Covid-19 Readings: Christina deVillier

During the spring term of 2020, the student director of the Carl and Sandra Ellston Ars Poetica Literary Lecture Series, Carissa Cummings, and I wondered how we might continue during the lockdown. We invited three writers at different points in their careers to join us via pre-recorded readings: Henrietta Goodman, Sarah Aronson, and Christina deVillier. […]

Covid-19 Readings: Sarah Aronson

During the spring term of 2020, the student director of the Carl and Sandra Ellston Ars Poetica Literary Lecture Series, Carissa Cummings, and I wondered how we might continue during the lockdown. We invited three writers at different points in their careers to join us via pre-recorded readings: Henrietta Goodman, Sarah Aronson, and Christina deVillier. […]

Covid-19 Readings: Henrietta Goodman

During the spring term of 2020, the student director of the Carl and Sandra Ellston Ars Poetica Literary Lecture Series, Carissa Cummings, and I wondered how we might continue during the lockdown. We invited three writers at different points in their careers to join us via pre-recorded readings: Henrietta Goodman, Sarah Aronson, and Christina deVillier. […]

Re-visiting the West: Susan Kay Anderson’s “Mezzanine”

Finishing Line Press, $19.99 reviewed by Cameron Scott Susan Kay Anderson’s “Mezzanine” is one of the best collections of poems I’ve read this year. Maybe it is because I am partial to the West. As in the dusty, isolated, windy, vast open spaces tucked away from urban centers, trashed-out, stuck in its solitude but still […]

Review of The River Where You Forgot My Name by Corrie Williamson

Southern Illinois University Press/Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, Paperback, 80 pages. $15.95. By Melissa Kwasny “A poem can be said to have two subjects,” Richard Hugo states in his collection of essays on writing, The Triggering Town, “the initiating or triggering subject, which starts the poem or ‘causes’ the poem to be written, and the […]

Review of Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today by Melissa Kwasny

University of Washington Press, hardback, 96 pages, $19.95 Reviewed by Tami Haaland Inspired by Christopher Howell’s ecstatic poem “Another Letter to the Soul,” Melissa Kwasny’s Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today is a careful examination of the self, the natural world, the spirit and soul woven through with an awareness of language and […]

Review of What Does Not Return by Tami Haaland

Lost Horse Press, Paperback, 78 pages. $18.00. Reviewed by Melissa Kwasny Poetry has been described as the art of speaking the unspeakable. In some cases, the unspeakable is that which seems almost too horrific to put into words. Sometimes it is that the state of being is too nuanced, the feeling too fleeting, the insight […]

Poetry Advocacy

How do we get the vital news not only from poems, as William Carlos Williams famously wrote in his poem “Asphodel,” but also of them? Many poets are skillful at promoting their work and connecting with a larger audience, but the sheer number of books published each year makes it nearly impossible to know about […]

So Precious: On The Hip Hop of Kunu Bearchum

By Steven Jackson Before this assignment for basalt, I was unfamiliar with Kunu Beachum (Stryk-9) or the other So Precious performers, Jordan Wheeler, and Adrienne Fainman. Nevertheless, as an unabashed hip-hop head who grew up watching shows like Yo MTV Raps, Rap City, and BET Uncut, I appreciate the opportunity to critique their hip-hop video. Stryker-9 […]

The Empty Hand of the Wind

by Robert Stubblefield Even as a student editor of a college literary magazine, perhaps particularly as a student editor of a college literary magazine, you are aware of those rare instances when a work lands on your desk that unequivocally belongs. And on that late winter afternoon in 1992 when I opened the envelope and read “Graves […]