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10 Questions for Kevin Prufer

November 2, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

Severalancient skulls unearthed in Ethiopia
with butchery marks around the eye sockets and occipital bones

It's called "pot polishing"—

A sign that bones have been boiled for reasons of cookery—
—from "Cannibalism," Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was about eight years old, I wrote a long story about a penguin who, one sunny day, wakes to find that his iceberg has floated far out to sea and is quickly melting. He has all sorts of adventures—with pirates, tourists, another lost penguin—trying always to get back to the South Pole. But I don’t think that’s what you mean by a “first” piece. My first serious...

10 Questions for Pam Baggett

October 22, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

Outside my mother's bedroom window
in the memory care unit, sparrows
and Carolina chickadees play hide-and-seek
in holly bushes lit with winter's red berries.
—from "Stripes," Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem I wrote was about standing by the pond at dawn watching a beaver quietly backstroke as sunrise turned October’s gold-leaved hickories briefly pink. The poem was probably terrible. When I got news later that day that my beloved uncle had died at that very hour of a heart attack, it seemed as if someone had handed me poetry and said, “Here, you’re going to need this.” Four years later, my first published poems appeared...

10 Questions for Christopher Schmidt

October 15, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

Aristotle imagined that red occured when "luminous transparency is covered by a thin burning smoke." In California, in the Amazon, wherever forest fires spread, visions of a red future multiply. "With all the dust and smoke in the air, the world will begin to look different," writes one reporter.
—from "Fugitive Reds," Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In college I wrote a poem about the oboe. Or perhaps it was a poem that used the oboe as a metaphor. Clearly, the poem itself was trash. What remains indelible to me is the word I lifted—daedal—from a then unpublished poem by Elizabeth Bishop. As transgressions go, it’s mild stuff. Yet...

10 Questions for Carly Joy Miller

October 8, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

Meanness is not the only way to access it.

I grew adjacent to Christ: knew him purely by name and sight (limbs on the patibulum)

The crossbar—the patibulum—is an incorrect representation.
—from "A Humility Essay," Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My second-grade teacher let me continue writing a Space Jam fan fiction after craft time was over! I also wrote Sailor Moon fan fiction in my early middle school years. And for poems, I remember an orange notebook I would carry with me—lots of song lyrics, flowers and investigating my feelings a la Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”

What writer(s) or works have...

10 Questions for Alex Mouw

October 1, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

The manatee's strangest feature is she's always
working, seven straight ruminant hours pawing

shallow floors for mangrove leaves and pickerel weed.
Even sleeping half the day, each quarter hour
—from "Anxiety Medication," Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In elementary school I wrote a story about a kid who gets lost at a candy store inside a strip mall. I don’t remember much else about it, but surely it was harrowing and sugary, and probably a troll was involved.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I’m a serial imitator, so I can’t read a book of poems without trying to copy that person, mostly...