Commonplace: Conversations with Poets (and Other People)
Rachel Zucker
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Intimate and compelling interviews by Rachel Zucker with poets and other artists. Become a Patron & support our growing podcast! www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast
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Episode 108: Saeed Jones
Books and Selected Other Work by Saeed Jones
Alive at the End of the World (Coffee House Press, 2022)
How We Fight For Our Lives (Simon & Schuster, 2019)
Prelude to Bruise (Coffee House Press, 2014)
Also Referenced
Open Books: A Poem Emporium
V Conaty
Christine Larusso
Commonplace Goes to Taiwan, Episodes 1 and 2
Pema Chödrön
Jorge Luis Borges
Roger Reeves
Roxane Gay
Claudia Rankine
Morgan Parker
Alexander Chee
Frank B. Wilderson III
Katelyn Hale Wood
Adrienne Rich
Prince, "I Wanna Be Your Lover"
Yanyi
Torrey Peters
Matthew Shepard
Kenneth Goldsmith
Saidiya Hartman
Rigoberto Gonzalez
Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners! Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast
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Jan 31, 2023
Episode 107: Eileen Myles
Books and Selected Other Work by Eileen Myles
Pathetic Literature, ed. (Grove Press, 2022)
For Now (Yale University Press, 2020)
evolution (Grove Press, 2018)
Afterglow: A Dog Memoir (Grove Press, 2017)
I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems, 1975-2014 (Ecco Press, 2015)
Snowflake/Different Streets (Wave Books, 2012)
Inferno: A Poet's Novel (OR Books, 2010)
The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art (Semiotexte, 2009)
Sorry, Tree (Wave Books, 2007)
Tow, with Artist Larry R. Collins (Lospecchio Press, 2005)
Skies (Black Sparrow Press, 2001)
On My Way (Faux Press, 2001)
Cool For You (Soft Skull Press, 2000)
School of Fish (Black Sparrow Press, 1997)
Maxfield Parrish: Early & New Poems (Black Sparrow Press, 1995)
The New Fuck You: Adventures in Lesbian Reading (Semiotexte, 1995), ed. with Liz Kotz
Chelsea Girls (Black Sparrow Press, 1994)
Not Me (Semiotexte, 1991)
Also Referenced
Patchin Place
Villa Albertine
Constance Debré
Grove Press
Marfa, Texas
Henry Miller
Franz Kafka
Simone Weil
The New Yorker
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman
Zinc Bar
CAConrad
Jack Halberstam
Karl Ove Knausgård
Bagley Wright Lectures
Wave Books
Graywolf Press
Julie Carr
Counterpath Press
Diane Wolkstein
Monkey King
Diane Wolkstein & Samual Noah Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth
Anselm Berrigan
Alice Notley, The Descent of Alette
Jorie Graham
Bernadette Mayer
Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Moyra Davey
Peter Hujar
Rebecca Solnit
Patti Smith
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
David Antin
Tabboo!
Marley Freeman
Hannah Beerman
Djuna Barnes
Amber Hollibaugh
Bruce Springstein
Andy Warhol
Joseph Bueys
New Journalism
Tom Wolfe
Joan Didion
Gertrude Stein
Allen Ginsberg
Jack Pearson
Johnnie Rae
Alex Katz
Guggenheim Fellowship
William Carlos Williams
Robert Mapplethorpe
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
Lewis Warsh
James Schuyler
Wayne Koestenbaum
C. D. Wright
Poetry Project Newsletter
Segue Reading Series
New York University
Lisa Cholodenko
MacArthur Genius Grant
The (Paris) Thanksgiving Manifesto
Chantal Akerman
Gus Van Sant
Robert Frank
Tanya Wexler
Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners! Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast
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Dec 20, 2022
Episode 106: S. Yarberry with V Conaty
Books and Selected Other Work by S. Yarberry
A Boy in the City (Deep Vellum, 2021
Also Referenced
Rachel Zucker
Kathryn Davis
Aphrodite
Charon, boatkeeper of the underworld
CAConrad
William Blake
The Odyssey
Icarus
John Keats
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches, “The Uses of the Erotic”
Maggie Nelson, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint, "The Ballad of Sexual Optimism"
Jose Esteban Munoz
Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure
Samuel L. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners! Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast
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Nov 9, 2022
Episode 105: Carl Phillips
Books and Selected Other Work by Carl Phillips
POETRY
Then The War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022)
Pale Colors in a Tall Field (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020)
Star Map With Action Figures (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019)
Wild Is the Wind (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018)
Reconnaissance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015)
The Art of Daring (Graywolf Press, 2014)
Silverchest (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013)
Double Shadow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012)
Speak Low (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)
Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems 1986–2006 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)
Riding Westward (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)
The Rest of Love (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004)
Rock Harbor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002)
The Tether (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)
Pastoral (Graywolf Press, 2000)
From the Devotions (Graywolf Press, 1998)
Cortège (Graywolf Press, 1995)
In the Blood (Northeastern University Press, 1992)
NONFICTION
My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing (Yale University Press, 2022)
Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Art and Life of Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2004)
TRANSLATION
Sophocles’s Philoctetes (Oxford University Press, 2003)
SELECTED OTHER WORK
Firsts: 100 Years of Yale Younger Poets, ed. Carl Phillips (Yale University Press, 2019)
“What I See Is the Light Falling All Around Us,” T Magazine (2015)
Cooking With Carl on Instagram
Also Referenced
Brooklyn Book Festival
Hafizah Jeter
R. Erika Doyle
Angelos Michalopoulos
Washington University at St. Louis
T Magazine
Omnidawn Publishing
Layli Longsoldier
Victoria Chang
Association of Writers and Writing Programs
Roe v. Wade
Julia Child
Whitney Houston
Breadloaf Writers Conference
The New York Times
Michael Palmer
Ernest Hemingway
Carcanet Books
Emergence Magazine
Robert Lowell, Life Studies
Ron Charles and Carl Phillips
Firing Line with William F Buckley Allen Ginsberg
Rachel Hadas
Prageeta Sharma, Grief Sequence
George Eliot, Middlemarch
John Updike
J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories
Carly Simon
The Go-Gos
Hadrian
Emily Dickinson
Yale Younger Prize
Eduardo C. Corral
Muriel Rukeyser
Jorie Graham
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Linda Gregg, Too Bright To See
Frank O’Hara
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Robert Hayden
David Wojahn
Thom Gunn
Poetry Magazine
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
Many thanks to Rickey Laurentiis, Erin Belieu, Dawn Lundy Martin, Justin Phillip Reed and the Association of Writing Programs Conference for granting me permission to record and share “Radiance Versus Ordinary Light: A Tribute to Carl Phillips,” March 28, 2019.
Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners! Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast
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Sep 21, 2022
Episode 104: The Critical Response Process with Liz Lerman & John Borstel
Selected Work
Critique Is Creative: The Critical Response Process in Theory & Practice (Wesleyan University Press, 2022), Liz Lerman and John Borstel
Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer (Wesleyan University Press, 2011), Liz Lerman
Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process (Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, 2003), Liz Lerman and John Borstel
Also Referenced
Erika Meitner
Jason Schneiderman
Washington Post
Cristóbal Martínez
Postcommodity
Colorado Dance Festival
Alternative Routes
New York Theater Workshop
Yale University
Iowa Writers Workshop
Doulas of North America
Erika R. Moore
Isaac Gomez
Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners! Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast
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Aug 22, 2022
Episode 103: Cody-Rose Clevidence with Valentine Conaty
Books
Aux Arc / Trypt Ich: Poppycock & Assphodel; Winter; A Night of Dark Trees (Nightboat Books, 2021)
Listen My Friend, This is the Dream I Dreamed Last Night (The Song Cave, 2021)
FLUNG THRONE (Ahsata Press, 2018)
BEAST FEAST (Ahsata Press, 2014)
Selected chapbooks
DEARTH & Gods Green Mirth (Fonograph, 2022)
“BEHOLD A MAN!” (Auric Press, 2020)
Perverse, All Monstrous (Nion Editions, 2017)
Also Referenced
Golden spike
Michel de Montaigne
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog
Waves Breaking with Avren Keating
Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book
Fall of Civilizations
Contrapoints, “Envy”
Sylvia Plath
Robert Sapolsky, Stanford Lectures
Jaak Panksepp, The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions
Johann Sebastian Bach
Alan Felsenthal
Douglas Kearney
Bagley Wright Lecture Series
Carl Sagan
Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Book of Revelation
Neopaganism
Quaker meeting
Toni Morrison
Linda Stone, Kinship & Gender: An Introduction
Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality & Natural Diversity
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (An Inquiry Into the Nature & Causes of the Wealth of Nations)
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
Jean Giorno, Joy of Man’s Desiring
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Robin Blaser
Derek Walcott
Wallace Stevens
Kamau Brathwaite
Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners! Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast
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Aug 2, 2022
Episode 102: Rebekah Wolkstein
Selected Work
Payadora Tango Ensemble
“Adios Muchachos/I Get Ideas,” (by Julio César Sanders) violinist and vocalist, with Payadora Tango Ensemble
“La Perdida,” violinist and songwriter, with Payadora Tango Ensemble
Tango in the Dark, with PointeTango
Venuti String Quartet
“Like My Sister,” violinist, vocalist, and songwriter, with family band
“Years from Today,” violinist, vocalist, and songwriter, with family band
Watch the full feature-length film Tango in the Dark here!
