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Archive for category: Blog Posts

GESTATION OF “ONE MUCH ONE”

02 Jan 2014 / in Blog Posts

  Gestation of “One Much One”: Ditty Went the Long Way   Once upon a time, maybe as many years ago as thirty, certainly more than twenty, at a time when my only creative (writing) outlet was the occasional postcard or long (paper) letter to a friend, I wrote a couplet. I copied it in […]

Naming Negro Lick

24 Oct 2013 / in Blog Posts

Forget Route 66. Try 67 instead. Head north out of St. Louis, across the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers into Illinois. There, past Alton and Godfrey, Route 67 splits. Take 267, once upon a time the old 67, and you’re in farming country. What you might not notice as you blow through burgs like Brighton, Medora, […]

2013 PoemoftheWeek.org Interview

04 Aug 2013 / in Blog Posts

An Interview by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. (For the full treatment–sample poems, recordings, reviews, etc.–go directly to PoemoftheWeek.org.) Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum: What’s going on with these titles? Almost all of them are titled after magazines. Steve Davenport: I like what Kathleen Kirk has to say in her review at Prick of the Spindle: “As it happened, I was […]

From the Vault: No Apology for Happiness

29 Jul 2013 / in Blog Posts

  I know this guy. It was thirteen years ago when he first set some words and gunpowder next to metal casings with the intent of being a truth-teller, a dangerous artist, a maker of things that do harm where harm needs doing. If you had asked him back then, he wouldn’t have been able […]

7.20.13. From the Whiskey Tub #3: Edwidge Danticat and Patricia Smith

21 Jul 2013 / in Blog Posts

O Whiskey Tub! You used to be easy like Sunday morning on a Saturday night. Sudsy hot water (man wash!), trusty glass, whiskey, ice, evil Sudoku puzzle, pen, music, and our old pal, Painter’s Ladder. Things were pure in those days. Then comes that complicated acquaintance, Book. Yes, complicated. In the beginning, Book is good. […]

Three Propositions about the Dangers of the Kerouac Classic ON THE ROAD

28 Jun 2013 / in Blog Posts

1. Jail is always a possibility. If you believe Jack Kerouac, he never meant to hurt a fly. Or, more specifically, a mouse. It was a lesson he learned from older brother Gerard, who died at the age of nine and was revered while living by all who knew him, including the nuns from nearby […]

On Anonymity, the Open Road, a Couple of Poets, and Trees Without Toilet Paper

23 Jun 2013 / in Blog Posts

It started simply enough. This past Thursday evening on Facebook, Ron Cooper, novelist and Philosophy prof, posted a link to a Washington Post piece that begins this way: “Friday morning, America’s great poets will wake up to find that someone has TP-ed their trees and scrawled ‘COWARD’ on their doors.” To be clear, the Washington […]

DIY: How to Write a Cheatin’ Song, Cheat, and Prosper

19 Jun 2013 / in Blog Posts

You know this one. Once upon a time, you go on a date. It’s been a while. Too long. Like that stretch of desert that gives way to hallucinations that give way to death and vultures that descend and strip your bones of the sad meat you thought set you apart from others. The date […]

6.13.13. From the Whiskey Tub #2: Susan Yount, Bayo Ojikutu, and The Nearness of Them

14 Jun 2013 / in Blog Posts

Some nights Whiskey Tub gets drunk rereading books it loves. Sometimes the cause of drunkenness is the hole someone thought to put in a bottle. Dangerous, beautiful thing, that opening. Sometimes Whiskey Tub gets drunk on love. How reliable is Whiskey Tub when drunk? And which obstacle, corn whiskey or the brainwashed heart, is more […]

5.28.13. From the Whiskey Tub #1: Robert Wrigley, Kevin McIlvoy, and Garin Cycholl

29 May 2013 / in Blog Posts

Tonight’s Whiskey Tub, obscured by Painter’s Ladder (constant companion), rereads two first books by native-born American Bottom writers, both of whom are seldom associated with the region. To be fair, Eugene B. Redmond, Poet Laureate of East St. Louis (St. Clair County) and Emeritus Professor of English at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (Madison County), is […]