Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Bernadette Geyer

June 13, 2017 - By Amal Zaman

“into it were poured
the years that followed
i’ll give you sugar for a good start
as if you were a horse spurs
if earned. we still say that? treasure
the future, bedecked. we let
it, i say to you: let it stick there!”
--from “paper cone” which appears in the Spring 2017 issue (Volume 58, Issue 1)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.

I am very thankful that it was one of Ulrike Draesner’s poems that was the first piece I attempted to translate. Because our daughters went to school together, we saw each other often, and I was able to meet with her...

10 Questions for Ruth Madievsky

June 6, 2017 - By Katherine Keenan

“I wish I knew the answer to the question
the gutted, flipped-over car
on Mulholland Drive is asking, or why the sound
of fingers snapping
fills my mouth with peanuts,
the way I fill my mouth with peanuts at baseball games
at county fairs and long shifts
at the pharmacy, when night hangs
over the windows
like the kind of silk scarf
Russian grandmothers adore...”
--from “Peanuts” which appears in the Spring 2017 issue (Volume 58, Issue 1)

...

10 Questions for Tom Cantwell

May 30, 2017 - By Katherine Keenan

“Coyote clings to the side of a boulder twice as a wide as his splayed body. He thinks he heard something down the slope, a small rock-slide or stick breaking. His fingers hold, but his boots scratch for leverage. Not that big a deal if you fell, though he doesn’t want to fall. He isn’t strong enough to rely on his upper body, instead squeezes the rock with his thighs and inches up like a slug. Good thing he’s light. His fingers find a new crease, and moments later he’s on the boulder, rising to his feet with a whoop at the sun...”
--from “Runner” which appears in the Spring 2017 issue (Volume 58...

10 Questions for Doug Ramspeck

May 23, 2017 - By Amal Zaman

“This is how we grew afraid.
The moon wore its bright hat.

The sun was a great wheel
of fire. Children played jump rope

in the crowded street, and everywhere
was the autobiograpical,”

--from “Blur” which appears in the Spring 2017 issue (Volume 58, Issue 1)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you’ve written

After decades of severe writer’s block as a fiction writer, I turned, in 2004, to the writing of poetry, and one of first poems I completed contained these opening lines:

            Where...

10 Questions for L.A. Johnson

May 18, 2017 - By Amal Zaman

“The foam line of the lake breaks into ice.
I can feel the weight of a flood,

the granite of you sealing together.

Still, the lake water is all quiet, no smell
of rain. No sense of struggle or lungs folding...”

--from “Auroras” which appears in the Spring 2017 issue (Volume 58, Issue 1)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you’ve written

I started writing when I was very young, so it’s hard for me to remember specifically. I wrote a lot of poems about the moon and its shadows. I didn’t know then why we see the moon in phases and I was...