The Poet Salon The Poet Salon

O hi there, it's us, The Poet Salon, back in your ears with our third season—and what a season it is! 
We're kicking things off with the incomparable Ada Limón. After some quick updates from us, we discuss the virtues of poetic "play" before conversing with the one-and-only Ada about the human condition, carrying grief, and Kentucky.
ADA LIMÓN, a current Guggenheim fellow, is the author of five poetry collections, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her fourth book Bright Dead Things was named a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
JANUARY GIMLET: a bright, easy-to-mix cocktail with gin, cranberry juice, and lime.

Friends—here we are. Here you are. Here's Ada Limón reading Wanda Coleman's "Requiem for a Nest." It is almost certainly the record for times we thought we were done with the conversation and Luther realized he had more to say about the poem. Enjoy. We did—we serenely and delusionally did.
ADA LIMÓN, a current Guggenheim fellow, is the author of five poetry collections, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her fourth book Bright Dead Things was named a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
WANDA COLEMAN grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. During her lifetime she worked as a medical secretary, magazine editor, journalist, and Emmy Award-winning scriptwriter before turning to poetry. Her poetry collections include Mercurochrome: New Poems (2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; Bathwater Wine (Black Sparrow Press, 1998), which received the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Native in a Strange Land: Trials & Tremors (1996); Hand Dance (1993); African Sleeping Sickness (1990); Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories 1968-1986 (1988); and Imagoes (1983). She also wrote the books Jazz and Twelve O'Clock Tales: New Stories (2008), Mambo Hips & Make Believe: A Novel (Black Sparrow Press, 1999), and A War of Eyes and Other Stories (1988). Coleman lived in Los Angeles until her death on November 22, 2013.

Lovely loves, we went on a panda break but we're back now with our latest drop: a conversation with the inimitable Tommye Blount on color, order and desire.


TOMMYE BLOUNTE grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College. He is the author of the poetry collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue (2020) and the chapbook What Are We Not For (2016). Blount has been awarded scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Cave Canem, and Kresge Arts. He lives in Novi, Michigan.


PELEGRINO WITH LIME. 

What's good, baby. We're back for the second part of our conversation with esteemed Tommye Blount. For us today, Tommy brought Spencer Reece's "Interlude," a short poem that imagines, does, asks so, so much.


TOMMYE BLOUNTE grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College. He is the author of the poetry collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue (2020) and the chapbook What Are We Not For (2016). Blount has been awarded scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Cave Canem, and Kresge Arts. He lives in Novi, Michigan.


Born in Hartford, Connecticut, and raised in Minneapolis, SPENCER REECE is the son of a pathologist and a nurse. He earned a BA at Wesleyan University, an MA at the University of York, an MTS at Harvard Divinity School, and an MDiv at Yale Divinity School. He was ordained in the Episcopal Church in 2011. Reece’s debut collection of poetry, The Clerk’s Tale(2004), was chosen for the Bakeless Poetry Prize by Louise Glück and adapted into a short film by director James Franco. He is also the author of the collection The Road to Emmaus (2013), which was a longlist nominee for the National Book Award.

Today, we‘ve got for you the inimitable Carl Phillips, with whom we discussed syntax, abstracts, and the brassiest of tacks. Enjoy!

Frenz, as promised, here is Carl Phillips' reading our first-ever haiku on The Poet Salon, Kobayashi Issa's "[The world of dew]" or "On the Death of a Child." 
CARL PHILLIPS is the author of fourteen books of poetry, most recently Pale Colors in a Tall Field (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). He has won the Kingsley Tufts Award and been a finalist for the National Book Award. He currently teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.


Japanese poet KOBAYASHI ISSA, also known as Kobayashi Yataro and Kobayashi Nobuyuki, was born in Kashiwabara, Shinanao province. He eventually took the pen name Issa, which means “cup of tea” or, according to poet Robert Hass, “a single bubble in steeping tea.” Issa’s haiku are as attentive to the small creatures of the world—mosquitoes, bats, cats—as they are tinged with sorrow and an awareness of the nuances of human behavior. In addition to haiku, Issa wrote pieces that intertwined prose and poetry, including Journal of My Father’s Last Days and The Year of My Life.