I write poetry and criticism. I currently am involved in an extended collaborative project, writing poems inspired by Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions. My criticism has two main focuses: an investigation of hybrid poetry and poetics, and an effort to increase attention to poetic turns in the reading and writing of poetry. I am a contributing editor at Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, where I have published numerous essay-reviews on trends in contemporary American poetry. As a teacher, I value and promote active engagement and creative risk. When not immersed in the above, I watch movies, dabble with abstract painting, jog, bike, rock climb, and read and drink coffee at the Coffee Hound.
Essays
'One and One are One'... and Two: An Inquiry into Dickinson's Use of Mathematical Signs, The Emily Dickinson Journal (2001)
Books
Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns (2007)
Description from Amazon.com: Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns offers a road map for analyzing...
Contributions to Books
Dragonfruit vs. Dragonfruit: The Versus & the Verdict (with Matthew Guenette), The Versus Anthology (2009)
From Josh Woods, the editor: Let’s pick a fight. And not just any fight, let’s...
Ut pictura poesis: An Introduction to Surrealism Using Postcards and Pantoums, Third Mind: Creative Writing Through Visual Art (2002)
Poetry
Mr. Del Elsworth, a Claims Adjuster, Lived in North Dakota, Where He Tried To Figure OUt the Meanings of Some Well-Known Haiku, Pindeldyboz (2007)
Reviews, Review Essays & Extended Reviews
Impolitic: Kent Johnson's Radical Hybridity on Doubled Flowering: From the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada (Roof Books, 1997), Epigramititis: 118 Living American Poets (BlazeVOX, 2004), Lyric Poetry after Auschwitz: Eleven Submissions to the War (Effing Press, 2005), I Once Met (Longhouse, 2007), and Homage to the Last Avant-Garde (Shearsman Books, 2008), Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, volume 30, issue , pgs. 117-51. (2010)
The past twenty years in American poetry have given rise to middle space poetry, poetry—sometimes...
Contradictory Keats: A Review of Stanley Plumly's Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography, Pleaides, v. 29 (1), 2009; 122-128 (2009)
Missed Communication: Three New Anthologies on The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, Allegrezza & Bianchi, eds (Cracked Slab, 2007); Lyric Postmodernisms, Reginald Shepherd, ed. (Counterpath Press, 2008); & TriQuarterly #128, the “Ultra-Talk” issue, Hamby & Kirby, eds., Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, volume 29, issue 2, pgs. 186-212. (2009)
In “The Flexible Lyric” (from The Flexible Lyric; Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1999),...
Writing Degree ∞ (on Recent Haiku), Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, volume 28, issue 1, pgs. 137-58. (2008)
On the following: Hipster Haiku. Siobhan Adcock. Broadway Books, 2006. She Was Just Seventeen. Billy...
It Not Do Fall For: on The Paradelle, Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, volume 27, issue 1, pgs. 132-41. (2007)
With the invention of the paradelle form by poet Billy Collins and the furtherance of...