Making a case for what he terms “liquid poetics,” Hayes suggests that great art comes from the ability to stay loose, to change tacks, to shape shift in response to these shifting, mysterious factors. Hayes’ sustained emphasis on personal poetics as both liquid and descendant creates a way for his readers (colleagues, family, fans) to find themselves within the fluctuating matrix he proposes.
This sensuous, image-rich poem engages with the pleasures of driving down back roads, as it marvels at the passage of time and the body’s relationship to the landscape that shapes it.
Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: This poem starts off deceptively simply, with a description of rooms and circumstances—a clean fridge, “intact” window blinds, and money in the bank.
Alison Carey: The opening act of Dan O’Brien’s latest play, Newtown, is heartbreaking and nauseating: Nancy Lanza is speaking to her son, Adam, the night before he kills her and then twenty-six children and staff at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School…
We’re given an alienating, bug-eating premise, placed in an effete literary space and positioned at odds with the whole stiff scene (uncomfortable shoes, Wordsworth’s snobbery, the “man, suited and tied”, etc.). Then, suddenly, we are steeped in a rich, compelling argument about Western exceptionalism…
How can language be used to express the limits of language? In Laura Grothaus’s “Also Milk,” Luca reveals to the speaker that her mother’s losing language. “She calls everything milk. / Ketchup is milk. Water is milk.”
