Blog / 10 Questions

10 Questions for Adrienne Su

October 7, 2019 - By Emily Wojcik

Photo by Guy Freeman.

“It doesn’t have to be unfeminist
to carry them across the bridge

if you meant to spend the morning
this way, and know he’s savoring

the gesture (and will wash the bowl). . . .“—from “Across the Bridge Noodles,” Volume 60, Issue 3 (Fall 2019)
 

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem I remember writing was about a rose, although I had no interest in roses. I was seven and thought poems had to be about revered objects. Luckily I got over that early.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
High-school Latin gave me an awareness of meter, a love of form, and a...

10 Questions for Allison Kade

October 1, 2019 - By Emily Wojcik

“In Long Island, I prepared to do a mitzvah. My breakdancing crew didn’t ask me about the bombing in Dallas yesterday—the news more front-page than the San Diego ICE raids or the Dominican kid shot in the Bronx last weekend. Just as I didn’t ask which of my boys were undocumented. Maybe they were all citizens; maybe I was a racist. I was the token white boy in their b-boy crew—me and an Asian girl brought the diversity. Yet because I was Jewish I threatened the racial superiority of those Dallas skin-heads, their bald heads crackling in the Texas heat like pork rinds.” —from “Doing a Mitzbah,” Volume 60, Issue 3 (Fall 2019)
 ...

10 Questions for Robert Evory

September 16, 2019 - By Catherine Fox

“My dream awakens after sleep. I cannot swear
these are my hands. The night is probing the air
for bodies asking a little grace from the watery moon.”
—from “Trying to Pray,” Volume 60, Issue 2 (Summer 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
As an undergraduate I took a class with Mary Ruefle. On the first day of class she asked a similar question and requested we bring in that early poem. I brought one in that used an image of a fly as an extended metaphor for love or being jaded about relationships or something. The point of the exercise was to note how our vocabulary and subject matter has changed from the time of our first poem. Many years later, when I got married, I realized...

9 Questions for Adam J. Sorkin

September 13, 2019 - By Christin Howard

“When I shook hands with him
his hand remained in my hand
that’s how he is, generous, I told myself
 as I tried to get rid of his warm hand
that grasped my own ever more tightly” —From "Two Snails Stuck to My Cheeks," by Matei Visniec, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Lidia Vianu, Summer 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 2)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
I never imagined myself a translator...

10 Questions for Lidia Vianu

September 10, 2019 - By Christin Howard

“it’s true that we’d been very close
but never did I imagine that
I’d see him flayed right before my eyes
with his heart tumbling down to my feet
just because we were going to say goodbye” —From "Two Snails Stuck to My Cheek," by Matei Visniec, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Lidia Vianu, Summer 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 2)

 Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
It was Joyce Carol Oates, followed by Joseph Conrad, Mirror of the Sea.

The former was—miraculously, for communist times in Romania—published in our then best world literature magazine. It was my one-time publication before 1990.  The latter took some twenty years to go to print...