Also Referenced
Drew Jureka
Diane Wolkstein
Sheila Heti
Judah Goren
Cleveland Institute of Music
Cleveland Orchestra
Itzhak Perlman, In the Fiddler's House
Mariah Carey
Whitney Houston
Ted Gup
The Plain Dealer
Connie Schultz
Paul Hindemith
Johannes Brahms
Jeff Healey’s Jazz Wizards
Glenn Gould School, The Royal Conservatory of Music
Toronto Symphony Orchestra
The National Ballet of Canada
The Canadian Opera Company
Jill Barber
Viva Mexico Toronto Mariachi Band
Astor Piazzolla
Alexander Glazunov
Jean Sibelius
Nathaniel Wolkstein
Shirley Temple
The Legend of Carau (Argentina)
PointeTango Dance Company
SoundMachine
Yiddish Glory
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Jun 10, 2022
Episode 101: Prageeta Sharma
Rachel speaks with poet, scholar, and Thinking Its Presence conference founder Prageeta Sharma about her book Grief Sequence and creating a platform for BIPOC writers and scholars with the settlement from her discrimination lawsuit. The conversation touches on grief, racism and misogyny, attachment to problematic objects, second chances at love, the abject lyric, false friends, and how to support each other with vibrancy.
Selected Work by Prageeta Sharma
Grief Sequence (Wave, 2020)
Undergloom (Fence Books, 2013)
Infamous Landscapes (Fence Books, 2007)
The Opening Question (Fence Books, 2004)
Bliss to Fill (Subpress, 2000)
“A One Won” and “Friendship and Racial Furniture: An Address” in Harp & Altar, Issue 11, Winter 2022
Also Referenced
Katy Lederer
Alice Notley
The Descent of Inanna
Douglas Kearney
Mark Strand
Dorothy Wang, Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race, and Subjectivity in Asian American Poetry
James Kyung-jin Lee, Pedagogies of Woundedness: Illness, Memoir, and the Ends of the Model Minority
Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism
Pauline Chen, Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality
Valorie Thomas
The Beatles, Let it Be
Barnett Newman
Brenda Shaughnessy
Sandra Lim
Divya Victor, Curb and Kith
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
Jorie Graham
Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings
Kyla Tompkins
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson
Amaud Jamaul Johnson
Jonathan Lethem
Claudia Rankine, Citizen
Roland Barthes, Grief Sequence
Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, ed. Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzalez and Angela P. Harris
Matthew Salesses, Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping
Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners! Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast
Prageeta Sharma and Dorothy Wang at the Thinking Its Presence conference.
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May 18, 2022
Episode 100: Doreen Wang
ADDITIONAL INFO
Selected Work by Doreen Wang
with Rachel Zucker et al., “Commonplace goes to Taiwan,” Part 1 and Part 2.
with Mish Liang Hsu, 一年的告白/ Dos Salidas.
“The roadmap of regret, curiosity and sound: How I decided to make a podcast with my dying mother,” CommonWealth Magazine.
“The Kundiman 2018 Series, Pt. 1,” Racist Sandwich.
"The Analects," Angels Flight: Literary West.
Also Referenced
Ghost Island Media
V Conaty
Katie Fernelius
Arielle Greenberg
Natalie Diaz and Roger Reeves
Ginsbyrg
Torrey Peters
Douglas Kearney
David Naiman
Karen Brody
Brenda Lin (author of The Wealth Ribbon)
Dianne Wolkstein, Rachel’s mother
Oedipus
Jesus
Sigmund Freud
The Grand Permission: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood, ed. Brenda Hillman and Patricia Dienstfrey
Yanyi
Isaac Ginsberg-Miller
Heidi Broadhead
D. A. Powell
Laurel Snyder
Recommended by Chris
Sharon Olds
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners! Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast
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Apr 6, 2022
Episode 99: Douglas Kearney
Books and Selected Other Work by Douglas Kearney
BOOKS / COMPOSITIONS
Sho (poetry, Wave Books, 2021)
Fodder, with Val Jeanty (poetry LP, Fonograf Editions, 2021)
Starts Spinning (poetry Chapbook, Rain Taxi, 2020)
Buck Studies (poetry, Fence Books, 2016)
Someone Took They Tongues. 3 Operas (libretti, Subito Press, 2016)
Mess and Mess and (poetry and essays, Noemi Press, 2015)
Patter (poetry, Red Hen Press, 2014)
The Black Automaton (poetry, Fence Books, 2009)
LECTURES
Douglas Kearney’s Bagley Wright Lectures
“I Killed, I Died: Banter, Self-Destruction, and the Poetry Reading” (The Yale Review, 2021)
OTHER
“Dear Editor——: An Open Letter from Douglas Kearney” (Cave Canem, 2020)
Also Referenced
Bagley Wright Lecture Series
Christopher Titus, Born With a Defect
Tarik Dobbs
Jennifer Holliday as Effie in Dream Girls
Ellen Welcker
Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Archaic Torso of Apollo”
James Wright, “A Blessing” and “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”
lucille clifton
Val Jeanty
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Mar 11, 2022
Episode 98: Torrey Peters
Books by Torrey Peters
Detransition, Baby (One World, 2021)
Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones (self-published, 2016; revised edition forthcoming from Penguin Random House, 2022)
The Masker (self-published, 2016; revised edition forthcoming from Penguin Random House, 2022)
Also Referenced
Topside Press
The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard, ed. Tom Leger and Riley MacLeod (Topside Press)
Imogen Binnie, Nevada (Topside Press)
Casey Plett
Iowa Writers Workshop
T. Fleishman, Time is a Thing The Body Moves Through (Coffee House Press) and Syzygy, Beauty (Sarabande Books)
Darcey Steinke
Darcey Steinke, Flash Count Diary: Menopause and Vindication of Natural Life (Macmillan)
Fleabag
The First Wives Club
Elena Ferrante, Neapolitan Novels (Europa Editions)
Rachel Cusk, Outline Trilogy (Macmillan) and Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation (Picador)
Jenny Offill
Susan Sontag, Illness as a Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (Picador)
Rabih Alameddine, The Wrong End of the Telescope (Grove Atlantic)
Zoe Whittal
Alexander Chee
Kristen Roupenian, “Cat Person” (The New Yorker)
Sylvia Plath
Virginia Woolf
Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899)
Dave Chappelle
E. M. Forster, Maurice (written 1913-1914, published 1971)
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (1897)
Jane the Virgin
Sex in the City
Friends
Seinfeld
The Simpsons
Cathy Park Hong
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian-American Reckoning (One World)
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Feb 1, 2022
Episode 97: Camille Dungy
ADDITIONAL INFO
Books and Selected Other Work by Camille Dungy
POETRY
Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017)
Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011)
Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010)
What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006)
NON-FICTION
Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History (W. W. Norton, 2017)
ANTHOLOGIES & EDITORIAL WORK
Ed., Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (University of Georgia Press, 2009)
Ed. with Matt O'Donnell & Jeffrey Thomson, From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea Books, 2009)
Also Referenced
Guggenheim Fellowship
Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year
Susan Sontag
Dorothea Lange
Toi Derricotte, Natural Birth
Matt O’Donnell
From the Fishhouse
Sharon Olds
Kimiko Hahn
Brenda Hillman
The Grand Permissio…
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Nov 2, 2021
Episode 96: Judy Grahn
ADDITIONAL INFO
Books and Selected Other Work by Judy Grahn
POETRY
Hanging on Our Own Bones (Red Hen Press, 2017)
Love Belongs to Those Who Do the Feeling: New & Selected Poems (1966-2006) (Red Hen Press, 2008)
The Queen of Swords (Beacon Press, 1987)
The Queens of Wands (Crossing Press, 1982)
The Work of a Common Woman: Collected Poetry (1964–1977) (St. Martin's Press, 1982)
She Who (Women's Press Collective/Diana Press, 1977)
A Woman is Talking to Death (Women's Press Collective, 1974)
Edward the Dyke and Other Poems (Women's Press Collective, 1971)
The Common Woman Poems (Women's Press Collective, 1970)
NONFICTION
Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power (Nightboat Books, 2021)
Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit: Living in a Sentient World (Red Hen Press, 2021)
A Simple Revolution: the Making of an Activist Poet (Aunt Lute Books, 2012)
with Lisa Maria Hogeland, The Judy Grahn Reader (Aunt Lute Books, 2009)
Descent to the Roses of a Family: A Poet's…
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Jun 22, 2021
Episode 95: Jason Schneiderman
Books and Selected Other Work by Jason Schneiderman
Hold Me Tight (Red Hen Press, 2020)
Primary Source (Red Hen Press, 2016)
Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Striking Surface: Poems (Ashland Poetry Press, 2010)
Sublimation Point (Four Way Books, 2004)
“Nothingism: A Poetry Manifesto” in The American Poetry Review (April 2019)
“How the Sonnet Turns: From a Fold to a Helix” in The American Poetry Review (June 2020)
Also Referenced
Sarah Polley
D.A. Powell
Sylvia Rivera
Andrew Sullivan
David Brooks
Sue Johnson, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love (2008)
Tom Sleigh
Walt Whitman
Oscar Wilde, “The Portrait of W.H.” (1889)
Anne Carson, Eros: The Bittersweet (1986)
Jacques Lacan, mirror stage
Sigmund Freud, melancholy
Leo Bersani, "Is the Rectum a Grave" (1987)
Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnen
Frank O'Hara
The Hanky Code
Emily Dickinson
Erika Meitner
Tilda Swinton
Derek Jarman
Jorie Graham
James Gal…
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May 26, 2021
Episode 94: Jennifer Block
Books and Projects
Everything Below the Waist: Why Healthcare Needs a Feminist Revolution (2019)
Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care (2008)
Our Bodies Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era (2005), Contributing Editor
Ms. Magazine (founded 1972), former Editor
Other Texts & People Mentioned in the Episode
Heather Corinna, What Fresh Hell Is This?: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You (2021)
Susun S. Weed, New Menopausal Years, Volume 3: Alternative Approaches for Women 30-90 (2002)
Our Bodies Ourselves (series, 1970-present)
Federation of Feminist Women's Health Center, A New View of a Woman's Body: A Fully Illustrated Guide (1981)
Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women (1978)
Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, & Nurses: A History of Women Healers (1973)
Shulamith Firestone
Adrienne Rich
Jerilynn Prior
Laura Eldridge, In Our Control: The…
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May 5, 2021
Episode 93: Arielle Greenberg
Arielle Greenberg writes and teaches poetry, creative nonfiction and cultural studies. Her most recent books are I Live in the Country & Other Dirty Poems (Four Way, 2020) and the creative nonfiction book Locally Made Panties (Ricochet Editions, 2016); her fifth collection of poetry, Come Along with Me to the Pasture Now, is forthcoming. She is co-editor of three literary anthologies, including Gurlesque (Saturnalia Books), based on a theory of Third Wave feminist avant-garde poetics Arielle developed. Her work has been featured in many anthologies, including the Best American Poetry, and she wrote a column on contemporary poetics for the American Poetry Review and edited a nonfiction column for The Rumpus called (K)ink: Writing While Deviant. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University and is the recipient of a MacDowell Colony fellowship and a Saltonstall Individual Artist Grant. A former tenured professor in poetry at Columbia College Chicago, she teaches at Maine Media Workshop, th…
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Apr 12, 2021
Episode 92: Behind the Scenes
Books and Projects
Rachel Zucker, SoundMachine
Christine Larusso, There Will Be No More Daughters
SoundMachine (audio project)
Other Texts & People Mentioned in the Episode
Emily Skillings
Claudia Rankine, Just Us
Poets House harassment and retaliatory firing
Small Press Distribution harassment and wage theft
Jay Hammond
Katie Fernelius
Doreen Wang
NYU Creative Writing Program
Antioch Low-Residency MFA Program
Jennifer Block, Everything Below the Waist: Why Healthcare Needs a Feminist Revolution
Arielle Greenberg
Marriage Story (2019)
Daring to Rest
Karen Brody
Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life (2006)
Amang’s newest collection, Raised By Wolves
[transcript to come]
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Mar 1, 2021
Episode 91: Nate Marshall
Books and Projects by/with Nate Marshall
Finna (One World, 2020)
Wild Hundreds (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015)
Breakbeat Poets (Haymarket Books, 2015)
Blood Percussion (Button Poetry, 2014)
1989, The Number (Haymarket Books, 2016) Free download!
