Elizabeth Jaeger, writing in The Literary Review about Gary Fincke’s book The Darkness Call (Pleiades Press, 2018):
“Sometimes it is too easy to observe history, science, and current events as separate from our personal lives.”
YZ Chin, in Singapore Unbound, reviewing Crystal Hana Kim’s If You Leave Me (HarperCollins, 2018):
We “would do well to remember that the devastation of war extends far beyond its supposed end.”
Thomas Davis, in The Huffington Post, speaking of poet Joseph Beam:
“We heal from sharing our stories and making sure they are not forgotten.”
Denise Duhamel, author of Blowout (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), interviewed by Julie Marie Wade, in The Rumpus:
“The “truth” is the poem itself. Just because someone writes a poem about a feeling she has does not mean that the feeling will stay forever. The truth of the emotion of the poem remains, even if the particular truth of the poet changes.”
L. Lamar Wilson, author of Sacreligion (Carolina Wren Press, 2013), interviewed by Abdul Ali in The Best American Poetry:
“Ninety-four percent of black women tried to save the soul of America on Nov. 8, 2016. White male terrorism, to which many white women & far too many black men & other people of color have pledged allegiance, found a way into the White House through the “electoral college,” the back-door entrance wealthy white men crafted into the Constitution to keep themselves in power.”
Darren Bifford, author of False Spring (Brick Books, 2018), interviewed in Open Book:
“I prefer the notion of a literary culture rather than a poetry community. … I think of poets in the way Wittgenstein characterized philosophers—as ‘citizens of no community’. We are beholden to our consciences solely, not to any collective.”
Heather Lang, writing in The Literary Review, about Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s Oceanic (Copper Canyon, 2018):
“… our moments in this world are not often binary, but typically both remarkable and messy.”
John Murillo, author of Up Jump the Boogie (Cypher Press, 2010), interviewed on the PEN website:
“I believe literature has the potential to make us more human. Poetry, drama, literary fiction, creative nonfiction—when done right—can show us exactly who we are and who we still might become. For better or worse.”
Jaime Shearn Coan, author of Lost and Found (Danspace Project, 2017), interviewed by Mariana Valencia in Movement Research:
“This is why working with archives is so crucial (and I am by no means the first to say so!). They are these time capsules that show us not just traces of individual lives but also the circulations and frictions between and among lives which constitute collective history.”