Zach Savich
Desire into language: Christopher Hennessy on James L. White
In the current edition of KROnline, David Bartone reviews James L. White’s influential The Salt Ecstasies (1982), recently reissued by Graywolf Press. The poems “breathe so lonesome,” writes Bartone, offering an “orientation to the burdensome world of Eros and loss” with…
What Can Poetry Teach Us?
Poetry classes aren’t about producing poems. That’s one view Dan Rosenberg considers in his KROnline review of Poets on Teaching, an anthology of ninety-nine short essays on teaching by contemporary poets, edited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson. Don’t worry about mastering…
Indeed Affection
In our discussion this month, I hope we’ve treated Merwin’s The Shadow of Sirius like he treats his father’s dictionary in “Inheritance.” The poem depicts a book with a “cover worn as though / it had been carried on journeys,”…
Side-Thought: Questions on Posture
In our discussion so far, we’ve hardly mentioned form, at least not in the strict sense of particular patterns by which Merwin, though eschewing conventional punctuation and pressing his thumb to the syntax nozzle (it makes bright billows of spray),…
Radio, Net, Siren
Does a poem express the self or create it? What happens when we read “I?” A few days ago, I sent Caryl the following note about The Shadow of Sirius. My words are in bold, below, with her gently inserted…
