The Beat

Derek N. Otsuji is the author of the book The Kitchen of Small Hours, which won the Crab Orchard Review Poetry Series Open Competition. He was also awarded the 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His poems have appeared in The Southern Poetry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Threepenny Review, The Bennington Review, Harpur Palate, Missouri Review Online, and many others. He is an associate professor of English at Honolulu Community College.      

George Herbert was born in 1593 in Montgomery Castle, Wales. He attended Westminster School and then Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained as a priest and became the rector at Bemerton. He died in 1633 of consumption at the age of forty.

Links:

Read "Among the More Innocent Touristic Amusements of the Old Waikiki"

Read "Two Boys One Fish Two Eyes" in Rhino

Read "Virtue" by George Herbert" at The Poetry Foundation

Derek N. Otsuji

Derek N. Otsuji's website

"How She Loves Music" in Pleiades.

Two Poems at Terrain.org

Video: "Interview with Derek Otsuji, Author of The Kitchen of Small Hours"

"Theatre of Shadows" at The Poetry Foundation

George Herbert

Bio and poems at the The Poetry Foundation

Bio and poems at Poets.org

"George Herbert: British Poet" in Britannica

Video: George Herbert - a Welsh-born poet, orator, and priest

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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Recorded live, April 10, 2023. In celebration of National Poetry Month, Maurice Manning joined us for Lawson McGhee Library's monthly book discussion group, All Over the Page. Hear Manning read his poems and talk about his book Bucolics. Manning also discusses more recent work including his new podcast, The Grinnin' Possum.

Maurice Manning has published seven books of poetry. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, won the Yale Younger Poets Award, and his fourth, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches Transylvania University.

Links:

The Grinnin' Possum Podcast: Poetry Music History with Maurice Manning

Eight Bucolics in VQR

Bucolics XXII, XXXV, and LVIII at Art and Theology

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

Article in Garden & Gun

Interview at Plume

Manning reading at the Sewanee Writer's Conference (Video)

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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In this episode, Lyn Hejinian reads four untitled poems from The Book of A Thousand Eyes.

Lyn Hejinian is a poet, translator, editor, and scholar whose literary career has been long associated with Language writing. Hejinian is the author of over twenty-five volumes of poetry and critical prose, the most recent of which are Tribunal (Omnidawn Books, 2019), Positions of the Sun (Belladonna, 2019), and a revised edition of Oxota: A Short Russian Novel (Wesleyan University Press, 2019.) Fall Creek, her latest long poem, is forthcoming from Litmus Press. A book of critical essays titled Allegorical Moments: Call to the Everyday will  come out in Fall 2023 (Wesleyan University Press), and The Proposition, a critical edition of Hejinian’s uncollected early work, is forthcoming from the University of Edinburgh Press (spring 2024). She is the editor of Tuumba Press, the co-director (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets, and co-editor (with Jane Gregory and Claire Marie Stancek) of Nion Editions, a chapbook press. She lives in Berkeley, California.

(Photo by Doug Hall)

Links:

Read four poems from The Book of a Thousand Eyes

Brief Interview and more at Omnidawn Press

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

Readings, Talks, Q&As, and Lectures at PennSound

Hejinian's books reviewed by Publishers Weekly

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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Jim Minick is the author of two books of poetry, Her Secret Song and Burning Heaven. In addition, he’s published: Finding a Clear Path, a collection of essays; The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family, which won the Southern Independent Booksellers Association’s award for nonfiction; and Fire Is Your Water, a novel that won the Appalachian Book of the Year Award. Minick’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Tampa Review, Shenandoah, Orion, Oxford American, and The Sun. His latest nonfiction book, Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas, is forthcoming next month, and his latest poetry manuscript, The Intimacy of Spoons, is forthcoming in 2024. He serves as Coeditor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.

Robert Frost was born 1874 in San Francisco. Though Frost attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, he never earned a formal degree. As a young writer, Frost didn’t have much luck publishing in American literary magazines. He spent much of his twenties and thirties farming and teaching. His first book wasn’t published until he was nearly 40 years old—and after he'd sold his New Hampshire farm and moved to England where publishers were more receptive to his work. Frost soon moved back to the U.S. where he lived in Massachusetts and Vermont, and he went on to win four Pulitzer Prizes and the Congressional Medal of Honor. He died in Boston in 1963.

Links: 

Read "The Oven-Bird"

Read "Diminished" at Still: The Journal

Read "The Collar” and "Still Dark"

Jim Minick

Jim Minick’s website

"Why Birds" at Salvation South

"Whale Light" at The Ekphrastic Review  

"Good Dirt" and "Stress Test" at Cutleaf

Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas at Bison Books

Robert Frost

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Bio and Poems at The Poetry Foundation's website

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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Monica Mody was born in Ranchi, India. She holds a PhD in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including Ordinary Annals, and two full-length books, Kala Pani, a cross-genre work, and Bright Parallel, which is forthcoming from Copper Coin. Her writing has won awards including the Sparks Prize Fellowship, the Zora Neale Hurston Award, and a Toto Award for Creative Writing. Her work has been published in Poetry International, Indian Quarterly, Almost Island, Dusie, The Fabulist, and anthologies including Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing and The Penguin Book of Indian Poets.

Poet and dramatist Michael Madhusudan Dutt was born in Bengal, India. He studied several languages and was well-versed in English and European literature. In 1861, Dutt published the epic poem Meghnadbadh Kabya, which is, perhaps, his most famous work. Between 1858 and 1874, Dutt penned at least nine plays, including three translations. He is known for his experimentation with verse forms, introducing blank verse in Bengali literature and the sonnet in Bengali—through a reconstruction of both Petrarchan and Shakespearean forms.

