New episode with the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Carl Phillips. We discuss classical literature, poetry, and the relationship between art and truth. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did!

open.spotify.com/episode/5DBhk5…

I very much appreciated Noam Dworman and periel aschenbrand bringing me on to argue over whether the US should support Israel in their war in Gaza.

Viktor Shklovsky knows how to reel 'em in

In five minutes!

Seamus Heaney: “Tom Sleigh’s poetry is hard earned and well founded. I greatly admire the way it refuses to cut emotional corners and yet achieves a sense of lyric absolution.”

In 2 and a half hours.

Tonight at 730!

New York friends! I'll be reading/talking AVALON at KGB Bar and Red Room tonight at 7 pm, with tony perrottet and a host of fabulous performers (including a theramin-ist): come if you can!

Author mattgallagher0 returns to the show tomorrow to chat with Daniel Ford about his novel Daybreak. Subscribe and tune in: apple.co/4bmzB8s #writers #podcast #writingcommunity #WBPN Atria Books

This is so good! He is so right about attention and vision. Thanks to Anthony Domestico for the conversation

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

‘…“If Russia is allowed to prevail in Ukraine, “it will send the wrong signal to Asia,” Mr Kishida told The Economist and other reporters in a wood-panelled room at the Kantei, the prime minister’s office, on April 5th…’ economist.com/asia/2024/04/0…

VIRTUAL EVENT: I'll be speaking with one of my favorite poets and people, Tom Sleigh, Thursday at 730 pm about the ethics of writing about war and atrocity, and what we can learn from both journalistic and poetic approaches to conflict. Fairfield U. MFA events.fairfield.edu/event/inspired…

“A nation that requires private armies to sustain popular support for wars is likely fighting those wars for the wrong reasons.”
Elliot Ackerman Liberties Journal of Culture and Politics

libertiesjournal.com/articles/merce…

“He understood that under modern industrial conditions, social justice and class reconciliation could not be accomplished by means of mere exhortations to virtue targeted at the elites, but by means of power exerted from below and bolstered by state action…by means of democracy”

“You could construct a history of modern literature just by writing about boxing.”

Tony Dombrowski

Phil Klay I [Okie], replied 'riding horses?' And he goes, 'well, maybe if you're an incredibly boring person.' The class erupted in laughter - I've never been roasted so hard in my life

Phil Klay I was in Koch's last Modern Poetry lecture at Columbia in 2001. We were reading Yeats' 'Wild Swans at Coole' and we got to the 'All suddenly mount' line and he asked 'what does the word mount make you think of?'

“The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”
—Naipaul

New York Times: now an eclipse is an opportunity to pay homage to the explanatory power of science.

Levinas: Descartes thought that by myself I could account for the sky and the sun despite all their magnificence.

Hitting the road again this month for some book festivals! Come on out and we'll chop it up about books, Ukraine and DAYBREAK San Antonio Book Festival Unbound Book Festival #TulsaLitFest