No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks
Daily Lyrical Product
Dark Noise Collective
Bruh Rabbit
Crescendo Literary
Other Texts & People Mentioned in the Episode
Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men (Harper Perennial)
Gwendolyn Brooks
Chance the Rapper
Richard Wright
Margaret Walker
Langston Hughes
Boondocks (animated series)
“Mrs Officer” by Lil Wayne
Scandal
Dark Noise Collective:
Aaron Samuels
Fatimah Ashgar
Danez Smith
Jamila Woods
Franny Choi
Follow Nate Marshall on Twitter and Instagram or sign up for his Substack to know more about his books, readings and events.
[transcript to come]
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Dec 27, 2020
Episode 90: Makenna Goodman
Books by Makenna Goodman
The Shame (Milkweed, 2020)
Other Texts, Artists, and Authors Mentioned in This Episode
Amelie Nothomb's Strike Your Heart (Europa Editions, 2018)
Angela Davis' Women Race and Class (Vintage, 1983)
Sheila Heti’s Motherhood (Picador, 2019)
Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste (Random House, 2020)
Angela Davis' Women Race and Class (Vintage, 1983)
Toni Morrison’s Beloved (Vintage, 2004)
Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice (Penguin Classics)
Robert A. Johnson’s Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche (HarperOne, 2009)
Virginia Woolf
Agnès Varda
Chantal Ackerman
Pedro Almodóvar
D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths (Delacorte, 1992)
Julie Buntin
Philip Roth
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Ben Lerner
Other Relevant Links
The Mountain School
Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners!
Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodc…
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Dec 9, 2020
Episode 89: The Ladder Out of the Hole
Featured in Episode 89:
David Naimon
Between the Covers podcast
Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. Le Guin & David Naimon
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Jun 4, 2020
Episode 88: Global Roll Call, Part 3
Commonplace guests as they appear in this episode:
Molly Peacock is a poet, biographer, essayist, and short fiction writer. Her most recent book is The Analyst: poems.
Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician, composer, performer and Torah teacher. She creates multi-genre works of experimental beauty which explore the intersection of ancient wisdom texts with everyday life. Her most recent book is Fruit Geode.
D. A. Powell’s books include Cocktails and Chronic, as well as Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys. He recently published a chapbook with Rescue Press, called Atlas T; all proceeds from the sale of Atlas T will be donated to Youth Speaks in San Francisco.
Rosa Alcalá is the author of three books of poetry: Undocumentaries, The Lust of Unsentimental Waters, and MyOTHER TONGUE. She is a Professor in the Bilingual MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Bernadette Mayer is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including Midwinter D…
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May 22, 2020
Episode 87: Global Roll Call, Part 2
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate and the author of the memoir Children of the Land.
Jennifer Croft is an American author, critic and translator who works from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish. She is also the author of Homesick.
Nick Flynn is an American writer, playwright, and poet. He has two books out this year: This is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire and Stay: Threads, Conversations, Collaborations.
Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of two books of poetry and one book of short stories. For The Paris Review she writes a monthly column on fairytales and motherhood entitled HAPPILY.
Erika Meitner is the author of five books of poems, most recently Holy Moly Carry Me.
Alicia Ostriker, a poet and critic, has published sixteen volumes of poetry.
Olga Tokarczuk is a Polish Nobel laureate writer, activist, and public intellectual.
New Books Written by and Author/Texts Recommended by Nick Flynn
Nick Flynn's This is the Nig…
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May 13, 2020
Episode 86: Global Roll Call, Part 1
David Trinidad is the author of numerous poetry collections, most recently Swinging on a Star. He teaches poetry and creative writing at Columbia College and lives in Chicago.
Alice Notley is the author of over 40 books of poetry. She lives in Paris.
Cathy Park Hong’s latest book is Minor Feelings. She is poetry editor of the New Republic and is a professor at Rutgers-Newark University.
John Murillo is the author of Up Jump the Boogie and Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry. He is an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University and also teaches in the low residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.
Tina Chang is a poet, teacher, and editor. In 2010, she was named Poet Laureate of Brooklyn (the first woman to hold this title).
Ada Limón is the author of five books of poetry. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program, and the online and summer programs for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.
M. NourbeSe Philip is a poet and…
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Apr 9, 2020
Episode 85: The Craft of the Literary Interview
Mike Sakasegawa, host of Keep the Channel Open, was scheduled to moderate a panel at this year’s annual AWP Conference called “The Craft of the Literary Podcast Interview,” featuring Rachel Zucker of Commonplace, Dujie Tahat of The Poet Salon, and David Naimon of Between the Covers. Due to the coronavirus, Mike and the panelists ended up having to cancel their appearance at the conference, which makes it all the sweeter to be able to bring you this podcast version of our panel. In this wide-ranging conversation, Rachel, Dujie, David, and Mike talk all about the “hows” and the “whys” of interviewing, including the importance of establishing rapport with our guests, questions about the ethics of interviewing, and what the role of the host ought to be.
