3rd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: SABINA IBARROLA on LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA
When I think of Leah Lakshmi’s poems, I think about femme. I think about hustle, and I think about love. I think of words like pussy and glitter and plum and open. I think about that pretty brown brown. I
3rd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 22 :: MC HYLAND on WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
So much of the uninteresting poetry that followed him can be blamed on Wordsworth. In the introduction to Lyrical Ballads alone, his insistence on using “a selection of the language really spoken by men” paved the way for a thousand
3rd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 21 :: VAHNI CAPILDEO on NICHOLAS LAUGHLIN :: AT FULL ARIEL TILT
The writing looks hieroglyphic: all caps. The envelope opens to release a Persian lion; a dancing rabbit; an Ethiopian prayerbook half the size of a matchbox; or, again and again, a handmade quasi-business card with no name, nothing but a
3rd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 20 :: Christina Rodriguez on Clarice Lispector, Agua Viva, and the Art of Breathlessness
It's a slow kind of love that builds as the pages are turning. When you read a book, you grow to love the story, the characters, and the author. If you are a writer, you might find a mentor and a
3rd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 19 :: CASEY SCOTT LEACH ON BILLY COLLINS
The morning I noticed a Billy Collins poem on the subway train, a part of the Poetry In Motion series, I was overcome with joy. “Hell yes!” I thought to myself, “a poet I know and love!” It was white
3rd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 18 :: CHARAN P. MORRIS on NATALIE DIAZ
Before I met Natalie Diaz, I was already in love with her writing. The day of my first workshop session with her, I scurried in nervously, eager to soak up insight into how she chisels poems from the bruised and
3rd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 17 :: SPARROW on PHILIP WHALEN
[line] I met Philip Whalen in 1976 at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where I was a student (22 years old). Philip co-taught a class with Allen Ginsberg called "Visiting Poetics." At that time Philip was a Zen monk, with a
3rd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 16 :: LAUREL KALLEN on JACQUELINE OSHEROW
In Dead Men’s Praise, Jacqueline Osherow explores the world through her identity as a Jewish-American woman poet of the first post-Holocaust generation. The tensions that define and trouble this identity are apparent in Osherow’s exploration of how a simple trip through
3rd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 15 :: CRISTINA PREDA on LILLIAN-YVONNE BERTRAM
[Editor's Note: Cristina Preda comes to us via our favorite model: the person to person relay-style hand off from former participants (in this case, frequent OS contributor, and all around badass inspirational mama Caits Meissner). I was overwhelmed with gratitude to
3rd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 14 :: DAVY KNITTLE on NATHANIEL MACKEY :: A POETICS of PLACING ESTRANGEMENT
[teaser] “A sign of estrangement, to poetize or sing is to risk irrelevance, to be haunted by poetry’s or music’s possible irrelevance (‘Tell it to the birds’), but nothing could be more relevant than estrangement…” - Nathaniel Mackey[/teaser] [line] I love about
