forum Moderator Maureen N. McLane offers a divagation on "Twisting and Turning" at the 2008 Poets Forum, accompanied by panelists Ron Padgett, Robert Pinsky, Kay Ryan, and Susan Stewart. On the web at: www.poets.org/kryan A Shape of Reality: Jonathan Thirkield Linda Bierds discusses the work of an emerging poet: "[Jonathan] Thirkield's myriad, haunting images result in layered lyrics, and the gathering of those lyrics results in a book shaped and enriched by the layered flashes of a singular mind." On the web at: www.poets.org/lbier Forms of Reticence Poet and Lowell scholar Saskia Hamilton offers a captivating essay re-examining the influence of hymns on Emily Dickinson's verse, ruminating on the work of William Cowper, and how it complicates the traditional expectations of the hymnal form. On the web at: www.poets.org/edick Manuscript Study: Walt Whitman Walt Whitman's handwritten rough drafts of "Come, said my Soul" reaveal much about the poem: it begins as an address to a "him," shifts to addressing the soul, and then becomes a command to the self to create a poem that one can return to enjoy even after death. On the web at: www.poets.org/wwhit