Podcasts by the Panelists
Keep the Channel Open
Between the Covers
The Poet Salon
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Mar 25, 2020
Episode 84: M. NourbeSe Philip
Books by M. NourbeSe Philip
Blank: Essays and Interviews (Book*hug, 2017)
She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (Wesleyan University Press, 2015)
Zong! (Wesleyan University Press, 2011)
A Genealogy of Resistance and Other Essays (Mercury Press, 1998)
Frontiers: Selected Essays and Writings on Racism and Culture 1984-1992 (Mercury Press, 1992)
Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence (Mercury Press, 1991)
Other Texts and Writers Featured in the Episode
Kamau Brathwaite
Nathaniel (Nate) Mackey and his lecture, “Breath and Precarity”
Phillis Wheatley
George Lamming’s In The Castle of My Skin (University of Michigan Press, 1992)
George Lamming’s The Pleasures of Exile (University of Michigan Press, 1991)
Claire Harris
Dionne Brand
Harold Sonny Ladoo’s No Pain Like this Body (House of Anansi, 2013)
Austin Clarke (fiction writer)
George Elliot Clarke’s argument about Nova Scotia preachers’ sermons
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman…
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Mar 4, 2020
Episode 83: Darcey Steinke
Books by Darcey Steinke
Flash Point Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019)
Jesus Saves (Grove Press, 2019)
Easter Everywhere (Bloomsbury, 2007)
Milk (Bloomsbury, 2005)
Up Through the Water (Grove Press, 2000)
Suicide Blond (Grove Press, 2000)
John-KJV (Grove Press, 1999)
Other Writers and Texts Mentioned in the Episode
Maud Casey
The Testosterone Files by Max Wolf Valerio (Seal Press, 2006)
Trans: A Memoir by Juliet Jacques (Verso, 2016)
Speedboat by Renata Adler (NYRB Books, 2013)
Branwell by Douglas A. Martin
Sarah Manguso (ep. 37)
Maggie Nelson (ep. 82)
Fanny Howe
Nick Cave
Women’s Writing Festival in Sydney, Australia
Other Relevant Links
Mike W. Hudson
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/opinion/reading-writing-stuttering.html
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Feb 12, 2020
Episode 82: Maggie Nelson
Books by Maggie Nelson
Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull, 2018)
The Argonauts (Graywolf, 2015)
The Latest Winter (Zed Books, 2018)
Shiner (Zed Books, 2018)
The Art of Cruelty (W.W. Norton, 2012)
Women, The New York School and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2011)
Bluets (Wave Books, 2009)
The Red Parts (Graywolf, 2007)
Jane (Soft Skull, 2005)
Other Authors and Texts Mentioned in the Episode
Avital Ronell’s Crack Wars (University of Illinois Press, 2004)
Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era
by Paul B. Preciado and Bruce Benderson (Feminist Press, 2013)
The Road of Excess: A History of Writer’s on Drugs by Marcus Boon (Harvard University Press, 2005)
Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty by Jacqueline Rose (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019)
Black and Blur by Fred Moten (Duke University Press, 2017)
Eileen Myles
Lauren Sanders
Frank O’Hara
Claudia Rankine (Ep 4)
Wayne Kostenbaum (Ep 9)
Christina Crosby…
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Jan 27, 2020
Episode 81: Commonplace goes to Taiwan, Part 2
People, Places, and Events Featured in this Episode:
Brilliant Time Bookstore
(Feature on Mr. CHANG Cheng and his partner, Ms. LIAO Yun-chan)
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
FemBooks est. 1994
Witch House (located in the same building as FemBooks)
Peng Wan-Ru Foundation (located in the same building as FemBooks)
KANG Min Jay
National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of Building and Planning
WenRooTin Cultural Area
Eslite Bookstore
(More on Eslite’s cultural significance and future)
Treasure Hill
KANG Min Jay’s speech “Altered Space: Squatting and Legitimizing Treasure Hill, Taipei” presented at Cultural Development Network’s 2006 Forum, “Artivism: The Role of Arts in Regeneration”
Public art project at Taipower Spider Tree
Tonsan Bookstore est. 1982 (the leftist bookstore referred to by KANG Min Jay)
GinGin Books est. 1999 (the gay bookstore referred to by KANG Min Jay)
(More on GinGin’s founder, LAI Jeng-jer 賴正哲)
Taiwanese poet…
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Jan 21, 2020
Episode 80: Commonplace goes to Taiwan, Part 1
Relevant Links from Rachel’s Story
“Diane Wolkstein, Children’s Author Who Spurred a Storytelling Revival, Dies at 70” via the New York Times
Rachel on The Longest Shortest Time
Audio of Diane Wolkstein performing “The Monkey King”
Relevant Links from Doreen’s Story
Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender
Haunani Kay Trask (University of Hawaii)
Daniel Kim (professor at Brown)
Lois Ann Yamanaka
R. Zamora Linmark
Saigon Grill picket of 2008
Audre Lorde Project
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Naomi Jackson (friend)
Sound Up Bootcamp
Betty Dodson’s female sexuality class
Kundiman
Museum of Chinese in America
BOOK CLUB
Hsia Yu’s SALSA (Zephyr Press)
Rachel Zucker’s MOTHERs (Counterpath)
Brenda Lin’s THE WEALTH RIBBON (courtesy of the author)
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Dec 18, 2019
Episode 79: Christine Larusso
Books by Christine Larusso
There Will Be No More Daughters (&Now/Lake Forest College Press, 2019)
Other Texts and Writers Mentioned in the Episode
Morgan Parker
Anne Boyer
Rachel Zucker
Home/Birth
Kimiko Hahn
Carmen Giménez Smith
Ada Limón
Victoria Chang’s twitter
Tommy Pico
Jakob Vala (designer)
Shira Erlichman
Sharon Olds
Juliana Spahr
Other Relevant Links
Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize at Lake Forest (currently on hiatus)
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Nov 27, 2019
Episode 78: Anne Boyer
Episode transcripts available here.
Books by Anne Boyer
The Undying (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019)
A Handbook of Disappointed Fate (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018)
Garments Against Women (Ahsahta, 2015)
The Romance of Happy Workers (Coffee House Press, 2008)
Other Texts and Writers Mentioned in the Episode
Cassandra Gillig
Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies (Scribner, 2011)
Bernadette Mayer
Patricia Lennox Boyd
Claudia Rankine’s Citizen (Graywolf, 2014)
Maggie Nelson
Arthur Rimbaud
Ocean Vuong
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Janet Holmes
Leo Tolstoy
Other Relevant Links
Excerpt of Anne Boyer’s The Undying in The New Yorker
Ferguson
Coupdizzle
Breast Cancer Action
Ashata Press
Jeremy Corbyn
Bernie Sanders
Elizabeth Warren
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Nov 18, 2019
Episode 77: Tina Chang
Books by Tina Chang
Hybrida (W.W. Norton, 2019)
Of Gods & Strangers (Four Way, 2011)
Language for a New Century [Editor, alongside Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar] (W.W. Norton, 2008)
Half-Lit Houses (Four Way, 2004)
Other Texts and Writers Mentioned in this Episode
Kimiko Hahn
Aracelis Girmay
sam sax
Agha Shahid Ali
Mira Jacob
Toni Morrison
lucille clifton
Brenda Shaughnessy
Carolyn Forché
Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (Picador, 2000)
Edwidge Danticat
“With the Birth of My Son, I Stopped Hiding”—Tina Chang’s Modern Love Column
Other Relevant Links
Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival
Napa Valley Writer’s Conference
The Case of Loving V. Virginia
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Oct 29, 2019
Episode 76: Ada Limón
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Ada Limón about her life as a poet, especially her two most recent books, The Carrying and Bright Dead Things. Limón speaks openly about contests and prizes, money, taboos around performance, her decision to stop trying to have children, writing about secrets, the privilege of being a writer, leaning toward gratitude, pinning the dragon of the mind to the page, writing as a shareable space and a form of connection and so much more.
Books by Ada Limón
The Carrying (Milkweed, 2018)
Bright Dead Things (Milkweed, 2015)
Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed, 2010)
lucky wreck (Autumn House, 2006)
This Big Fake World (Pearl Poetry Prize series, 2006)
Other Relevant Links
The theory and play of duende by Lorca
Adrian Matejka’s One Big Smoke
Nyorican Poetry
Episode 16: Jericho Brown
CD Wright
Bernadette Mayer’s conversation with Charles Bernstein
Episode 60: Robin Coste Lewis
Robin Coste Lewis’ acceptance speech for NBA
Ada Limon’s acceptance…
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Oct 4, 2019
Episode 75: Victoria Chang
Books by Victoria Chang
Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon, 2017)
Is Mommy? (With Marla Frazee) (Beach Lane, 2015)
The Boss (McSweeney’s, 2013)
Salvinia Molesta (University of Georgia Press, 2008)
Circle (Crab Orchard/Southern Illinois University Press, 2005)
Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation (Editor) (University of Illinois Press, 2004)
Other Books and Writers Mentioned in the Episode
Chen Chen
Kristin Chang
Fatimah Asghar
Paige Lewis
Kaveh Akbar
Cathy Park Hong
Mary Ruefle
Louise Glück
Jorie Graham
Anne Carson
Terrance Hayes
Ilya Kaminsky
Other Relevant Links
Commonplace interview with Richard Siken
Commonplace interview with Ilya Kaminsky
Victoria Chang at McSweeney’s
Copper Canyon Press
Antioch University
CalArts School of Critical Studies
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Sep 17, 2019
Episode 74: Rachel Zucker's SoundMachine
Books/Projects by Rachel Zucker
SoundMachine (Wave, 2019)
The Pedestrians (Wave, 2014)
Mothers (Counterpoint, 2013)
Museum of Accidents (Wave, 2009)
The Bad Wife Handbook (Wesleyan University Press, 2008)
The Last Clear Narrative (Wesleyan University Press, 2004)
Eating in the Underworld (Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
Home/birth: a poemic with Arielle Greenberg ( 2011)
Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections with Arielle Greenberg (University of Iowa Press, 2008)
Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First One Hundred Days with Arielle Greenberg
SoundMachine, the audio project
Books by Guest Interviewers
Sharon Olds
Arias (Knopf, 2019)
Odes (Knopf, 2016)
Stag’s Leap (Knopf, 2012)
One Secret Thing (Knopf, 2008)
Strike Sparks (Knopf, 2004)
The Unswept Room (Knopf, 2002)
Blood, Tin, Straw (Knopf, 1999)
The Wellspring (Knopf, 1996)
The Father (Knopf, 1992)
Gold Cell (Knopf, 1987)
The Dead and the Living (Knopf, 1984)
Satan Says (University of Pitts…
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Sep 4, 2019
Episode 73: Jennifer Croft (Translation Series Ep. 3)
Episode 3 of Commonplace’s special series on translation.
Jennifer Croft is a writer, translator and critic. She was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2018 and a National Book Award Finalist for her translation from Polish of Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. She is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN, MacDowell, and National Endowment for the Arts grants and fellowships, as well as the inaugural Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation and a Tin House Workshop Scholarship for her memoir Homesick, just released from Unnamed Press. She holds a PhD from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She is a founding editor of The Buenos Aires Review and has published her own work and numerous translations in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Granta, VICE, n+1, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She currently divides her time between Buenos Aires and Los Angeles. [Bio adapted from Unnamed Press and the NEA.]
