The Beat
Knox County Public Library
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In each episode of The Beat, host Alan May introduces a poet and we hear a few poems, usually read and recorded by the poets themselves.
The Beat is produced by Knox County Public Library in Knoxville, Tenn.
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Available episodes
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Anna Laura Reeve and William Shakespeare
Anna Laure Reeve was born and raised in Knoxville, and she earned a Master of Arts in Literature & Poetry Writing from the University of Tennessee. Her poems have appeared in Terrain.org, Jet Fuel Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and many others. She recently won Beloit Poetry Journal’s Adrienne Rich Award, and she was a finalist for the Heartwood Poetry Prize and the Ron Rash Award in Poetry. Her book Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility was recently published by Belle Point Press. She is an assistant editor of Juke Joint, a literary magazine based in Jackson, Mississippi.
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, most likely in April of 1564. When he was 18, he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children. Shakespeare made his living as an actor and playwright, and his works include 38 plays in addition to 154 sonnets and various other types of poetry. Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616.
Links:
Read an early version of "Tennessee Red Cobb" at Appalachia Bare
Read "Méniére's Disease" at The Racket
Read "Look at Everything" and "Children of Asylum Seekers" at The Racket
Read "That time of year thou mayst in me behold (Sonnet 73)" at Poets.org
Read "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes (Sonnet 29)" at Poets.org
Anna Laura Reeve
Anna Laura Reeve's website
"Poets in Conversation: Anna Laura Reeve" at Beloit Poetry Journal
Two Poems from Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility by Anna Laura Reeve at ACM
"Motherhood Unshorn: A Review of Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility" at Literary Mama
William Shakespeare
Bio and poems at Poets.org
"Shakespeare's Life" at Folger Shakespeare Library's site
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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Aug 29, 2023
Pauletta Hansel and Edna St. Vincent Millay
Pauletta Hansel is the author of nine collections of poetry, including her latest book Heartbreak Tree. Her work has been featured in Oxford American, Rattle, American Life in Poetry, and Poetry Daily, among others. Hansel was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate, and she was the 2022 Writer-in-Residence for The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine in 1892. Along with her many books of poetry, Millay published plays, a libretto called The King’s Henchman, and she wrote short stories for popular fiction magazines under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.
Links:
Read "I Take My Mother with Me Everywhere" and "After"
Read "Postcard from Age 60" at Braided Way
Read "Recuerdo" at The Poetry Foundation
Pauletta Hansel
Pauletta Hansel's website
"The Road" at Poetry Daily
"The City" at Appalachian Review
"May 1, 2020" in The Oxford American
"Palindrome" at Still: The Journal
Video: "Meet our 2022 Writer-In-Residence" Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Bio and poems at The Poetry Foundation
Bio and poems at Poets.org
The Millay Society's Audio Archives
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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Jul 31, 2023
Gary Metras and Simon Perchik
Gary Metras is a retired high school English teacher and college writing instructor. His poems have appeared in America, The Common, Poetry, and many others. Metras has published eight books, including his latest called Vanishing Points. His book Marble Dust is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. Metras was the founder, editor, and letterpress printer of Adastra Press, a venture that for forty years specialized in limited editions of poetry chapbooks. In 2018, Metras was appointed the inaugural Poet Laureate of Easthampton, Massachusetts.
Simon Perchik's poems have appeared in The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and many others. He was born in 1923 in Paterson, New Jersey. During World War II, he joined the Army Air Corps, flew 35 missions overseas, and reached the rank of first lieutenant. Thanks to the GI Bill, Perchik attended New York University where he earned a bachelor’s degree and a law degree. He practiced law for 25 years before becoming an assistant DA for Suffolk County and its first environmental prosecutor. He was a prolific writer, and he published more than thirty books of poetry. A November 2000 issue of Library Journal called Simon Perchik “the most widely published unknown poet in America.” Perchik died on June 14, 2022, in New York City.
Links:
Read "The Engagement" and "Lint" at The Poetry Foundation
Read "Another Winter"
Read "3" and "482"
Gary Metras
"April 6, 2022" at One Art
"Two Poems by Gary Metras" at Flyfishing and Tying Journal
"Art Maker: Gary Metras, Poet" at Daily Hampshire Gazette
"In Studio: Gary Metras" by Easthampton Media (via YouTube)
Simon Perchik
"Simon Perchik, Poet" in The Easthampton Star
"Five Poems" at the Poetry Foundation
Poems at Poetry Northwest
Poems at Plume
"Two Untitled Poems" at The Inflectionist Review
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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Jun 30, 2023
Sara Moore Wagner and H.D.
