‘No one in my family is surprised to find me putting the waffle iron away on a different shelf because in my story it has quarreled with the toaster, and if I left them together they might come to blows …’
Read articlePhillip B. Williams reforms worlds in ‘Mutiny’
Nationally awardwinning poet Phillip B. Williams has published his newest book, moving through a space where myth and story and lived experience charge the air — a place of persistence, anger and beauty.
Read articleNorth Bennington sculpture livens a country town
A man is standing on the platform, looking at his watch — waiting for a train that hasn’t come in 50 years. By the historic station around the corner from the feed store, he’s a sculpture in the North Bennington Outdoor Sculpture Show.
Read articleRoss Gay’s ‘Unabashed Gratitude’ surges with life
On a spring night in Bloomington, Indiana, Ross Gay is planting young lettuces. Winter has hung on so long, a warm evening feels new — to stand barefoot in a troweled furrow with the air smelling of earth and stems, and peels in the compost pile.
Read articlePhillip B. Williams — Love and sadness in free verse
Bound, it begins. ‘Wasn’t night what lingered where sweat left / salt, where breath touch-expired?’ Bound is the title of the first poem in Phillip B. Williams ‘Thief in the Interior,’ a book that opens with confinement and insistent motion and closes with a movement outward into a changed life.
Read articleCharles Simic hones poetry with spectacle and attention
A man drops his glasses and staggers away, singing — or straps on an accordion to leap a waterfall. Vivid scenes condense here on a spring night, when Charles Simic reads his poetry at Bennington College.
Read article‘Losing Afghanistan’ — Bennington professor releases new book
Istalif is a mountain village known for hand-glazed pottery and fruit trees. It sits north of Kabul on the Shomali desert plain in Afghanistan. Ten years ago Noah Coburn came here for the first time.
Read article