Links:

Read "Glass House--Anthropocene" and "That I exist only as a speck on your bloodshot eyes but I am willing to sweat"

Read "Sonnets" by Michael Madhusudan Dutt

Monica Mody's website

"What Was Alive" at Yes Poetry

Interview with Mody at Poetry Mini Interviews

Mody reads from Ordinary Annals at Periodicities' Virtual Reading Series (Video)

"Homing Instinct" at The Other Side of Hope

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Executive Director for Sundress Publications and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. Her third full-length poetry collection, Down, was released in 2020 by Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Guernica, Ecotone, Mid-American, Tupelo Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, and Willow Springs, among others. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and is now a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Tennessee. She is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Links:

Read "Alice Gives Advice to Dorothy"

Read "February in Knoxville" and other poems by Smith at Menacing Hedge

Erin Elizabeth Smith's page at Sundress Publications

Two poems by Erin Elizabeth Smith at The Los Angeles Review

Three poems by Erin Elizabeth Smith at The Superstition Review

"Plating the Poem, Reclaiming the Story: A Conversation with Erin Elizabeth Smith"

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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Bernard Clay was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and he spent most of his childhood and high school years there. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Kentucky, and he is a member of the Affrilachian Poets collective. His work has been published in Appalachian Heritage, The Limestone Review, Blackbone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets, and various other journals and anthologies. His book English Lit was published by Old Cove/Swallow Press in 2021. He lives on a farm in eastern Kentucky with his wife Lauren Kallmeyer, an herbalist who serves as the director of Kentucky Heartwood's Forest Council.

Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr. was born on February 2, 1861, in Bardstown, Kentucky, and he died in Lousiville, Kentucky in 1949. When he was just eight years old, he had to leave school to help support his family. At the age of 22, Cotter returned to his formal education and eventually served for more than fifty years as a teacher and administrator in several Louisville schools. In 1891, he married Maria F. Cox; they had three children, including his eldest son, Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr., who was also a talented poet and playwright. According to Oxford Reference, Joseph Cotter Sr. provided an important “voice during one of the most difficult eras of African American history, and he was a man who backed his words with action in building the African American community.”

Links:

Read "Mr. Nap's Fight" and "Appalachian Smitten"

Read "Dr. Booker T. Washington to the National Negro Business League"

Bernard Clay

Bernard Clay's website

English Lit reviewed in Southern Review of Books

Bernard Clay reading at the historic Western Library of the Louisville Free Public Library

Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr.

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Bio and Bibliography at the Carnegie Center--Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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Just in time for Halloween! GennaRose Nethercott reads two spooky entries from the imagined bestiary 50 Beasts to Break Your Heart.

GennaRose Nethercott is a writer and folklorist. Her work has appeared in The American Scholar, Bomb Magazine, Pank, The Literary Review, and others. Her first book, The Lumberjack’s Dove, was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series, and her debut novel—the modern fairytale Thistlefoot—was published last month. She tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow) and composing poems-to-order on an antique typewriter with her team The Traveling Poetry Emporium.

Links:

Read "Yune" and "Yslani," along with other entries from 50 Beasts to Break Your Heart, at Bomb

GennaRose Nethercott's website

GennaRose Nethercott on All Things Considered

"Three Poems" at Pank

Thistlefoot reviewed in Kirkus Reviews

The Lumberjack’s Dove reviewed in Berkely Fiction Review

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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Juan R. Palomo is the author of Al Norte (Alabrava Press 2021). Born in Grafton, North Dakota to migrant-worker parents, Palomo grew up in South Texas and several midwestern states. He received a bachelor’s degree in art education from Texas State University and a master’s in journalism and public affairs from American University. He was a reporter, columnist, and editorial writer for The Houston Post; he covered religion for the Austin American-Statesman; and he wrote a column for USA TODAY. His poems have appeared in The Acentos Review, The Sonora Review, The Account, and others.

Links:

Read "The Day They Do Not Show Up" and "Life & Death in Marathon, Texas"

juanzqui: Views and Ramblings by Juan Ramon Palomo

“Al Norte by Juan R. Palomo is an Homage to a Family Drifting in Colors” by Anthony Isaac Bradley in Infarrealista Review

“Speed Queen, North Dakota 1983” and “Noise” at Acentos Review  

“A Shy One” and “His Future” at The Account

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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Andrea Carter Brown was born in Paterson, New Jersey. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Mississippi Review, and many others. She is the author of September 12, which recently won the 2022 IPPY Silver Medal in Poetry from the Independent Publishers Group. Her other titles include the The Disheveled Bed, Domestic Karma, and Brook & Rainbow. Her poems have won the Five Points James Dickey Prize, the River Styx International Poetry Prize, and the PSA Gustav Davidson Memorial Prize. She was a founding editor of the poetry journal Barrow Street, and, since 2017, she has been Series Editor of The Word Works Washington Prize.

John Keats, one of the greatest of the Romantic Poets, was born October 31, 1795 in London. He published just three volumes before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25. Some of his poems are among the most anthologized in the 20th Century, including “To Autumn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

Links:

Read “After the Disaster: Fragments,” “Ars Poetica,” “To the Dust,” and other poems at andrea carterbrown.com

Read "When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be" by John Keats

Andrea Carter Brown

“An Interview with Andrea Carter Brown"

September 12 book launch

Brown’s poem "The Rock in the Glen” featured in an episode of Poems on Air

“Poet Mary Mackey Interviews Poet Andrea Carter Brown”

John Keats

Bio and poems at Poets.org

Bio and articles on John Keats at the British Library

“The Cockney Romantics: John Keats and His Friends,” a lecture by Johnathan Bate

Mentioned in this episode:

KnoxCountyLibrary.org

Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.

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