Catching up! And news...

On Close Readings, plus a couple new pieces

Back, I don’t know, six, seven years ago, I started tweeting out poems I was reading and loved. I didn’t know what I was doing or why, but it wound up creating for me a kind of community, organized around something I loved. And that community was a not unimportant respite for me from some hard years, hard times.

Then six or seven months ago, when it looked like Twitter might die, I figured I’d actually start the podcast idea I’d been toying with, and also launch this newsletter to tell people about it. Partly to keep that feeling of community alive.

One of the reasons I fell off the newsletter wagon was because I’d been busy with edits on a couple pieces that have come out recently. Here those are:

• I wrote about my sister, poetry, and anticipatory grief for The Yale Review.

• I wrote about the poetry of place and Megan Fernandes for The New Yorker.

But now Twitter is dying again (is it? probably it is), but the podcast is going strong, and though I’ve gotten slack about sending out newsletters to go with each episode, here we are.

There’s a new episode out today, number 27, and it’s a beauty: I talked with Kristin Grogan about Lorine Niedecker and “Poet’s Work.” Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

And here are the episodes that have come out since my last newsletter:

21. Sarah Osment on David Berman (“Governors on Sominex”): Apple, Spotify, Google

22. Dan Chiasson on William Butler Yeats (“Among School Children”): Apple, Spotify, Google

23. Johanna Winant on Emily Dickinson (“My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun —”): Apple, Spotify, Google

24. Evan Kindley on Kenneth Koch (“One Train May Hide Another”): Apple, Spotify, Google

25. Walt Hunter on Gwendolyn Brooks (“kitchenette building”): Apple, Spotify, Google

26. Gillian White on Elizabeth Bishop (“Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance”): Apple, Spotify, Google

Do listen if you haven’t already—perfect for summer road trips, airport delays, what have you. Make sure you’re following the podcast, leave a rating and review, and share it with friends. I’d love to see the community around it continue to grow.

And rest assured that while my own summer travel may disrupt the every week rhythm now and then, I have every intention of keeping the podcast going while interest remains. I have some exciting episodes in the works!

Meanwhile if Twitter really does die, and if you like the community around the poems, keep following me here, spread the word, and know that you can find me on Bluesky as well, where I’ve just set up shop and am for now merely biding my time. Same handle as Twitter for me there, maybe this link will work?