Sara Moore Wagner is the winner of the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors Prize for her book Swan Wife and the 2020 Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize for Hillbilly Madonna. She has published two chapbooks, Tumbling After (Red Bird Chapbooks) and Hooked Through (Five Oaks Press). She won the 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award, and she was a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, Beloit Poetry Journal, Waxwing, The Cincinnati Review, Nimrod, Rhino, and others. Wagner's book Lady Wingshot, based on the life of Annie Oakley, won the Blue Lynx Prize and is forthcoming in 2024.
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) was born in 1886 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and she grew up in Upper Darby near Philadelphia. She attended Bryn Mawr and the University of Pennsylvania. H.D. published numerous books, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, essays, and translations. The publication of her collected and selected poetry helped to establish her as a major poet of the 20th century. H.D.’s work is revered by countless writers and critics, and she’s often thought of as a poet's poet and one of the key figures of the Imagist movement. She died in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1961.
Links:
Read "Purity Test"
Read "Captivity Narrative"
Read "Legend Says"
Read "Leda"
Sara Moore Wagner
Sara Moore Wagner's website
"Anti-Pastoral" at Sixth Finch
"Passing It On" at Waxwing
"Girl as a Deer Shedding the Velvet" at The Inflectionist Review
"Embracing the Half-Wild Creature: A Conversation with Sara Moore Wagner" at The Rumpus
"Sara Moore Wagner on 'Getting My Body Back'" at Poetry Society of America
H.D.
Bio and poems at The Poetry Foundation
Bio and poems at Poets.org
"H.D.: American Poet" in Britannica
"Radical Freedom: Poets on the Life and Work of H.D." Live from the IceHouse Tonight (YouTube)
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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May 30, 2023
Derek N. Otsuji and George Herbert
Derek N. Otsuji is the author of the book The Kitchen of Small Hours, which won the Crab Orchard Review Poetry Series Open Competition. He was also awarded the 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His poems have appeared in The Southern Poetry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Threepenny Review, The Bennington Review, Harpur Palate, Missouri Review Online, and many others. He is an associate professor of English at Honolulu Community College.
George Herbert was born in 1593 in Montgomery Castle, Wales. He attended Westminster School and then Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained as a priest and became the rector at Bemerton. He died in 1633 of consumption at the age of forty.
Links:
Read "Among the More Innocent Touristic Amusements of the Old Waikiki"
Read "Two Boys One Fish Two Eyes" in Rhino
Read "Virtue" by George Herbert" at The Poetry Foundation
Derek N. Otsuji
Derek N. Otsuji's website
"How She Loves Music" in Pleiades.
Two Poems at Terrain.org
Video: "Interview with Derek Otsuji, Author of The Kitchen of Small Hours"
"Theatre of Shadows" at The Poetry Foundation
George Herbert
Bio and poems at the The Poetry Foundation
Bio and poems at Poets.org
"George Herbert: British Poet" in Britannica
Video: George Herbert - a Welsh-born poet, orator, and priest
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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Apr 27, 2023
Maurice Manning Joins Us Live for All Over the Page!
Recorded live, April 10, 2023. In celebration of National Poetry Month, Maurice Manning joined us for Lawson McGhee Library's monthly book discussion group, All Over the Page. Hear Manning read his poems and talk about his book Bucolics. Manning also discusses more recent work including his new podcast, The Grinnin' Possum.
Maurice Manning has published seven books of poetry. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, won the Yale Younger Poets Award, and his fourth, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches Transylvania University.
Links:
The Grinnin' Possum Podcast: Poetry Music History with Maurice Manning
Eight Bucolics in VQR
Bucolics XXII, XXXV, and LVIII at Art and Theology
Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation
Article in Garden & Gun
Interview at Plume
Manning reading at the Sewanee Writer's Conference (Video)
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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Mar 29, 2023
Lyn Hejinian: Four Poems from The Book of a Thousand Eyes
In this episode, Lyn Hejinian reads four untitled poems from The Book of A Thousand Eyes.
