The title of Ross Gay’s poem “Within Two Weeks the African American Poet Ross Gay is Mistaken for Both the African American Poet Terrance Hayes and the African American Poet Kyle Dargan, Not One of Whom Looks Anything Like the Others” recalls the kind of clarity Billy Collins found refreshing in reading Chinese poetry. Unlike […]
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Being Huffy with Henry: A CloseRead of the First “Dream Song”
This is not my first rodeo with John Berryman’s Dream Songs, but I feel like I have much more of an appreciation on how to read them. Upon reflection of how to do an explication of the first of them, “Dream Song 1,” I became hesitant; is it appropriate to do a close reading of a […]
Following Ginsberg Following Whitman: CloseReading “A Supermarket in California”
The first two things that are immediately apparent in Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” both relate to form. One is that the lines are long, with no stanza, if the groups of lines may be called that before each break, shorter than two actual lines on the page. In fact, upon editing this close […]