Waking in Foreign Surroundings – On the Seawall

Waking in Foreign Surroundings

Second Looks |November 14, 2024

“Rereading May Swenson”

an essay by Randall Mann

“I think rereading is an act of hope, a way of seeing if the past is truly present, or could be, or should be. As I get older, I find I return to the things that first made sense in poetry, before I was hardened into opinion, or career …”
Poetry |November 14, 2024

“What I Like,” “Elegy” & “The Second Year”

three poems by Chase Twichell

“An elegy reveals the current / state of the grief. Therefore, // I cannot write an elegy. / Grief is a shape-shifter.”
Commentary |November 14, 2024

on An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth, a novel by Anna Moschovakis

reviewed by Mark Athitakis

“The pleasure of the novel derives from its tension between the narrator’s urge to organize — she makes lists, fills notebooks, takes classes — set against Moschovakis’ determination to question the meaning of that organization, to mess with language and existence.”
Commentary |November 14, 2024

on Candy, poems by Dan Albergotti

reviewed by Joyce Peseroff

“The ghost of Hamlet and Keats’s living hand steer Albergotti through a world at risk, its chaos echoed in the play between established forms and rougher music.”

Waking in Foreign Surroundings

Read Tim Appelo’s profile of Ron Slate at the Poetry Foundation website.