In this episode Jennifer Croft speaks…
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Jul 25, 2019
Episode 72: Ilya Kaminsky
EXTRA RESOURCES FOR EPISODE 72
Books by Ilya Kaminsky
Poetry Collections:
Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019)
Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004)
Anthologies:
The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (co-editors Susan Harris, Ecco, 2010)
In the Shape of a Human I Am Visiting the Earth: Poems from Far and Wide (co-editors Dominic Luxford and Jesse Nathan, McSweeney’s, 2017)
Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose (co-editors Katie Farris and Valzhyna Mort, Tupelo Press, 2014)
A God in the House: Poets Talk about Faith, (co-editor Katherine Towler, Tupelo Press, 2012)
Translations/Readings:
Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (with Jean Valentine, Alice James, 2012)
This Lamentable City by Polina Barskova (Tupelo Press, 2010)
If I Were Born in Prague: Poems of Guy Jean (with Katie Farris, Argos Press, 2011)
Other Books and Writers Featured in the Episode
Isaac Babel
Leslie Scalapino
Catullus
Propertius
Anna Akhmatova
Czeslaw Milosz
T…
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Jun 16, 2019
Episode 71: Mira Jacob
Rachel Zucker speaks with Mira Jacob, author and illustrator of a newly released graphic memoir GOOD TALK: A Memoir in Conversations. Zucker and Jacob speak about “the gaze of disbelief,” racism, raising sons in the age of Trump, the relationship between humor and anger, the lonely exhilaration of immersing oneself in a new medium, the challenges and pleasures of translating text into audio and the complicated work of making art about yourself, your children, family and friends.
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May 12, 2019
Episode 70: Alicia Jo Rabins
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, musician and Jewish educator Alicia Jo Rabins about her new book, Fruit Geode, and her lifelong passion for writing. In an episode rich with music, Alicia Jo describes falling in love with Jewish learning, being a classically-trained violinist, learning American fiddle music from a busker, playing in a klezmer punk band, recording three albums of Girls in Trouble songs (written in the voices of female biblical figures), her one-woman rock opera about Bernie Madoff and the collapse of the financial market, the inevitability of cycles, writing a spiritual memoir, the non-binary divine, the Jewish priestess movement, the importance of stopping writing, a hunger for integration, shame, performance, and so much more.
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Apr 30, 2019
Episode 69: Live Reading with Brown, Joseph, Meitner Parker, Pico, Tolbert, and Yanyi
A live reading featuring past Commonplace guests Jericho Brown, Janine Joseph, Erika Meitner, Morgan Parker, Tommy Pico, TC Tolbert, and Yanyi, held in Passages Bookstore in Portland, OR, on March 30, 2019.
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Apr 18, 2019
Episode 68: Live Reading w/ Calvocoressi, Falkner, Gay and Mark
Live reading featuring Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Adam Falkner, Ross Gay and Sabrina Orah Mark hosted by Rachel Zucker at the Association of Writing Programs Conference in Portland, OR, on March 29, 2019. Includes a brief update on the state of the podcast and an invitation to leave a message on (347) 762-3405 with your comment, question, suggestion or friendly provocation about Commonplace.
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Mar 26, 2019
Episode 67: John Biewen
Rachel Zucker speaks with public radio reporter and documentarian John Biewen about his work at the Center for Documentary Studies, especially his two series Seeing White and MEN, which investigate the history and reach of whiteness and masculinity. Rachel and John talk about how John decided to make these series, about the format of Seeing White and MEN, how and why it was important and effective to have a recurring conversational partner or official co-host, the value of white people examining whiteness and men examining toxic masculinity, virtue signaling, problems with imaginative empathy and how to not just think about oppression but begin to do something about changing it.
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Mar 8, 2019
Episode 66: Sarah Gambito
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, professor and co-founder of Kundiman Sarah Gambito about writing after the 2016 election, their shared love of cooking, experiments in non-traditional teaching, going back to the ancients and redefining the goals of the creative writing workshop to include: care (of self and other), nourishment, joy and abundance. Gambito describes the loneliness she felt moving to New York in her mid-twenties, how and why she and Joseph Legaspi co-founded Kundiman (“a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature”) and how sometimes you need to buy a snow-cone machine.
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Feb 14, 2019
Episode 65: Hillary Frank
Author, illustrator and podcaster Hillary Frank talks about how she tricked her way into radio, early writing failures, being driven by wanting to prove people wrong, the misogyny against mothers in media that she experienced while trying to tell audio stories about birth, motherhood and reproductive health, and how she finally started and grew her podcast The Longest Shortest Time. Frank talks about writing YA fiction and about her newly released nonfiction book, Weird Parenting Wins. Rachel and Hillary discuss the benefits and challenges of various storytelling formats, their shared desire to tell (or write) stories about parents that don’t make parents feel terrible, and the difficult balancing act of writing honestly and vulnerably about one’s kids or partner while protecting loved one’s privacy.
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Jan 24, 2019
Episode 64: John Keene (Translation Series, Ep. 2)
Episode 2 of Commonplace’s special series on translation
John R. Keene is the author of Annotations and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer. Born in St. Louis, Keene is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University, where he was a New York Times Fellow. He is the recipient of many awards and fellowships—including a MacArthur Genius Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize, and the Whiting Foundation Prize for fiction. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark. (Bio adapted from New Directions.)
John Keene talks to Commonplace host Rachel Zucker about his experiences—starting as early as middle school—with translation, why he believes translation is so important, and how his work as a poet and fiction writer is informed by his work as a translator. Keene, who primarily t…
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Jan 10, 2019
Episode 63: Juliana Spahr
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, scholar and activist Juliana Spahr about teaching, language poetry, studying at SUNY Buffalo, post-colonialism and anti-colonialism, personal rules she established when living, writing and teaching in Hawaii, finding a more nuanced way of avoiding appropriation (without just avoiding it completely), who she is willing to upset, what it means to not uphold a nation, funding, the influence of the state on literature, why literature and higher education (especially MFA programs) remain so segregated and influenced by whiteness, the problems with declamatory political poems, Commune—both the book press and the magazine—occasional poems, how the genre of poetry is changing, the role of the internet on political poetry projects, the impact of Black Lives Matter on literature, and how literature is becoming more and more like opera.
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Dec 18, 2018
Episode 62: Khadijah Queen
Rachel Zucker speaks with scholar, poet, playwright, professor, artist, mother Khadijah Queen about what she’s teaching, her doctoral studies, her memoir-in-progress, her newest book (I’m So Fine), her new, unpublished poems, simultaneity and happening-aliveness, emotion, emotion as knowledge, humor, healing, intuition, ancient traditions, fibromyalgia, gender violence, being single, the writing community in Denver, the patriarchy, wanting not only to begin but to continue, memes, and recognizing that not everything will turn out perfectly.
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Nov 20, 2018
Episode 61: Rosa Alcalá (Translation Series, Ep. 1)
Episode 1 of Commonplace’s special series on translation.
Rosa Alcalá is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently, MyOTHER TONGUE (Futurepoem), and translator of several full-length translations including the recently released New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña (Kelsey Street Press) for which Alcalá received a translation fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts in 2015.
Alcalá talks to Commonplace host Rachel Zucker about the experience of translating and transcribing the poetry and performances of Chilean-born artist Cecilia Vicuña. Alcalá speaks about growing up in Paterson, N.J., having been a child interpreter and mediator for her Spanish-speaking parents, language shame, studying at Brown and meeting Vicuña for the first time, studying transcription and ethnopoetics with Dennis Tedlock at SUNY Buffalo, grappling with how to record ephemerality, inaudibility, temporality, volume, tone and the feeling of listening (and misheari…
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Nov 7, 2018
Episode 60: Robin Coste Lewis
Host Rachel Zucker speaks with Robin Coste Lewis, author of the 2015 National Book Award winning Voyage of the Sable Venus and poet laureate of Los Angeles, about when to say no, how to say no, wishing people would educate themselves on centuries old African American intellectual tradition before asking her to respond to obvious questions, professionalism, calling in, her position as Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, the pressure, power and exhaustion of having to offering historical correctives, migration, celebrating black culture, archives, writing work that spans 38,000 years, photography, narrative as a story filled with holes, the arctic, brain damage, being a “baby writer” in her fifties, the value of having to confront mortality, environmentalism, research as devotion, the difference between beauty and prettiness, Cave Canem, Gwendolyn Brooks, loneliness, why she’s going to burn her diaries, Henri Matisse, and much more.
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Oct 9, 2018
Episode 59: Alison S. M. Kobayashi
Rachel Zucker speaks with Alison S. M. Kobayashi, artist and performer, about Say Something Bunny!, her most recent theater/performance piece, how to engage the audience during a performance, what led her to become an artist, obsession, found objects, persona, collaboration, her experience with UnionDocs, and what it's like to see success after devoting six years to a project.
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Sep 5, 2018
Episode 58: Cate Marvin
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet and professor Cate Marvin, author of Oracle, A Fragment of the Queen’s Head, and the World’s Tallest Disaster, co-editor of Legitimate Dangers and co-founder and former president of VIDA “a non-profit feminist organization committed to creating transparency around the lack of gender parity in the literary landscape.” Marvin talks about moving from Staten Island, NY to Scarborough, ME, teaching at different types of educational institutions, writing about childhood, therapy, Charlotte Mew, writing longer pieces, writing prose, being a single mom, her summer schedule, working at the public library, gardening, why her poems are getting messier, alcohol, her first kiss, smoking, being married, her decision to have a child on her own, narcissism, literary citizenship, her Tillie Olsen feminist awakening, starting VIDA, stepping away from VIDA, money, power, re-thinking social media, why she’s a poet, why writing poetry matters, knowing when it’s t…
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Aug 15, 2018
Episode 57: Dorothea Lasky
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet and educator Dorothea Lasky about the volume and quality of her voice, the game Kill, Marry, Fuck, rules, craft, associational thinking, obsession as a vital part of learning and creativity, preschool pedagogy, the penultimate part of poems, being only-children, witnessing one’s own life, Albert Einstein, not going to medical school, getting degrees in Education, the movie The Shining, motherhood, misogyny, Lasky’s essay “Why I am Sad,” a difficult interpersonal interaction between Rachel and Dorothea, feeling that one’s narrative is outside of motherhood, writing to the future, Lasky’s lectures and dissertation, small “c” creativity and much more.
