Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva A Reading by Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine
In Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine take a new approach to Marina Tsvetaeva’s work by interspersing poems with fragments of prose from her “daybooks,” prose books described by one critic as a “lyric diary.” The book is formatted as an assortment of tasty Tsvetaeva tidbits: poems juxtaposed with...
An Interview with Moya Cannon
I found Hands is also available at Carcanet Press or on Amazon, as is Carrying the Songs. More Moya Cannon: http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=860
Jane Hirshfield: Articulation: An Assay
“Yet the speaking tongue is supple, / untroubled by bone.” Jane Hirshfield’s “Articulation: An Assay” addresses when articulation begins and how it occurs, in part by addressing the physical aspects of speech. The tongue, “untroubled by bone,” is able to flex and move to form sounds that become words. One doesn’t often think of...
Please by Jericho Brown
What can a poet teach us about using music to discover new approaches to popular culture, family, racial and sexual identity? Jericho Brown’s debut volume, Please, explores musical themes, variations, and contemporary musicians, including personas such as Diana Ross, Luther Vandross, and Marvin Gaye. Many poems are explicitly about music—the persona poems, certainly, and also...
Carrying the Songs by Moya Cannon
Moya Cannon’s latest collection, Carrying the Songs, features stunning new poems along with selected poems from her previous collections, Oar and The Parchment Boat. Cannon’s title poem begins with the lines: “It was always those with little else to carry / who carried the songs.” Her insights into the deep human need for music...