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 ManningEight Bucolics in VQRBucolics XXII, XXXV, and LVIII at Art and TheologyBio and poems at the Poetry FoundationArticle in Garden & GunInterview at PlumeManning reading at the Sewanee Writer's Conference (Video)Mentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

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 EyesBrief Interview and more at Omnidawn Press Bio and poems at Poets.orgBio and poems at the Poetry FoundationReadings, Talks, Q&As, and Lectures at PennSoundHejinian's books reviewed by Publishers WeeklyMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

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 JournalRead "The Collar” and "Still Dark"Jim MinickJim Minick’s website "Why Birds" at Salvation South"Whale Light" at The Ekphrastic Review  "Good Dirt" and "Stress Test" at CutleafWithout Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas at Bison BooksRobert FrostBio and poems at Poets.orgBio and Poems at The Poetry Foundation's websiteMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

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 DuttMonica Mody's website"What Was Alive" at Yes PoetryInterview with Mody at Poetry Mini InterviewsMody reads from Ordinary Annals at Periodicities' Virtual Reading Series (Video) "Homing Instinct" at The Other Side of HopeMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

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 HedgeErin Elizabeth Smith's page at Sundress PublicationsTwo poems by Erin Elizabeth Smith at The Los Angeles ReviewThree 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.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

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 ClayBernard Clay's websiteEnglish Lit reviewed in Southern Review of Books Bernard Clay reading at the historic Western Library of the Louisville Free Public LibraryJoseph Seamon Cotter Sr. Bio and poems at Poets.orgBio and Bibliography at the Carnegie Center--Kentucky Writers Hall of FameMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

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 BombGennaRose Nethercott's websiteGennaRose Nethercott on All Things Considered"Three Poems" at PankThistlefoot reviewed in Kirkus Reviews The Lumberjack’s Dove reviewed in Berkely Fiction ReviewMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

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 AccountMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

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.comRead "When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be" by John KeatsAndrea 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.orgBio and articles on John Keats at the British Library “The Cockney Romantics: John Keats and His Friends,” a lecture by Johnathan BateMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

Linda Parsons holds a BA and an MA in English from the University of Tennessee. She's the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. Parsons has published poems in The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, The Chattahoochee Review, Southern Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, and Shenandoah, among others. Her fifth poetry collection is Candescent, which was published by Iris Press in 2019. She has received grants from the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Knoxville Arts Council, was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2011, and she’s won the Tennessee Writers Alliance award in poetry, among other awards and honors.William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was born in Dublin, Ireland. In addition to writing poetry, Yeats was also a playwright; he wrote 26 plays that were performed by the Irish Literary Theatre. He was politically outspoken, and, beginning in 1922, he served six years as a senator in the Irish Free State. He’s considered by many to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. LinksRead "Midsummer"Read "Everywhere and Nowhere at Once"Read "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"Linda ParsonsCandescent at Iris PressBio and poems at the Poetry FoundationTwo poems at Terrain.org"Therapy Dog" at Verse DailyTwo poems at Vox PopuliWilliam Butler YeatsBio and poems at the Poetry FoundationBio and poems at Poets.orgHear more W.B. Yeats poems at The Poetry ArchiveMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

Matthew Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s the author of Daniel Boone's Window and All the Great Territories. Wimberley has won the Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book Award, the Weatherford Award, the William Matthews Prize, and his work was chosen for the 2016 Best New Poets Anthology. He's an Assistant Professor of English at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina.  Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York City. He's best known as the author of novels like Moby Dick and White-Jacket, along with short fiction including “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno.” However, Melville spent decades writing poetry exclusively, and critics have ranked him, alongside Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, as one of the best poets of the 19th century.   Links: Read "And So It Ends with the Cry of a Nuthatch on the First Day of Spring"Read "Shiloh: A Requiem"Matthew Wimberley"The Celebrated Colors of the Local Sunsets" at Poets.org“Tabula Rasa” in Rattle“Elegy at Night” in The Paris-American Three poems in BlackbirdFour poems in Narrative“’If There Is Anything to Show You:’ An Interview with Matthew Wimberley”Herman Melville Bio and poems at Poetryfoundation.orgBio and poems at Poets.org“Herman Melville: American Author" at Britannica.com”"Herman Melville at Home" in The New YorkerMusic is by Chad CrouchMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

Amelia Martens is the author of four chapbooks and the full-length collection The Spoons in the Grass are There to Dig a Moat. Her work has appeared in The Indianapolis Review, Cream City Review, Diode, Southern Humanities Review, Plume, Southern Indiana Review, and many others. She serves as the Associate Literary Editor for Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art and she co-curates the Rivertown Reading Series in Paducah, Kentucky. Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was born near St. Louis, Missouri, raised in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and she graduated from Bryn Mawr College. Early on, she worked as a schoolteacher and as an assistant at The New York Public Library. From 1925 to 1929, she was the editor of The Dial, an influential literary magazine. Her Collected Poems, published in 1951, won the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Links: Read "The Apology" and "The Secret Lives of Cows"Read "A Jelly-Fish"Amelia MartensAmelia Martens’ website“Amelia Martens, a Natural Born Poet,” Something from Nothing podcast at WKMS  Four poems at The American Journal of PoetryTwo poems at Plume Two poems at DiodeThree poems at Tenderbox Marianne MoorePoems and bio at the Poetry Foundation's website Poems and bio at Poets.org“In Praise of the Difficult: On Marianne Moore, Defiant Poet of Complexity” at LitHub"NYPL's Marianne Moore: Writing Her Way Onto the Shelves" at NYPL.orgMarianne Moore documentary from the Voices and Visions series (on YouTube)Music is by Chad Crouch.Mentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