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Jul 26, 2018
Episode 56: Jennifer Kronovet
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet and translator Jennifer Kronovet about translating the Chinese poet Liu Xia, choosing a pseudonym, the ethics of translation, negotiating appropriation, how to engage other cultures when you’re not from that culture, translating Yiddish poet Celia Dropkin, how to pull an older work into the present, being a Jew in Berlin, learning a new language to find your own lineage, an amazing coincidence about a small town in Romania, Paul Celan, Charles K. Bliss, a perfect language you can’t speak, language diversity, kung fu, writing a sci-fi novel, the body, prepositions, the Sapir Worth Hypothesis, mother-linguists, raising children in another country and language, being with someone who is learning to talk, the trucks in China, and much more.
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Jul 11, 2018
Episode 55: Anne Waldman
Rachel Zucker speaks with Anne Waldman about Allen Ginsberg, “being on the job,” mantra, embodiment, the refugee vow, gender, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, archive, undertaking a long project, her insatiable curiosity, Balinese dolls, ritual, patriarchy, the maternal imagination and so much more.
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Jun 27, 2018
Episode 54: Gerald Stern
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, essayist and educator Gerald Stern about his new poems, his old poems, Tourette Syndrome, keeping in touch with students, the Iowa Writers Workshop, teaching, place, memory, writing (not nice things about) living or identifiable people, Jewish identity and much more.
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Jun 13, 2018
Episode 53: Tommy Pico
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Tommy Pico about his first three books: IRL, Nature Poem, and Junk. Pico talks about epic cycles, the birdsong, growing up on a Kumeyaay reservation, becoming a poet, the culture shock and class shock of going to college in the Northeast, deciding not to go to medical school, training himself to become a performer, his influences and the teachers who helped him stop taking the easy way out and write longer work, learning to write no matter what, letting his voice open up, going from being unknown except in the world of local readings and zines to a headliner reading to a packed house, the craft, form and function of his books, the importance of being alone, the reason he loves long poems, experiments in screenwriting, genre, traveling for work, his podcast Food 4 Thot and so much more.
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May 23, 2018
Episode 52: Richard Siken
Host Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Richard Siken, author of Crush and War of the Foxes and publisher and poetry editor at Spork Press. They talk about his current five-book project, the restrictions he uses in each book during its composition, how these restrictions can help him avoid repetition, strategies inherent in poetry, rhetoric and discourse, Siken's rules for editing, not naming names, the idea and (f)utility of art therapy, teaching, the job market, the logistics and economics of for-profit-publishing, and family.
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May 11, 2018
Episode 51: TC Tolbert
Host Rachel Zucker talks with poet and educator TC Tolbert (author of Gephyromania and co-editor of Troubling the Line) about a car accident that changed the course of TC's writing life, the process of healing, learning to love the smallest things, having to ask someone to carry your weight, speaking to a younger self, *seeing one aspect of life as a metaphor for other patterns of living*, and coming out as trans. They talk about teaching, wanting to go back to school, and about the Bagley Wright Lecture Series conference at University of Arizona.
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Apr 26, 2018
Episode 50: Inside Commonplace
For this special “Inside Commonplace” episode, Rachel Zucker speaks with her son Judah, her mentee Yanyi, and her husband Joshua Goren. These conversations help Rachel examine the history of Commonplace and reveal more about her work, her personal life, and the pleasures and challenges of making this podcast. Rachel and her guests (or is it the other way around?) discuss teaching, gender, listening, marriage, mental health, privilege, and much more
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Apr 4, 2018
Episode 49: CAConrad
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet CAConrad about their Somatic poetry rituals, their childhood in rural Western Pennsylvania, becoming an avid reader, running away from home, the AIDS epidemic, writing The Book of Frank over an 18 year period, anti-efficiency, marketing research, the 1998 murder of CA’s boyfriend, Earth, using a somatic ritual to cure a pernicious depression, and CA’s recently published book, While Standing In Line for Death. CAConrad describes their writing process, how to get ahead of one’s internal editor, revision, combating misogyny, animal rights activism, ACT UP, ecological disaster, ecopoetics, the vibrational absence of extinct species being replaced by the din of humanity, white rhinos, Walmart, the end of empire, teaching, the myth of writer’s block, how to write inside the hardest things, roadkill memorials, being alone, and accepting the elements.
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Mar 21, 2018
Episode 48: Poets at MacDowell: Destiny Birdsong, Juleen Johnson, Jenny George, Eloisa Amezcua, & Amanda Galvan Huynh
They talk about their particular interests—writing about women of color, writing about place, writing from unknowing or from knowing to unknowing, writing about the relationship between humans and animals, working with found texts, writing about assimilation and loss of culture, bi-linguality—and about their shared experiences at MacDowell. They offer advice for folks who might be headed to a residency, talk about various writing processes, and about what was wonderful and what was challenging about being at the residency including their feelings about being selected and about the selection process and not having to do the kind of labor one does in normal life.
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Mar 7, 2018
Episode 47: Erin Riley
Host Rachel Zucker talks with textile artist Erin Riley about how she started weaving, the importance of making work no one saw, promiscuity, risky behavior, addiction, how her work became more detailed and came to have more depth, learning things without learning them, pornography, selfies, the loss of meaning when images are repeated, slowing down, being deliberate, girlhood obsession with one’s body, yeast infections, UTIs, menstruation, using images of her own body in her tapestries, tattoos, long distance image-based relationships, the mental and physical stamina required to make tapestry, the pleasure of making tapestry, ego, velcro, labor, deliberately choosing not to do something in a traditional mode and the pushback from people who like to tell other people how to do things “right,” not behaving, non-erotic nudity, trichotillomania, representing things in tapestry, the mediation of reality that tapestry affords, the strength of vulnerability, dick pics, privacy, dildos,…
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Feb 14, 2018
Episode 46: Allison Parrish
Host Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, programmer and professor, Allison Parrish. They talk about Articulations, Parrish’s first book of poetry, why she wanted to publish a book, “the threat of permanence,” Allison’s background in linguistics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and how she made the poems in Articulations. They discuss phonemes, word vectors, semantic and phonetic similarity and proximity, and the post-processing procedures she used, as well as the ways in which computer-generated language is the same or different from “intention-typical poetry.” They also discuss J.R.R Tolkien and Gertrude Stein, not being very interested in narrative, and what Parrish hopes practitioners of computer-generated poetry will do next and what she hopes they will not do.
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Jan 31, 2018
Episode 45: Tyehimba Jess
Rachel Zucker talks with poet Tyehimba Jess about his Pulitzer-prize-winning book, Olio. They talk about Scott Joplin, Henry Box Brown, Blind Boone, Blind Tom, Millie and Christine McCoy Twins, Edmonia Lewis, the Fisk Jubilee singers and the other historical figures in Jess’ book. They talk about minstrelsy, captivity, agency, wonder and play, and about the forms of the poems within the book including syncopated or contrapuntal sonnets, ghazal, golden shovel and other, and the unusual physical properties of the book. Jess talks about what it was like to write Olio, about having 11 years between his first two books, getting a handshake from Yusef Komunyakaa, living in Brooklyn and working on Staten Island, the tenure clock, trying live up to the challenges and expectations of an earlier project, growing up Catholic, his experience at Cave Canem, meeting Gwendolyn Brooks and being encouraged by her, and so much more.
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Jan 10, 2018
Episode 44: Matthew Zapruder
Rachel Zucker speaks to poet, prose writer, professor, editor, publisher, Matthew Zapruder, an hour after his interview on Leonard Lopate Show, about Ai Weiwei, Tracey Ullman, and being a Commonplace listener. Zucker and Zapruder discuss their relationship as writer-editor, how Matthew appears in Rachel’s poems, power, sharing work with friends and trusted readers, the history of Wave Books, the Poetry Bus, why Matthew wrote Why Poetry?, Matthew’s relationship with his father and his father’s death, how to include not-knowingness, the kind of thinking you can only do in poems, having to say no to things, trying to do less and becoming less of a public person. Matthew reads from Why Poetry? and a new poem from an unpublished manuscript.
