How do you write? My best friend might look at her old poems and draw from those. My former newspaper advisor tweeted at me: “Nulla dies sine linea,” or “Never a day without a line.”
poetry
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A ’60s Poet, Mixing Images of Asia and Africa with Bohemian London
[Rosemary] Tonks’s first poetry collection, Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms, was published in 1963; her second and final one, Iliad of Broken Sentences, in 1967. She interweaves images of her years in Asia and Africa with snapshots of bohemian London: desert oases and mirages, jazz and cocktails. True to the first collection’s title, the poems carry a […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Philip Levine’s Advice for ‘Making It’ as a Writer
“Many young poets have come to me and asked, How am I gonna make it?”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Uncategorized
How To Win a Million Dollars Writing Poetry in Abu Dhabi
As poetry readings go, the setting was unique. The Al Raha Beach Theatre in Abu Dhabi boasted light-up floors, backdrop projections and a light show of a kind that would be familiar to fans of Pop Idol, X Factor or America’s Got Talent. Since February, global audiences of up to 70 million have tuned in […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
'When You Make Art Out of Something, They Get Another Chance'
She was still living in the rectory when “Rape Joke” was published in The Awl. There is a section of the poem about the speaker’s parents’ response to the rape: It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Maya Angelou: 1928-2014
Angelou, in 1990, on the moment she decided to write.
Posted inFiction, Quotes
Where the Gift of Writing Comes From
Let me state it so you get the picture clear as wind chimes in a soft breeze on a somnolent noon. Underlying my existence is a deeper intelligence that speaks to me when I am writing. My artist friends say I am an anomaly—no education, no family grounding, no proper socialization. My writing gifts seem to […]
Posted inQuotes
In Her Own Words: Being Maxine Kumin
I was a closet poet always. I didn’t stop writing poetry just because Wallace Stegner told me I was a terrible poet. I went underground. I had exempted English A at Harvard, which was a big mistake. Everybody should take it. They bucked me up to a high-level class in creative writing. It was all […]
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Longreads Member Pick: 'A Semester with Allen Ginsberg,' by Elissa Schappell
This week we’re excited to feature Elissa Schappell‘s essay, “The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg,” as our Longreads Member Pick. Her recollections are an intimate window into the Beat legend. The piece originally appeared in the Summer 1995 issue of the Paris Review and was later anthologized in their 1999 collection Beat […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
5 Great Stories on the Lives of Poets
“If I knew where poems came from, I’d go there.”