Lyn Hejinian is a poet, translator, editor, and scholar whose literary career has been long associated with Language writing. Hejinian is the author of over twenty-five volumes of poetry and critical prose, the most recent of which are Tribunal (Omnidawn Books, 2019), Positions of the Sun (Belladonna, 2019), and a revised edition of Oxota: A Short Russian Novel (Wesleyan University Press, 2019.) Fall Creek, her latest long poem, is forthcoming from Litmus Press. A book of critical essays titled Allegorical Moments: Call to the Everyday will come out in Fall 2023 (Wesleyan University Press), and The Proposition, a critical edition of Hejinian’s uncollected early work, is forthcoming from the University of Edinburgh Press (spring 2024). She is the editor of Tuumba Press, the co-director (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets, and co-editor (with Jane Gregory and Claire Marie Stancek) of Nion Editions, a chapbook press. She lives in Berkeley, California.
(Photo by Doug Hall)
Links:
Read four poems from The Book of a Thousand Eyes
Brief Interview and more at Omnidawn Press
Bio and poems at Poets.org
Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation
Readings, Talks, Q&As, and Lectures at PennSound
Hejinian's books reviewed by Publishers Weekly
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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Feb 28, 2023
Jim Minick and Robert Frost
Jim Minick is the author of two books of poetry, Her Secret Song and Burning Heaven. In addition, he’s published: Finding a Clear Path, a collection of essays; The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family, which won the Southern Independent Booksellers Association’s award for nonfiction; and Fire Is Your Water, a novel that won the Appalachian Book of the Year Award. Minick’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Tampa Review, Shenandoah, Orion, Oxford American, and The Sun. His latest nonfiction book, Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas, is forthcoming next month, and his latest poetry manuscript, The Intimacy of Spoons, is forthcoming in 2024. He serves as Coeditor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.
Robert Frost was born 1874 in San Francisco. Though Frost attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, he never earned a formal degree. As a young writer, Frost didn’t have much luck publishing in American literary magazines. He spent much of his twenties and thirties farming and teaching. His first book wasn’t published until he was nearly 40 years old—and after he'd sold his New Hampshire farm and moved to England where publishers were more receptive to his work. Frost soon moved back to the U.S. where he lived in Massachusetts and Vermont, and he went on to win four Pulitzer Prizes and the Congressional Medal of Honor. He died in Boston in 1963.
Links:
Read "The Oven-Bird"
Read "Diminished" at Still: The Journal
Read "The Collar” and "Still Dark"
Jim Minick
Jim Minick’s website
"Why Birds" at Salvation South
"Whale Light" at The Ekphrastic Review
"Good Dirt" and "Stress Test" at Cutleaf
Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas at Bison Books
Robert Frost
Bio and poems at Poets.org
Bio and Poems at The Poetry Foundation's website
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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Jan 30, 2023
Monica Mody and Michael Madhusudan Dutt
Monica Mody was born in Ranchi, India. She holds a PhD in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including Ordinary Annals, and two full-length books, Kala Pani, a cross-genre work, and Bright Parallel, which is forthcoming from Copper Coin. Her writing has won awards including the Sparks Prize Fellowship, the Zora Neale Hurston Award, and a Toto Award for Creative Writing. Her work has been published in Poetry International, Indian Quarterly, Almost Island, Dusie, The Fabulist, and anthologies including Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing and The Penguin Book of Indian Poets.
Poet and dramatist Michael Madhusudan Dutt was born in Bengal, India. He studied several languages and was well-versed in English and European literature. In 1861, Dutt published the epic poem Meghnadbadh Kabya, which is, perhaps, his most famous work. Between 1858 and 1874, Dutt penned at least nine plays, including three translations. He is known for his experimentation with verse forms, introducing blank verse in Bengali literature and the sonnet in Bengali—through a reconstruction of both Petrarchan and Shakespearean forms.
Links:
Read "Glass House--Anthropocene" and "That I exist only as a speck on your bloodshot eyes but I am willing to sweat"
Read "Sonnets" by Michael Madhusudan Dutt
Monica Mody's website
"What Was Alive" at Yes Poetry
Interview with Mody at Poetry Mini Interviews
Mody reads from Ordinary Annals at Periodicities' Virtual Reading Series (Video)
"Homing Instinct" at The Other Side of Hope
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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Dec 31, 2022
Erin Elizabeth Smith
Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Executive Director for Sundress Publications and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. Her third full-length poetry collection, Down, was released in 2020 by Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Guernica, Ecotone, Mid-American, Tupelo Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, and Willow Springs, among others. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and is now a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Tennessee. She is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Links:
Read "Alice Gives Advice to Dorothy"
Read "February in Knoxville" and other poems by Smith at Menacing Hedge
Erin Elizabeth Smith's page at Sundress Publications
Two poems by Erin Elizabeth Smith at The Los Angeles Review
Three poems by Erin Elizabeth Smith at The Superstition Review
"Plating the Poem, Reclaiming the Story: A Conversation with Erin Elizabeth Smith"
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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Nov 30, 2022
Bernard Clay and Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr.