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Dec 21, 2017
Episode 43: Airea D. Matthews
Rachel Zucker talks with Airea D. Matthews about her new book, Simulacra, and about (not)understanding, poems as places to show what you (don’t)know, reading, poetry as a place to ask questions and have a conversation, ordering a manuscript, getting help with a manuscript-in-progress, burning a manuscript, kicking the voices out of one’s head to find one’s voice, self as relatable through the other, representation, the connective tissue of humanity, helping a reader become accustomed to uncertainty, kitchen-sink stew, a nervous breakdown, the psychiatric ER, writing in series, strangeness, the canon, different kinds of lineage (Anne Sexton, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and others), the role of biography, not writing about race, how to signal race to the reader, not writing about motherhood, the unknowability or secrecy of motherhood, growing up with liars, the difference between lies and secrets, hunger, weakness, not idealizing mental illness, mothering yourself, worrying about…
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Dec 6, 2017
Episode 42: Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Rachel Zucker talks with poet, editor, professor Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of three full length collections, most recently Rocket Fantastic, about her new book. They also talk about wanting things, reading in New York, God, prayer, nystagmus (a neurological eye condition), practicing Judaism (but not converting to Judaism) in Los Angeles and in the South, gender identity, gender expression, sexual fantasies, gayness and queerness, butch lesbianism, bros, the symbol she uses in Rocket Fantastic instead of a gendered pronoun and how she reads that symbol, having and recovering from a nervous breakdown and panic attacks, mental health, not seeking out trouble, getting to know the animal you are, envy, jealousy, the granting and prize system in poetry, ambition, unionizing poets, and being honest.
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Nov 15, 2017
Episode 41: Danez Smith
Rachel Zucker talks with Danez Smith, author of [insert] boy and Don’t Call Us Dead (recently shortlisted for the National Book Award) about confessional-testimonial poems, sonnets, essential poems, poets and books, Cave Canem, the MFA industrial complex, not feeling desired, depression, community, living and learning, Minneapolis, living as a full-time artist, their writing space, hanging out with grandma, HIV+ diagnosis, Danez’s new poems, writing a time travel novel, play, getting over imposter syndrome, and the challenges and pleasures of working on a third book after two early successes. Towards the end of the episode Danez reads two new poems.
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Nov 2, 2017
Episode 40: Kaveh Akbar
Rachel Zucker speaks with Kaveh Akbar about his first full-length poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf. They talk about recovery, addiction, Ellen Bryant Voigt’s unpunctuated line, teaching, his writing process for poetry or prose, the hutzpah and/or cluelessness that enabled him to reach out to established poets, the founding and process of running Divedapper.com (Kaveh’s interview site), the art of interviewing, using poetry to press the pleasure button, social media, white poets writing about whiteness, writing to delight, writing with compassion, his poem “Heritage” (about Reyhaneh Jabbari), the potential violence of erasure poems, and the intersection of power and poetry.
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Oct 18, 2017
Episode 39: Erika L. Sánchez
Rachel Zucker speaks with Erika Sánchez about her first book of poems, her first YA novel (currently shortlisted for the National Book Award), her experience as a sex advice columnist, how her manuscript became a book, writing unlikeable characters, shame, obsessions, sex, making things up in poems and prose, authenticity, feminism, Buddhism, and DACA.
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Oct 4, 2017
Episode 38: Sharon Olds
Rachel Zucker talks to acclaimed, award winning poet Sharon Olds about dope, talking nicely to yourself when you’re alone, noticing one’s tiniest thoughts, the advantages of being an “ordinary enough” person, Brenda Hillman and Community of Writers (formerly known as Squaw Valley), teaching, the rhythm of writing, Odes, sharing poems, being truthful, Galway Kinnell, how to deal with bad reviews, how to deal with praise, envy, talent, self-esteem, jealousy, heteromania, eros, intimacy, anger, dancing, parent-child separation and so much more.
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Sep 19, 2017
Episode 37: Sheila Heti and Sarah Manguso
Rachel Zucker talks with Sheila Heti and Sarah Manguso about literary friendship, Sarah’s two recent books, Sheila’s manuscript in progress, maternal ambivalence, uncertainty, sacrifice of self, envy, curiosity, being a daughter, attachment and unattachment, shame, the sickening state of wondering whether or not to have children, abandonment, money, the things we cannot choose, choosing intolerable feelings, whiteness, class, the poetics of motherhood, purity, polluted writing, and motherhood as a sexuality category.
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Sep 5, 2017
Episode 36: Dialogue Arts Project
Rachel Zucker speaks with Adam Falkner, Lauren Whitehead and Carlos Andrés Gómez about their involvement with the Dialogue Arts Project, a non-profit, arts-based organization in which artist-facilitators help schools, businesses and organizations communicate more effectively across lines of social identity and difference. These three amazing artists talk about how working with DAP has affected their creative work, their teaching, their lives and their priorities. They talk about how a workshop model can be used in schools, offices, and organizations to reimagine and revitalize diversity education, the power of performance and first-person narratives, guidelines for encouraging openness and risk taking, how to invite vulnerability into the classroom in responsible ways, culture-based intentionality, the permission to start with the self, how and why to step out onto the vulnerable edge in order to dismantle the master’s house, coming out, seasonal personal and political grief, and v…
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Aug 15, 2017
Episode 35: Aracelis Girmay
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Aracelis Girmay about creating new forms and structures, employing fragments, the time it takes to get to urgent questions, research, patience, appreciating snails with Kamau Brathwaite, menarche, estrangement, pregnancy, naming, our fathers and families, worrying about doing harm in poems, effort, June Jordan, Ross Gay, writing about family, history, avoiding and countering the language of violence and brutality, writing long poems and find ways to express anger and rage without adopting the language of tyranny and oppression.
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Aug 1, 2017
Episode 34: Dr. Joshua Bennett
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, performer, educator and scholar Dr. Joshua Bennett about writing a poem for a friend’s wedding, the relationship between performance and page, growing up in South Yonkers and attending a largely white private school, the birth of Black Studies, creating alternative gathering and learning spaces, infiltrating established institutions, the June Jordan fellowship at Columbia’s Center for Justice, the writers and thinkers who inspire Bennett, and how to write about family and living people with respect and honesty.
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Jul 18, 2017
Episode 33: Sabrina Orah Mark
Rachel Zucker speaks with writer Sabrina Orah Mark (author of The Babies and Tsim Tsum) right before the first night of Passover. They talk about Judaism, surrealism, Claudia Rankine and Kenneth Koch, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, being good at being pummeled, the prose poem, the kabbalistic concept of tsim tsum, the Holocaust, Jewish identification, what makes a Nazi a Nazi, empathy, Trump, slavery, living in Georgia, the commodification of trauma, teaching outside the academy, “the crying room,” writing fiction, using “I” again, raising an interracial Jewish family in the South, privilege, safety, fear, and believing and not believing in healing.
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Jul 3, 2017
Episode 32: Laynie Browne
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, professor Laynie Browne about schools of poetry, poetic influences, personal losses, feminism, contemplative poetics, devotional practices, spirituality, writing for a small audience, homage, writing for survival, poetry as a form of protection and as a coping mechanism, the many, many books and projects Laynie is currently working on, suffering, illness, and the importance of listening.
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Jun 15, 2017
Episode 31: Carmen Giménez Smith
Rachel Zucker talks with poet, editor/publisher and professor, Carmen Gimenez Smith, about the intersection of the lyric and the spoken word, the long poem, punctuation, working on several books at once, Cantomundo, Carmen’s writing process, writing long poems, being an editor, working with editors as a creator, the imagined or intended audience, the importance of getting feedback, political charge, the politicization of the bodies of women and people of color, Carmen’s mother and father, poetry as a form of recuperation, destabilizing the lyric “I”, writing about adolescents, Trump, “self-help” books, privilege, and the gift of entitlement.
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Jun 1, 2017
Episode 30: Sarah Vap
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Sarah Vap about Sarah’s unpublished and evolving manuscript, sentimentality, extreme susceptibility, interruptibility, raising sons, toxic masculinity, the invisible violence of the state, and the extended emergency of mothering young children. Their conversation is informed by Sarah's presentation for Protean Acts: The Art of Reinvention, a panel for the 2017 Association of Writing Programs conference in Washington D.C., of which an excerpt is also included in the episode.
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May 23, 2017
Episode 29: Molly Peacock
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, memoirist, essayist, and teacher Molly Peacock about authenticity, performance, fear, a woman’s presentation of an authentic self, confessional poetry, constructing art from the material of life, female crafts, photography, the relationship of constructedness to privilege, teaching, formalism, her friendship with poet Phillis Levin, watching the light change in a room, Mary Delany, Molly’s decision not to have children, giving up perfectionism, psychotherapy, the idea of the sympathetic witness, how to construct a life in which you are there for yourself, how to teach with generosity and enthusiasm while still maintaining energy for one’s own creative life, and how to foster boldness.
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May 14, 2017
Episode 28: Poems for Mother's Day
Episode 28 is a special Mother’s Day episode featuring a collection of poems chosen and read by poets who are mothers.
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Apr 25, 2017
Episode 27: Rita Dove
Rachel Zucker talks with Rita Dove, former Poet Laureate, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of more than 15 books and University of Virginia professor about political poetry, creative writing programs, the usefulness of prosody, form as ‘a talisman against disintegration,’ the public intimacy of social media, her poem ‘Parsley,’ audience, code switching, why some poems are hard to read, blackness and other people’s expectations of her as a black woman, getting over the Iowa voice, narrative poetry, her book Thomas and Beulah, the myth of Persephone, Trump, motherhood, marriage, slavery, freedom, why she moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, being a musician and a ballroom dancer, the solace of rhyme, and embracing change.
