Issue X, Volume IV : June 2013
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Congeries - November 2009
A Poetry Congeries, with John Hoppenthaler - November 2009
As I assembled this Congeries, I noticed that two sets of prose poems figure in the issue’s offerings. I have, during much of my life in poetry, been suspicious of and confounded by the form, and perhaps I still am. The poems, by Robert Thomas and Dag T. Straumsvåg (as translated by Robert Hedin), are marked by playfulness, mild irreverence, quirkiness, and a brushstroke of sadness; they are, as well, crafted so as to allow their images to impart much of the content, and they are textured enough to warrant multiple readings. In other words, they do what those poems I most admire tend to do.
Richard Foerster - Poetry
Richard Foerster was born in 1949 in the Bronx, New York, where he was educated by Dominican nuns and Jesuits. He is the author of six poetry collections: Sudden Harbor (1992) and Patterns of Descent (1993), published by Orchises Press; Trillium (1998), Double Going (2002, which was named a 2002 Notable Book by the National Book Critics Circle), and The Burning of Troy (2006, which received the 2007 Maine Literary Award for Poetry), published by BOA Editions; and Penetralia (forthcoming, in which these poems will appear).
Kwame Dawes - Poetry
Born in Ghana and raised in Jamaica, Kwame Dawes is the author of fourteen books of poetry and many books of fiction, non-fiction, criticism and drama; and editor of several anthologies of poetry.
Denise Duhamel & Amy Lemmon - Poetry
Denise Duhamel's most recent poetry titles are Ka-Ching! (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009); Two and Two (Pittsburgh, 2005); Mille et un Sentiments (Firewheel, 2005); Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (Pittsburgh, 2001); and The Star-Spangled Banner (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999).
Patrick Bizzaro - Poetry
Patrick Bizzaro has published nine books and chapbooks of poetry, two critical studies of Fred Chappell’s poetry and fiction, a book on the pedagogy of academic creative writing, some textbooks, and a couple hundred poems in magazines.
Robert Thomas - Poetry
Robert Thomas’ first book, Door to Door, was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize and published by Fordham University Press, and his second book, Dragging the Lake, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Suzanne Cleary - Poetry
Suzanne Cleary's books are Trick Pear and Keeping Time, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, which will also publish her third book, Beauty Mark. Recent poems have appeared in Poetry London and Best American Poetry.
Reginald Dwayne Betts - Poetry
Reginald Dwayne Betts has been awarded the Holden Fellowship from the MFA program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. A Cave Canem fellow, his poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Crab Orchard Review and Poet Lore among others.
Chad Sweeney - Poetry
Chad Sweeney is the author of three books of poetry, Parable of Hide and Seek (Alice James, 2010), Arranging the Blaze (Anhinga, 2009), and An Architecture (BlazeVOX, 2007) and the chapbook A Mirror to Shatter the Hammer (Tarpaulin Sky, 2006)—as well as the editor of Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds: The Teachers of WritersCorps in Poetry and Prose (City Lights, 2009)
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