I've never taken pictures of Italy till now.
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Image by David Wittig
Gates Reading
Bless their hearts, my department has just asked me to give the annual Gates Reading at Seattle Pacific University, this year.
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Coffee at Campo dei Fiori, about a block from our classroom.
Come Away! Come Away!
This summer, it is my good fortune to accompany my colleague, the (extraordinary) poet Jennifer Maier, on Seattle Pacific University's study abroad trip to Rome
Read MoreMusic/ 2016
I've kept a list of the most important records for my life every year since 1992.
Read MoreWriting Pet Peeves
In a sense, it isn’t right to call the following errors “pet peeves,” since they are, well, errors. It’s not like they’re idiosyncratic to me; it’s not like they’re pets that I nurture, little annoyances I nurse for the pleasure of hating something. It’s just that these are the writing errors that I’m tired of pointing out. I’d like to move on to getting upset about other mistakes you make, to believe that your sins are unique to you instead of stamped out at some kind of demonic factory.
Read MoreWe Three Kings
This coming 2017 is going to be a great year for poetry.
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Big News
A little bit ago, I posted about my new poetry collection, 10+ years in the making and how I was ready to send it out. I'm excited, deeply humbled, a little giddy and a little scared to say that it's been picked up for publication this year by Cascade Books.
Read MoreFrom Seattle to France, with Love
I was devastated by the Nice attacks. I don't know if it was because this has already been such a difficult year in world events, or because I was just there recently and so know the place, or because of their particularly gruesome nature, but I just can't find any words to say to myself or to anyone else about them.
Thankfully, we don't always have to say things.
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A New Collection
I've been writing poems since I was 14 years old. At least, those are the earliest poems I've saved, or that I know anything about. It seems to me sometimes that I must have started earlier though.
Read MoreOur June
When it isn’t summer, I always think of it as a magical time, but can’t always recall why. Sure, the weather is better, but does that really lend so much to my experiences? Last month we moved back to Seattle after 2 years away. It’s bliss. This is some of why.
Read MoreTaking Stock
I am taking a moment at the outset of summer to take stock of the year. Though the natural breaking point for the year is December, and though I usually do feel reflective then, as an academic, my years sheer cleanly along the school calendar’s lines, recently involving moves, new places of employ, and similar obvious points of development. So, what has happened just now?
Read MoreExtraordinary Life
My favorite part of last night’s American Literature lecture was talking about how Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative both reads us and revises earlier memoirs.
Read MoreIn Praise of Peer-Review
Can I just say that I love the peer-review process? Sure, it’s a bit cumbersome, and the timeline to publication rather long, but sometimes it’s enormously helpful.
Read MoreProgress Update: Children’s Books
A few years ago, I started writing children’s books about poets. My head is full of anecdotes from literary history that come up in lectures, and I started writing some of them down.
Read MoreThe Spasmodics’ Social Anxiety Salve
I’m presenting a paper at the Fall 2016 gathering of the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) hosted by the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at ASU on the theme of “Social Victorians.”
Read MoreChurchill’s Largess
Only on chapter one, I’m already floored by the resourcefulness of the man, but also his principles. When coalminers staged a strike during his tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he broke it by founding an anti-strikers newspaper. Then, after he’d won, he sided with the miners, steering through parliament a campaign for better wages and safety standards. Noblesse oblige.
Read MoreOn Trains
There are many ways America could achieve a respectable system in the immediate future. I’m not a student of governance, nor a policy wonk, but these seem to me the most pressing, workable solutions.
Read MoreAnother Victorian Vampire
I admire Elizabeth Barrett Browning immensely, but I’m tempted sometimes to classify her among the undead.
Read MoreOn McCracken on Malick
I said I liked this review by Brett McCracken of the new Terrence Malick film “Knight of Cups” and my friend, the artist David Wittig, asked why, so I thought I’d try to figure it out.
Read MoreRonson Review
I read this book by Jon Ronson because Austin Kleon told me to, and I basically do whatever he says.
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