(Dedicated to Idiots, Assholes, Delvers, and Thinkers) Topographies are important. The feel of the land. A lover’s feel, inspirited and hearthsick; caressing hands roughly over protrusions and pressing fingers into the furrows of the terra—that’s how you write, that’s the…
Guest Post: How the Marx Brothers Taught Me to Write Poetry by Marcella Benton
Okay, so maybe the Marx Brothers didn’t really teach me to write poetry, but these wordplay magicians did ingrain in me a love of humor and language that helped seed my desire to manipulate language myself. I’m not the only…
Guest Post: The Guest Poet by Kevin Casey
We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest. — Horace The bathroom remodel is coming along fine, and thanks for…
A Conversation with Patricia Colleen Murphy
An Interview by Alicia Cole Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. Her book Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press, 2016) won the May Swenson Poetry Award. A chapter…
A Conversation with Sharanya Manivannan
An interview by Alicia Cole. The poet Sharanya Manivannan’s first book of fiction, The High Priestess Never Marries, has been described in The Establishment as “a tour de force of language, desire, and ancestral heartbeats.” It has just been published…
Guest Post: Nipple Slips and Murder: a List of Illegal Things by Julianne Berokoff
I was sitting in an office with my poetry teacher during my last semester at school. Her window faced the arching freeway onramp of the 57 North, shooting white glints from cars onto the finger paintings and crayon sketches pinned…
Guest Post: The Accidental Poets by William Greenfield
Some decades ago I unwittingly fathered a baby girl. Through some trick of fate or the magic of genetics, that baby girl helped me develop into something loosely resembling a poet. I say “loosely” because part of me believes that…
A Conversation with Tasha Cotter
An interview by Alicia Cole. Tasha Cotter is the author of the poetry collection Some Churches (Gold Wake Press, 2013) and the chapbooks That Bird Your Heart and Girl in the Cave. Winner of the 2015 Delphi Poetry Series, her…
Guest Post: The Art of Construction by Shaina Clingempeel
Oftentimes, people picture the modern poet as an outspoken individual. This individual shares even her early scraps. I, however, differ from this image. Throughout college, I dreaded the workshop circle. While I like the concept of collaboration, I struggle to…
Guest Post: Laryngitis by Diana Conces
Laryngitis is, of course, a temporary loss of voice. You try to speak, and what comes out is this awkward, hollow hiss, like a particularly disgruntled ghost dragging a rusty pitchfork across a chalkboard, and then everyone around you puts…
Guest Post: A-merica, our home and native land… by Garreth Chan
I spent two months of my summer entangled and confused in an endless jungle of a fantastically exotic city. Glass and cement twisted into a permanent tango, childish handwriting in chalk emblazoned across uneven sidewalks, slowly scrubbed away by the…
Guest Post: Pull That Trigger (and I Don’t Mean Guns) by Tobi Alfier
In the old days (think Centennial by James Michener), I was afraid of nothing and no one. I flew hot air balloons, jumped out of airplanes, was kicked awake by the police while sleeping on a pier in Monte Carlo,…