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Apr 18, 2017
Episode 26: Alice Notley
Host Rachel Zucker speaks with one of her most important influences and inspirations, author of more than 30 books, poet Alice Notley. They talk about a recent reading that Notley gave with Eileen Myles and Sonia Sanchez that Zucker attended, Notley’s reading and poetic styles, and how Zucker came to Notley’s work. They also discuss writing an epic, suffering, writing about family, writing through pain, communication with the dead, how Notley represents her deceased brother, poetry as the public communication of the dead, money, poverty, survivor's benefits, working for Allen Ginsberg, the dearth of women (particularly women with children) in poetry, the shock and shame of postpartum depression, self-hypnosis, the unconscious, the tyrant, Trump, fascism, the desert, and growing up in a small town. EXTRA MATERIALS FOR EPISODE 26 Books by Alice Notley Certain Magical Acts (Penguin, 2016) Benediction (Letter Machine Editions, 2015) Culture of One (Penguin, 2011) Songs and Stories…
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Apr 11, 2017
Episode 25: Ross Gay
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, teacher, gardner and community organizer Ross Gay. Gay is the author of Bringing Down the Shovel, Against Which, River, and Catlog of Unabashed Gratitude which won the Kinglsey Tufts Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Zucker and Gay talk about gardens, seasonal changes, teenage boys, anger, sorrow, stress reduction, and how poems can help you look at difficult emotions. Gay reads from his book Catlog and one of his new, unpublished “delights”. Gay and Zucker talk about what they love about long poems and the experience of writing and reading them and other prosy-poemy forms of sustained meditations. They discuss a mutual love for prose by poets and how to teach less from the mode of critique and more from gratitude and love.
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Apr 4, 2017
Episode 24: Julie Carr
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, professor, translator, dancer, choreographer Julie Carr about her book Think Tank and her many other recent projects. They discuss narrative, abstraction, prose envy, pleasure, desire, movement, reading with a group, compositional process and writing habits, homophonic translation, writing-through-reading, pheromonal meter, improvisation, form, mode, and “the poetics of containment.” Carr describes how she and her husband Tim Roberts founded Counterpath Press and the evolution of the focus and identity of the press. Zucker and Carr talk about Carr's role as editor of Rachel’s book, MOTHERs. They also discuss teaching, the financial crisis, money, the daily, moving into more engagement with others, social and political activism and poetry as site of individual change, desire and arousal.
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Mar 15, 2017
Episode 23: Morgan Parker
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Morgan Parker (author of Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night and There are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé) in front of a LIVE audience at the KGB Red Room on February 27, 2017. Morgan reads new work, discusses what she’s working on, who she’s writing for, and her 13 husbands. They talk about confessional poetry, performance, blackness, whiteness, therapy, Beyoncé, authenticity, revision, therapy as reparations, and Nelly.
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Mar 2, 2017
Episode 22: Undocupoets 2 — Javier Zamora, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, and Janine Joseph
Rachel Zucker speaks with poets Javier Zamora, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, and Janine Joseph who are working to remove publication obstacles for undocumented or previously undocumented poets and writers. They speak about the work of Undocupoets, the current, constantly shifting state of U.S. immigration, the petition they started, fundraising and other actions of literary activism. They also talk about mixed-status families, “exceptionalism,” and the fear and invisibility experienced by people with insecure immigration status. They talk about writing, the hierarchy of imagery and language, memory loss, the use of “I” in their poems, ways of distancing one’s self from one’s story, whether or not they are writing since the presidential election, and the incredible usefulness of email for organizing.
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Feb 26, 2017
Episode 21: Undocupoets Part 1 — Christopher Soto aka Loma
Rachel Zucker talks with author of the chapbook Sad Girl Poems and co-founder of Undocupoets Christopher Soto, aka Loma, about their experience at NYU, the exploitation of pain and sadness of poets of color, the pressure on poets of color and queer poets to write a certain kind of poem or a embrace a certain kind of content, the redistribution of money, and the presence of the physical body in activism. They talk about literary activism, including Loma's Tour to End Queer Youth Homelessness, Latinas Against Everyone, Undocupoets, and the role of literature in building the human.
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Feb 11, 2017
Episode 20: Kristin Prevallet
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, hypnotherapist, teacher, workshop leader and activist Kristin Prevallet about teaching grammar in prisons, trancepoetics, hypnotherapy, radical femininity, retrograde meaning, and what it means to be a tender of the garden of language. They discuss Kristin’s new novel and new book on healing, teaching writing to non-writers, and the power of female sexuality.
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Feb 1, 2017
Episode 19: Andi Zeisler
Rachel Zucker speaks with writer and illustrator Andi Zeisler, co-founder of Bitch Media. They discuss the recent election, feminism, and Andi’s most recent book We Were Feminists Once, which offers a critical analysis of the ways that feminism has been co-opted by the marketplace. They also discuss the impulse behind the foundation of Bitch Media, new projects, and how to move forward in an era of uncertainty. Help support our growing podcast by becoming a patron of Commonplace: patreon.com/commonplacepodcast Follow the show on Twitter @commonplacepod and Facebook at facebook.com/commonplacepodcast
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Jan 20, 2017
Episode 18: Terrance Hayes
Host Rachel Zucker talks with award-winning poet Terrance Hayes about Terrance’s new work, living in New York City, the election, teaching workshop, painting, sharing work with peers, not wanting help, provocation, offensive language, the role of audience, and staying true to oneself. Terrance reads a selection of new poems all titled “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin” to start the conversation.
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Jan 16, 2017
Episode 17: Natalie Diaz and Roger Reeves
Rachel Zucker talks with poets Natalie Diaz and Roger Reeves right before all three of them are about to read at a poetry event called “Love, especially love,” organized by Natalie Diaz and held at NYC’s Housingworks Cafe. The three talk about racism, family, the family that poetry makes, long poems v. shorter, self-contained poems, getting in the way, taking up space, risk, pleasure, joy, public/private, spectacle, spectator and poetry of witness. They also talk about the artists and writers who inspire them, including the painter Kerry James Marshall, and about Standing Rock, native poets, how to fight and the essential importance of love.
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Jan 2, 2017
Episode 16: Jericho Brown
Host Rachel Zucker speaks with award-winning poet Jericho Brown about the differences between poetry and journalism, the role of truth and facts in poetry, the complexities of separating a poet’s autobiography from the work especially in the age of Facebook, writing about family and about queerness, coming out, “bad people,” the complications of assembling a collection a poems, poetry projects v. poems, and treasuring the “small, complete thing.”
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Dec 22, 2016
Episode 15: Bernadette Mayer
Host Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Bernadette Mayer.
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Dec 15, 2016
Episode 14: Alicia Ostriker
In this episode, host Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, critic, biblical scholar Alicia Ostriker about the election, feminism, the difference between the contemporary moment and the idealism of the sixties, how the ego is subsumed in the process of writing poetry, William Blake, and the differences between writing poetry and prose. They also talk about motherhood, daughterhood, Ostriker's friendship with Toi Derricotte, teaching, and the interpretive process of biblical reimagining called "midrash."
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Dec 1, 2016
Episode 13: D.A. Powell
Host Rachel Zucker talks with her friend D.A. Powell, author of five award winning books of poetry and professor at University of San Francisco. They talk about the presidential election, outrage, disturbance, poetry as social activism and action, normalization, resistence, erasures, palimpsests, minimalism, droplifting, notebooks, revision strategies, chaos and order(ing), and going forward. They also talk about their time together at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, teaching, their mutual affection and respect for one another and the importance of friendship.
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Nov 15, 2016
Episode 12: Steph Burt
Rachel Zucker talks with poet-critic-professor Steph Burt about types of criticism, ethical problems of criticism, gender expression, female embodiment, an aesthetic of adornment and neon violet and an aesthetic of naturalness and apparent authenticity, Yeats, form, formalism and informality, The Vision, Kitty Pride and the desire to dematerialize, authority and male privilege, Steph’s recent book of criticism “The Poem Is You” and their unpublished manuscript “Advice from the Lights,” different kinds of questions one might ask of short, lyric art works v. the kinds of questions one might ask of longer more comprehensive works, persona poems, cultural appropriation, whiteness, influence and “a poetics of incremental change.”
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Nov 1, 2016
Episode 11: Shane McCrae
Rachel Zucker speaks with Shane McCrae, professor and author of five books, about his poetic process, what he’s working on, and the current political climate. The two discuss the limitations of the term “confessional poetry,” the difficulties of writing about tragedies in the immediate wake of their occurrences, the impulse to witness humiliation in popular culture, the American anxiety of the long poem post-Eliot, and how one might curate an “overwhelming sadness” through art. Shane McCrae reads “In the Language” from his new book In the Language of My Captor, and “Forgiveness in America” from Forgiveness Forgiveness. An audio excerpt from Shane’s newest book-length poem and two hand-picked playlists are available to Patreon subscribers of Commonplace.
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Oct 17, 2016
Episode 10: Olena Kalytiak Davis
Rachel Zucker speaks with Olena Kalytiak Davis, author of three books and a chapbook, about her daily writing practice (or lack thereof), writing autobiographically, and what it means to not fake it in her work. The two discuss a new poem of Rachel’s, “Enough Is Enough,” in which Olena is prominently featured as a subject without her prior knowledge. The poem sparks an animated conversation that explores questions of shared memory, the ethics of writing about people you know, and what it’s like to be concretized in poem. Olena reads two short poems during the podcast: “I Was Minor,” and “My Own Self Still Unconcerned.” Rachel’s poem “Enough is Enough” and Olena’s poem “Late Summer Ode” are available to Patreon subscribers of Commonplace.
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Sep 29, 2016
Episode 9: Wayne Koestenbaum
Rachel Zucker speaks with Wayne Koestenbaum, an artist of multiple mediums and a cultural critic, about nudism, the shame of writing, sensual upsurge, ecofeminism, the different challenges posed by writing and painting, and what he calls “the cage of language.” They explore questions of self-validation, changing one’s relationship to language, and what it means to be a cautious person who “bares all” in their work. In the latter part of the conversation, Zucker and Koestenbaum discuss the implications of book purging, and the difficulties of managing and letting go of the things one inherits.
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