Bernard Clay was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and he spent most of his childhood and high school years there. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Kentucky, and he is a member of the Affrilachian Poets collective. His work has been published in Appalachian Heritage, The Limestone Review, Blackbone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets, and various other journals and anthologies. His book English Lit was published by Old Cove/Swallow Press in 2021. He lives on a farm in eastern Kentucky with his wife Lauren Kallmeyer, an herbalist who serves as the director of Kentucky Heartwood's Forest Council.
Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr. was born on February 2, 1861, in Bardstown, Kentucky, and he died in Lousiville, Kentucky in 1949. When he was just eight years old, he had to leave school to help support his family. At the age of 22, Cotter returned to his formal education and eventually served for more than fifty years as a teacher and administrator in several Louisville schools. In 1891, he married Maria F. Cox; they had three children, including his eldest son, Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr., who was also a talented poet and playwright. According to Oxford Reference, Joseph Cotter Sr. provided an important “voice during one of the most difficult eras of African American history, and he was a man who backed his words with action in building the African American community.”
Links:
Read "Mr. Nap's Fight" and "Appalachian Smitten"
Read "Dr. Booker T. Washington to the National Negro Business League"
Bernard Clay
Bernard Clay's website
English Lit reviewed in Southern Review of Books
Bernard Clay reading at the historic Western Library of the Louisville Free Public Library
Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr.
Bio and poems at Poets.org
Bio and Bibliography at the Carnegie Center--Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame
Mentioned in this episode:
KnoxCountyLibrary.org
Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.
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Oct 26, 2022
GennaRose Nethercott
Just in time for Halloween! GennaRose Nethercott reads two spooky entries from the imagined bestiary 50 Beasts to Break Your Heart.
GennaRose Nethercott is a writer and folklorist. Her work has appeared in The American Scholar, Bomb Magazine, Pank, The Literary Review, and others. Her first book, The Lumberjack’s Dove, was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series, and her debut novel—the modern fairytale Thistlefoot—was published last month. She tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow) and composing poems-to-order on an antique typewriter with her team The Traveling Poetry Emporium.
Links:
Read "Yune" and "Yslani," along with other entries from 50 Beasts to Break Your Heart, at Bomb
GennaRose Nethercott's website
GennaRose Nethercott on All Things Considered
"Three Poems" at Pank
Thistlefoot reviewed in Kirkus Reviews
The Lumberjack’s Dove reviewed in Berkely Fiction Review
Mentioned in thi…
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Sep 28, 2022
Juan R. Palomo
Juan R. Palomo is the author of Al Norte (Alabrava Press 2021). Born in Grafton, North Dakota to migrant-worker parents, Palomo grew up in South Texas and several midwestern states. He received a bachelor’s degree in art education from Texas State University and a master’s in journalism and public affairs from American University. He was a reporter, columnist, and editorial writer for The Houston Post; he covered religion for the Austin American-Statesman; and he wrote a column for USA TODAY. His poems have appeared in The Acentos Review, The Sonora Review, The Account, and others.
Links:
Read "The Day They Do Not Show Up" and "Life & Death in Marathon, Texas"
juanzqui: Views and Ramblings by Juan Ramon Palomo
“Al Norte by Juan R. Palomo is an Homage to a Family Drifting in Colors” by Anthony Isaac Bradley in Infarrealista Review
“Speed Queen, North Dakota 1983” and “Noise” at Acentos Review
“A Shy One” and “His Future” at The Account
Mentioned in this…
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Aug 24, 2022
Andrea Carter Brown and John Keats
Andrea Carter Brown was born in Paterson, New Jersey. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Mississippi Review, and many others. She is the author of September 12, which recently won the 2022 IPPY Silver Medal in Poetry from the Independent Publishers Group. Her other titles include the The Disheveled Bed, Domestic Karma, and Brook & Rainbow. Her poems have won the Five Points James Dickey Prize, the River Styx International Poetry Prize, and the PSA Gustav Davidson Memorial Prize. She was a founding editor of the poetry journal Barrow Street, and, since 2017, she has been Series Editor of The Word Works Washington Prize.
