Do you differentiate between your work and play, your avocation and your job? Robert Penn Warren asked, “What is a man but his passion?” If you make your life’s work out of your passion, then there doesn’t need to be a distinction between vocation and avocation, or between business and poetry, or between any other […]
This is Part 2 (of 2) of my essay, “Great Audiences for Great Poetry,” adapted from a 2009 speech I gave at AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) when I was president of the Poetry Foundation. The rather insipid title of my remarks, “Great Audiences for Great Poetry,” is adapted from Whitman’s famous dictum, […]
This is Part 1 (of 2) of my essay, “Great Audiences for Great Poetry,” adapted from a 2009 speech I gave at AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) when I was president of the Poetry Foundation. Twenty years ago I moved to Chicago and started work at the Poetry Foundation. I remember visiting historic […]
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Between Them a Universe explores two kinds of relationships we can have as human beings. In the first section, my poems explore the universe of relationships we can have with each other. The poems in the second section explore the universe of our relationships with the world of the non-human.
