Second Looks

Second Looks |

Revisiting Shirt In Heaven by Jean Valentine

“I was carrying a copy of Shirt in Heaven, Jean Valentine’s final collection of poetry, on one of the last evenings I saw her.  It was 2017 and she was reading at Yale’s Beinecke Library.”

Second Looks |

“Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo Reconsidered”

“The erasure between the lyric and narrative drives is something I aspired to achieve in my own work, but it wasn’t until I read Rulfo’s novel that I learned how to do it.”

Second Looks |

“Rereading May Swenson”

“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 …”