John Keats, one of the greatest of the Romantic Poets, was born October 31, 1795 in London. He published just three volumes before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25. Some of his poems are among the most anthologized in the 20th Century, including “To Autumn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” and “Ode…
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Jul 27, 2022
Linda Parsons and William Butler Yeats
Linda Parsons holds a BA and an MA in English from the University of Tennessee. She's the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. Parsons has published poems in The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, The Chattahoochee Review, Southern Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, and Shenandoah, among others. Her fifth poetry collection is Candescent, which was published by Iris Press in 2019. She has received grants from the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Knoxville Arts Council, was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2011, and she’s won the Tennessee Writers Alliance award in poetry, among other awards and honors.
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was born in Dublin, Ireland. In addition to writing poetry, Yeats was also a playwright; he wrote 26 plays that were performed by the Irish Literary Theatre. He was politically outspoken, and, beginning in 1922, he served six years as…
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Jun 24, 2022
Matthew Wimberley and Herman Melville
Matthew Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s the author of Daniel Boone's Window and All the Great Territories. Wimberley has won the Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book Award, the Weatherford Award, the William Matthews Prize, and his work was chosen for the 2016 Best New Poets Anthology. He's an Assistant Professor of English at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York City. He's best known as the author of novels like Moby Dick and White-Jacket, along with short fiction including “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno.” However, Melville spent decades writing poetry exclusively, and critics have ranked him, alongside Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, as one of the best poets of the 19th century.
Links:
Read "And So It Ends with the Cry of a Nuthatch on the First Day of Spring"
Read "Shiloh: A Requiem"
Matthew Wimberley
"The Celebrated Colors of the Local Sunsets" at Poets.org…
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May 25, 2022
Amelia Martens and Marianne Moore
Amelia Martens is the author of four chapbooks and the full-length collection The Spoons in the Grass are There to Dig a Moat. Her work has appeared in The Indianapolis Review, Cream City Review, Diode, Southern Humanities Review, Plume, Southern Indiana Review, and many others. She serves as the Associate Literary Editor for Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art and she co-curates the Rivertown Reading Series in Paducah, Kentucky.
Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was born near St. Louis, Missouri, raised in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and she graduated from Bryn Mawr College. Early on, she worked as a schoolteacher and as an assistant at The New York Public Library. From 1925 to 1929, she was the editor of The Dial, an influential literary magazine. Her Collected Poems, published in 1951, won the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.
Links:
Read "The Apology" and "The Secret Lives of Cows"
Read "A Jelly-Fish"
Amelia Martens
Amelia Martens’ website
“Ameli…
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Apr 28, 2022
Ashley M. Jones and Phillis Wheatley Peters
Ashley M. Jones is Alabama's first African American Poet Laureate, and she's also the youngest. Her books are Magic City Gospel, dark // thing, and REPARATIONS NOW! She teaches creative writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and also at the Low Residency MFA program at Converse University.
Phillis Wheatley Peters was abducted in West Africa and brought to Boston where she was sold as a slave when she was around seven year old. Her first and only book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773. She was in poor health for most of her life, and she died in her early thirties. According to the Smithsonian Institute, she was the “first American slave, the first person of African descent, and only the third colonial American woman to have her work published.”
Links:
Read the poems
Think of a Marvelous Thing / It’s the Same as Having Wings at Inspicio Arts
"Harriet Tubman Crosses the Mason-Dixon for the First Time" at Oxford American
"On Being Broug…
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Mar 25, 2022
Joyelle McSweeney; Season 2 Intro.
Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, stories, novels, essays, translations, and plays. She has won The Pushcart Prize, The Fence Modern Poets Series Award, and The Leslie Scalapino Prize for Innovative Women Performance Artists. With Carmen Maria Machado, she was the guest editor of Best American Experimental Writing 2020. With Johannes Göransson, she co-edits the international press Action Books and teaches at the University of Notre Dame.
