September 2004 Cover Image

The Many Places We Are: An Interview with Diane Glancy

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H.L. Hix
Language is like a spine, and when that's removed there is an inability to stand, which is one of the reasons for alcoholism and depression.
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In Search of the Exact Word

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Richard Goodman
The exact word. Le mot juste, in French, is how it's expressed. Mot meaning "word," and juste meaning "exact." Most everyone I've ever talked to, or have read, attributes this phrase to Gustave Flaubert, the celebrated 19th century French perfectionist author of Madame Bovary and A Sentimental Education.
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New York's Poets House Looking for New Space with the Same Rai­son d'etre

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Steven Huff
As the staff and directors of Poets House grow their collection of poetry, grow their outreach programs, and expand audiences for poetry, they're also scanning Manhattan for a new home. If they make good on their intention to move, it will mean the relocation of a 40,000 volume library of contemporary poetry which is the cornerstone and focus of the organization, the largest library of its kind in the world.
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Past, Present, and Possible: Exploring How Time Works in Poems

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Ann E. Michael
The concept of time has motivated poets through millennia, for mortality is a function of time. The contemplation of impending death, the "haiku moment," the carpe diem verse, and the memory-based lyric or narrative all rely upon how the poet perceives and uses time. Time, therefore, is often both subject and tool for the writer.
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An Interview with Sydney Lea

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Marie Jordan Giordano
To me Robert Frost is the great American poet. There are contenders obviously. Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, but Frost is probably my favorite and I'll tell you why. You can take a Robert Frost poem into almost any venue and people will get something out of it. It's what I hope for in my writing.
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Sad Anthropologists: Stable, Dialectical, and Dialogic Use of Tone

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Tony Hoagland
Poets are the fruit flies of literature, always conducting genetic experiments on themselves. Fundamentally excitable people, known for their great intensity and short attention spans, poets tend to take any trend to its extreme. Perhaps this explains the welter of aesthetic styles extant in contemporary poetry, and their ongoing permutations. Certainly American poetry at this time seems far more diversified than American fiction.
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Peering at Privacy in Creative Nonfiction

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Kaylene Johnson
Writers face all sorts of choices when they sit down to bear witness to the world. Penning poetry, fiction, or nonfiction, writers use a palette of words and literary techniques to paint a world of images and story that provoke the thought, feeling, and imagination of the reader.

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Brave New World: Aliteracy in America

D.W. Fenza
The report analyzes the decline in the popularity of liteary reading by age groups, gender, ethnicity, level of income, and region. In every sector, the indicators point the wrong way, verifying a steady fall in the popularity of literature in each break-out group.
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