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In Their Own Words
Interviews and detail with the leading poets of today.
Jennifer Hayashida on “Chronology”
There is a story from when I was a small child and lived in Oakland, California, the city where I was born. One day, according to my mother, I disappeared, and my parents searched for me everywhere, inside the house and in the surrounding neighborhood. Supposedly, they searched for hours. They eventually found me sitting in a walk-in closet, behind some piece of furniture. I now have children of my own, and often wonder about a child's ability to remain still and quiet for so long.
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Emily Sieu Liebowitz on “I Am Always Leaving to Gather the News”
The title is taken from an Andre Breton poem, and I've sat with that line for a long time. The poem is in some ways a response to that line, an examination of the individual and the collective, and how events, lives, and people turn into news, history, and narrative.
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Joseph O. Legaspi on “This Town, Empty Nest”
A poet, at times, is the last person to know or to know how to talk about his poems. So, it starts often with the declarative for me, an insistence. With this poem it is a banishment: there are no children here. What a lonesome, futureless place of absence and ghostly laughter.
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