Links:
Read today’s poem at BOMB: “Two Poems by Joyelle McSweeney”
Joyelle McSweeney’s Website
Bio and Poems at the Poetry Foundation
Poems at Poets.org
“Kingdom” in The New York Times Magazine
“Joyelle McSweeney’s Poetry of Catastrophe” in The New Yorker
“A Poetry Reading by Joyelle McSweeney in conversation with David Baker and Kendra Sullivan”
Action Books, Edited by McSweeney And Johannes Göransson
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Aug 18, 2021
Janet McAdams
Janet McAdams is the author of the novel Red Weather and the poetry collections Feral and The Island of Lost Luggage, which won an American Book Award. Her chapbook of prose poems Seven Boxes for the Country After won the Wick Chapbook competition and was published in 2016. She teaches at Kenyon College, where she is the Robert P. Hubbard Chair in Poetry.
Links:
Read "Thanatoptic"
Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation
"Lie" at Poem-a-Day
Interview at Shenandoah’s website
"______and the Elders” at Southern Humanities Review
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Aug 4, 2021
Jesse Graves
Jesse Graves is a Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at East Tennessee State University. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, and other literary magazines and anthologies. He has published four books of poetry and his book Said-Songs: Essays on Poetry and Place is forthcoming from Mercer University Press in 2022. Graves received his PhD in English from the University of Tennessee and his MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. He has won the Book of the Year in Poetry Award from the Appalachian Writers’ Association and the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing.
Links:
Read "In a Familiar City" and "Sage Grass Brushing Against My Shins"
Jesse Graves’ website
Interview with Linda Parsons at Chapter 16
YouTube reading through West Virginia Wesleyan MFA Program Summer Reading Series
A collection of Jesse Grave’s poems available online
Poet-to-Poet Interview: A Conversation with Jesse G…
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Jul 21, 2021
Bruce Alford
Bruce Alford’s work has appeared in the African American Review, Imagination & Place Press, The Comstock Review, and elsewhere. He teaches poetry at Louisiana State University. Before working in academia, he was an inner-city missionary and journalist.
Links:
Read "from Alford's Devotional"
Bruce Alford’s website
Poems at SickLit
“Perfect” at Storm Cellar
Review of Terminal Switching at Alabama Writers Forum
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Jul 6, 2021
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren is primarily known as the author of the great American novel All the King’s Men, but he’s also a well-respected poet, and was the USA’s first Poet Laureate. He grew up in Guthrie, KY, and then crossed the state line to go to high school in Clarksville, TN. In 1921, he began his studies at Vanderbilt University and joined a group of poets who called themselves the Fugitives. He went on to publish over 40 books, and he is the only writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry.
Links:
Read "Vision" and other poems by Robert Penn Warren at Poets.org
Biography and poems at the Poetry Foundation
Online Resources (Library of Congress Web Guide)
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Jun 22, 2021
Chris Tonelli
Chris Tonelli is a founding editor of the independent poetry press Birds, LLC; co-director of the NC Book Festival; and author of five chapbooks and two full-length collections of poetry, most recently Whatever Stasis (Barrelhouse Books, 2018). He works in the Libraries at NC State and is the co-owner of So & So Books in downtown Raleigh, where he lives with his wife, Allison, and two kids, Miles and Vera.
Other Links:
Read "Wide Bird" and "Pluto" by Chris Tonelli
Bio and links at Birds, LLC
Interview at NaPoWriMo.net
from “A Test of Company” at poets.org
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Jun 8, 2021
Adelaide Crapsey
Adelaide Crapsey is best known as the inventor of the American cinquain. She was born in 1878 in Brooklyn, NY, and she grew up in Rochester. In 1903, she began to show symptoms of tuberculosis which would eventually take her life in 1914. In spite of her illness, Crapsey attended the American Academy’s School of Classical Study in Rome, and then eventually returned to the U.S. to teach at Smith College. Shortly after her death, her first book of poems was published. It was called simply Verse.
Links:
Read "Amaze" and "Niagra" by Adelaide Crapsey
Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation's website
Adelaide Crapsey at Poets.org
Cinquain.org
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May 24, 2021
Amy Wright
Amy Wright is the author of three books of poetry and six chapbooks. Wright’s essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, Brevity, and elsewhere. She has been awarded two Peter Taylor Fellowships to the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop, an Individual Artist Grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission, and a fellowship to Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her nonfiction debut, Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round, is forthcoming in 2021 from Sarabande Books. She teaches at Austin Peay State University.
"Habitat" is used with permission by the author.