Ashley M. Jones is Alabama's first African American Poet Laureate, and she's also the youngest. Her books are Magic City Gospel, dark // thing, and REPARATIONS NOW! She teaches creative writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and also at the Low Residency MFA program at Converse University.Phillis Wheatley Peters was abducted in West Africa and brought to Boston where she was sold as a slave when she was around seven year old. Her first and only book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773. She was in poor health for most of her life, and she died in her early thirties. According to the Smithsonian Institute, she was the “first American slave, the first person of African descent, and only the third colonial American woman to have her work published.”Links:Read the poemsThink of a Marvelous Thing / It’s the Same as Having Wings at Inspicio Arts"Harriet Tubman Crosses the Mason-Dixon for the First Time" at Oxford American"On Being Brought from Africa to America" at poets.orgAshley M. JonesAshley M. Jones’ websiteJones’ Bio and Poems at the Poetry Foundation “Alabama's First Black Poet Laureate Takes A Personal Approach To 'Reparations” on NPRInterview with Ashley M. Jones at The Reckon“How to Become a Poet: A Conversation with Ashley M. Jones” at The RumpusPhillis Wheatley PetersBio and Poems at the Poetry Foundation “The Multiple Truths in the Works of Enslaved Poet Phillis Wheatley” by Drea BrownPhillis Wheatley Historical SocietyWheatley’s Bio and Poems at Massachusetts Historical Society Collections OnlineMusic is by Chad Crouch.Rate & review on Podchaser Mentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank 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.Rate & review on Podchaser

Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, stories, novels, essays, translations, and plays. She has won The Pushcart Prize, The Fence Modern Poets Series Award, and The Leslie Scalapino Prize for Innovative Women Performance Artists. With Carmen Maria Machado, she was the guest editor of Best American Experimental Writing 2020. With Johannes Göransson, she co-edits the international press Action Books and teaches at the University of Notre Dame.Links:Read today’s poem at BOMB: “Two Poems by Joyelle McSweeney”Joyelle McSweeney’s Website Bio and Poems at the Poetry FoundationPoems at Poets.org “Kingdom” in The New York Times Magazine“Joyelle McSweeney’s Poetry of Catastrophe” in The New Yorker “A Poetry Reading by Joyelle McSweeney in conversation with David Baker and Kendra Sullivan” Action Books, Edited by McSweeney And Johannes Göransson

Janet McAdams is the author of the novel Red Weather and the poetry collections Feral and The Island of Lost Luggage, which won an American Book Award. Her chapbook of prose poems Seven Boxes for the Country After won the Wick Chapbook competition and was published in 2016. She teaches at Kenyon College, where she is the Robert P. Hubbard Chair in Poetry.Links:Read "Thanatoptic"Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation"Lie" at Poem-a-DayInterview at Shenandoah’s website"______and the Elders” at Southern Humanities Review

Jesse Graves is a Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at East Tennessee State University. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, and other literary magazines and anthologies. He has published four books of poetry and his book Said-Songs: Essays on Poetry and Place is forthcoming from Mercer University Press in 2022. Graves received his PhD in English from the University of Tennessee and his MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. He has won the Book of the Year in Poetry Award from the Appalachian Writers’ Association and the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing.Links:Read "In a Familiar City" and "Sage Grass Brushing Against My Shins"Jesse Graves’ websiteInterview with Linda Parsons at Chapter 16YouTube reading through West Virginia Wesleyan MFA Program Summer Reading Series A collection of Jesse Grave’s poems available online Poet-to-Poet Interview: A Conversation with Jesse Graves and Rita Sims Quillen, hosted by Johnson City Public Library

Bruce Alford’s work has appeared in the African American Review, Imagination & Place Press, The Comstock Review, and elsewhere. He teaches poetry at Louisiana State University. Before working in academia, he was an inner-city missionary and journalist.Links:Read "from Alford's Devotional"Bruce Alford’s websitePoems at SickLit “Perfect” at Storm CellarReview of Terminal Switching at Alabama Writers Forum

Robert Penn Warren is primarily known as the author of the great American novel All the King’s Men, but he’s also a well-respected poet, and was the USA’s first Poet Laureate. He grew up in Guthrie, KY, and then crossed the state line to go to high school in Clarksville, TN. In 1921, he began his studies at Vanderbilt University and joined a group of poets who called themselves the Fugitives. He went on to publish over 40 books, and he is the only writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry.Links:Read "Vision" and other poems by Robert Penn Warren at Poets.orgBiography and poems at the Poetry FoundationOnline Resources (Library of Congress Web Guide)

Chris Tonelli is a founding editor of the independent poetry press Birds, LLC; co-director of the NC Book Festival; and author of five chapbooks and two full-length collections of poetry, most recently Whatever Stasis (Barrelhouse Books, 2018). He works in the Libraries at NC State and is the co-owner of So & So Books in downtown Raleigh, where he lives with his wife, Allison, and two kids, Miles and Vera.Other Links:Read "Wide Bird" and "Pluto" by Chris TonelliBio and links at Birds, LLCInterview at NaPoWriMo.netfrom “A Test of Company” at poets.org

Adelaide Crapsey is best known as the inventor of the American cinquain. She was born in 1878 in Brooklyn, NY, and she grew up in Rochester. In 1903, she began to show symptoms of tuberculosis which would eventually take her life in 1914. In spite of her illness, Crapsey attended the American Academy’s School of Classical Study in Rome, and then eventually returned to the U.S. to teach at Smith College. Shortly after her death, her first book of poems was published. It was called simply Verse.Links:Read "Amaze" and "Niagra" by Adelaide CrapseyBio and poems at the Poetry Foundation's website Adelaide Crapsey at Poets.org Cinquain.org