by Jacob Sunderlin, contributing editor If you needed more than the existence of Siri to prove that we’re living in Back to the Future Part II, you got it the other day in the weirdo shitstorm of Yahoo! News-commissioned inaugural poems. I’m too dumbstruck to say whether or not the existence of “Obama in Asheville” … Continue reading A Weirdo Smattering of Inaugural Internet Poetry
Tag: Jacob Sunderlin
Stuff To Buy If You’re A Soldier In The War On The War On Christmas: Literary Gift Ideas For Specific Kinds Of People From Sycamore’s Editors
By Jacob Sunderlin, Rosalie Moffett, Conor Broughan, and Matt Kilbane BOOK FOR A CRATE-DIGGING VINYL SNOB How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life (2000) by John Fahey Drag City Books, $15.00 Do you have one of those uncles who has more square-footage of used records than he has money in the bank? Does he sometimes wonder … Continue reading Stuff To Buy If You’re A Soldier In The War On The War On Christmas: Literary Gift Ideas For Specific Kinds Of People From Sycamore’s Editors
Someone Worth Your Time: The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard
by Jacob Sunderlin There should be a class required for everyone getting an MFA called “How to Be an American Artist and Stay Human” and the textbook should be The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard. In this volume, put out by Library of America (which means that Joe Brainard is—yes—set alongside Thomas Jefferson and Emerson, … Continue reading Someone Worth Your Time: The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard
“Nod never was a nation”: James Arthur and the Poetics of Travel
by Jacob Sunderlin There is a particular brand of travel poetry—marked by the cataloguing of sensual spices, exotic flora, and the sitting-in-an-outdoor-café speaker marking the wrinkles in streetperson hands—that I feel is my solemn duty to despise. Doubtless, this comes from the deep well of psychic gloop I swam in during college, writing undergrad papers … Continue reading “Nod never was a nation”: James Arthur and the Poetics of Travel
Music for the Writing Life
By Rosalie Moffett, Blog Editor Recent graduate of the Purdue MFA program, and previous Sycamore Review poetry editor, Jacob Sunderlin, shares some insight about 1) the solitude of writing, and 2) the music to fill it with. Here is the dispatch from his first day at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he … Continue reading Music for the Writing Life
“There isn’t a revelation”: An Interview with Ryan Teitman
by Jacob Sunderlin, co-editor of poetry Listen up: Ryan Teitman is writing the kind of poems you sometimes hear about but rarely see, poems in which the usual becomes unusual. He’s going places, and was kind enough to correspond with me via email about his exciting new poem “Viola, Bound" from the forthcoming issue of Sycamore … Continue reading “There isn’t a revelation”: An Interview with Ryan Teitman
“Put some blood in the letter”: An Interview with Weston Cutter
by Jacob Sunderlin, Co-Editor of Poetry Like every beer drinker with a couple folders of poems, I just got back from AWP. Happy to report that I am operational, minus brain cells. Among the learnable things at such a venue as AWP: how many people there are running around writing poetry and fiction. Weston Cutter … Continue reading “Put some blood in the letter”: An Interview with Weston Cutter
A Poem by Weston Cutter
by Jacob Sunderlin, Co-Editor of Poetry Weston Cutter is from Minnesota, is the author of the book of stories You’d Be a Stranger, Too, has had work recently inForklift, OH and the Kenyon Review, and is an assistant professor at the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne, IN. His poem “If Not River” is … Continue reading A Poem by Weston Cutter
“surrounded by cannibals who are nice”: Ron Padgett is cooler than you
by Jacob Sunderlin, Co-Editor of Poetry Ron Padgett, poet, author of some twenty volumes, memoirist, collaborator, badass, septuagenarian, translator, Okie, grandfather, has earned himself the right to start a poem thusly: There’s not a lot of time to think when one is assailed by activities and obligations and even less time to do it when … Continue reading “surrounded by cannibals who are nice”: Ron Padgett is cooler than you
“the past, the color pink”: An Interview with David Trinidad
by Jacob Sunderlin, Co-Editor of Poetry When I was seventeen, I ganked the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry from the public library and found three poems by David Trinidad anthologized between Bob Kaufman and Woody Guthrie. This was—to my mind—pretty much the coolest thing ever. In his newly-published and completely-addictive Dear Prudence: New and Selected … Continue reading “the past, the color pink”: An Interview with David Trinidad
