Today's show features poet Lesley Wheeler, and her wonderful new book of poems, Mycocosmic. It’s a fascinating book both in its individual poems and in its overall assembly. It takes us under the earth to the mycelia below, and under the skin to the heart inside.

Lesley Wheeler’s previous poetry collections include The State She’s In, Radioland, The Receptionist, Heterotopia, and Propagation. She has also published the novel Unbecoming and and a collection of essays, Poetry’s Possible Worlds. Wheeler edits poetry for the literary magazine Shenandoah and teaches at Washington & Lee University. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Breadloaf, and the Sewanee Writers Conference.

Pick up a copy of Mycocosmic here.

Read more about Wheeler here.

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Today on the show we have poet Christian Teresi, talking about his new book, What Monsters You Make of Them, recently published by Red Hen Press. Teresi has published poems in AGNI, The American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Blackbird, and many other places. He has also translated Book 7 of Nonnus of Panopolis’s Dionysiaca, the longest surviving text from Ancient Greece, as a part of a collection from several translators. His work has been supported by a fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He holds degrees from Binghamton University and George Mason University.

Pick up a copy of What Monsters Your Make of Them here.

Read more about Teresi here.

Content note: There is a mention of suicide in the episode.

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On the show is poet Ava Nathaniel Winter, whose new book, her first full-length collection, is the National Poetry Series–winning Transgenesis.

Winter has also published the chapbook, Safe House, and her work has appeared in The Baffler, Beloit Poetry Journal,Poetry International, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She served as a Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University and now teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the department of English and the women’s and gender studies program.

Pick up a copy of Transgenesis here.

Read more about Winter here.

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I’ve always loved the poem "Year's End" by Richard Wilbur, and it is of course a great choice for the last day of the year, so here’s a short episode on this amazing poem. Wishing you all a wonderful New Year's Eve, and a great year to come!

Richard Wilbur, twice-winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, was the author of eleven collections of poetry, and was also the second Poet Laureate of the United States.

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In time for your holiday travels, here is a new episode to cue up! Today, Abbie Kiefer talks about her new book, Certain Shelter, which focuses on the loss of her mother and the loss of her home, a Maine mill town. We also talk about the poet, E.A. Robinson. Happy Thanksgiving!

Besides Certain Shelter, Kiefer is the author of the chapbook Brief Histories. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other places. She is on the staff of The Adroit Journal and lives in New Hampshire.

Pick up a copy of Certain Shelter here.

Read more about Abbie Kiefer.

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Today on the show is Carl Phillips, whose new book, Scattered Snows, to the North, has recently been published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US and Carcanet in the UK, where it has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Phillips' previous book, Then the War and Selected Poems, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In total, Phillips has published 17 books of poetry and three prose volumes. His work has earned him many awards and accolades besides the Pulitzer, including the 2021 Jackson Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Award.

Pick up a copy of Scattered Snows, to the North here. (Want the British version? Here you go.)

Read more about Carl Phillips.

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Today's guest is Matthew Buckley Smith, whose new book, Midlife, won the 2021 Richard Wilbur Poetry Award, and is out from Measure Press. He is also the author of Dirge for an Imaginary World, which won the 2011 Able Muse Book Award. His poems and stories have appeared in AGNI, American Life in Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best American Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Fairy Tale Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, Subtropics, and Threepenny Review.

He also hosts a terrific podcast of his own—Sleerickets—a podcast about “poetry and other intractable problems” as he calls it. It’s a smart and in-depth look at poetry and the poetry world and is absolutely worth giving a listen to.

Pick up a copy of Midlife here.

Read more about Matthew Buckley Smith.

Listen to Sleerickets. (Also, subscribe to the Secret Show!)

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A new sidebar edition! This week I read and discuss Barbara Jordan's poem "The Discovery Room," from her book, Channel. Jordan only published two books of poems, and they are excellent. What happened to her, why she stopped writing, or publishing, is a bit of a mystery. Do you know Jordan's work? Do you have clues as to her whereabouts? I'd love to know. Send me a note, please!

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