Links:
Read "Habitat" by Amy Wright
Amy Wright’s website
Forthcoming book: Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round by Amy Wright
"Yam Weevil” at Verse Daily
“Prey,” an essay at Kenyon Review Online
Review of Cracker Sonnets and interview at New Books Network
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May 10, 2021
Prince Bush
Prince Bush is an MFA student at Western Kentucky University. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including The Cincinnati Review, Cream City Review, Poet Lore, Pleiades, Puerto del Sol, and others. He was a 2019 Fellow at Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets and an Erastus Milo Cravath Presidential Scholar at Fisk University.
"Lithium" first appeared in Pleiades; "On Truth" first appeared in Sporklet. Both poems are used with permission by the author.
Links:
Read "Lithium" and "On Truth" by Prince Bush
Prince Bush’s Website
“Middle of Protesting” at Rattle
Poems at Softblow
Poems at Counterclock
Music:
"Just A Memory Now (Instrumental)" by Chad Crouch is licensed under CC
BY NC 4.0 with modifications
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Apr 27, 2021
David Baker
David Baker is the author and editor of 18 books, including 12 books of poetry. His most recent book is Swift: New and Selected Poems, published by W. W. Norton. Baker teaches at Denison University and he frequently serves on the faculty of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College. He is the Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review.
"Swift" is used with permission by the author.
Links:
Read "Swift" by David Baker
David Baker’s Website
"Poetry That Bears Witness to a Changing Natural World,” a review of Swift: New and Selected Poems in The New Yorker
Interview at Tupelo Quarterly
Poems and Essays at Virginia Quarterly Review Online
Swift: New and Selected Poems at Amazon.com
David Baker reading at CornellCast
Music:
"Just A Memory Now (Instrumental)" by Chad Crouch is licensed under CC
BY NC 4.0 with modifications
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Apr 20, 2021
Tyler Mills
Tyler Mills’ poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Guardian, The New Republic, and others. She’s published two books and has two chapbooks forthcoming. Mills teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and she edits The Account, an online literary magazine. Look for Tyler Mills’ books in our online catalog or call us at the Reference Desk at Lawson McGhee Library.
Today's poem, "Oak," appeared in the January 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine. You can read the poem on the Poetry Foundation's website or in the links below.
Links:
Read "Oak" by Tyler Mills
Tyler Mills’ website
Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation
“The Poetic Half-Life of One Family’s Nuclear History: Tyler Mills on Her Grandfather's Role in the Bombing of Nagasaki” in Literary Hub
Review of Hawk Parable at Publishers Weekly
Poems at Pinwheel
Poems in Blackbird
Introduction, reviews, and visual art at Tupelo Quarterly
Music:
"Just A Memory Now (Instrum…
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Apr 13, 2021
Cintia Santana
Cintia Santana’s work has appeared in the Best New Poets 2020 anthology, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, and many other literary journals. She was awarded fellowships from CantoMundo, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She teaches literary translation, as well as poetry and fiction workshops in Spanish, at Stanford University.
Links:
Read "Ode to the J" and "[F]"
Cintia Santana’s website
Interview at The Kenyon Review
Poems at Kenyon Review Online
“Kintsugi” at Harvard Review Online
Poems at Beloit Poetry Journal
“Plosive” (visual poem) at Pleiades
Music:
"Just A Memory Now (Instrumental)" by Chad Crouch is licensed under CC
BY NC 4.0 with modifications
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Apr 7, 2021
Maurice Manning
Maurice Manning has published seven books of poetry. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, won the Yale Younger Poets Award, and his fourth, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Be sure to look for books by Manning in our online catalog.
Links:
Read "One View of Time" by Maurice Manning
Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation
The Grinnin' Possum Podcast: Poetry Music History with Maurice Manning
Article in Garden & Gun
Interview at Plume
Manning reading at the Sewanee Writer's Conference (Video)
Music:
"Just A Memory Now (Instrumental)" by Chad Crouch is licensed under CC
BY NC 4.0 with modifications
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Mar 24, 2021
Introducing: The Beat
Subscribe to this feed for an upcoming poetry podcast produced by Knox County Public Library. It’s called The Beat.
David Orr, a poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review, describes a common idea that some people have about poetry—that understanding it "is like solving a calculus problem while being zapped with a cattle prod." Or maybe worse, we hear people give (again quoting David Orr) "testimonials announcing poetry’s ability to derange the senses, make us lose ourselves in rapture, dance naked under the full moon, and so forth." We’ll try to avoid all of that.
Each show will introduce a new poet and you’ll get to hear poems being read aloud by the poets themselves, usually. The first episode of “The Beat” will air in a couple of weeks. Please tune in for the show, and subscribe.
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