New Books Network Podcast

Jewish Studies November 29, 2023

Centuries Encircle Me with Fire

Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam. A Bilingual English–Russian Edition

Ian Probstein, trans.

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's most influential poets. This collection, compiled, translated, and edited by poet and scholar Ian Probstein, provides Anglophone audiences …

Shakespeare For All November 20, 2023

Shakespeare's Sonnets Part 3

A Discussion with Michael Schoenfeldt

Michael Schoenfeldt

Hosted by Zachary Davis

Part 3 starts with a discussion of general reading strategies to help you discover the poetic techniques and insights of any individual sonnet. It concludes with a close-reading of three …

Shakespeare For All November 13, 2023

Shakespeare's Sonnets Part 2

An interview with Michael Schoenfeldt

Michael Schoenfeldt

Hosted by Zachary Davis

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Part 2 focuses closely on the two major “characters” to whom the sonnets are addressed: a beautiful young man, and a woman described as black. You’ll learn how the speaker …

Literary Studies November 8, 2023

Seamus Heaney’s Afterlives

A Discussion with Joseph Nugent and Vera Kreilkamp

Joseph Nugent and Vera Kreilkamp

Hosted by John Yargo

In 1995, Seamus Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. During his speech, he explained that the adequacy of lyric poetry spoke to the “‘temple inside our hearing’ which …

Poetry November 6, 2023

Fool in a Blue House

Katherine Gaffney

Hosted by Megan Wildhood

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Katherine Gaffney completed her MFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently working on her PhD at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has previously appeared …

Shakespeare For All November 6, 2023

Shakespeare's Sonnets Part 1

A Discussion with Michael Schoenfeldt

Michael Schoenfeldt

Hosted by Zachary Davis

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The sonnet — a 14-line poem with a strict rhyme scheme, conventionally associated with love — was one of the most popular poetic forms in late Elizabethan England. In 1609 …

Poetry October 31, 2023

Crash

A Memoir of Overmedication and Recovery

Ann C Bracken

Hosted by Megan Wildhood

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Ann Bracken has published three poetry collections, The Altar of Innocence, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom, Once You’re Inside: Poetry Exploring Incarceration, and a memoir entitled …

The Common Magazine October 27, 2023

Closure?

A DIscussion with Christopher Spaide

Christopher Spaide

Hosted by Emily Everett

Christopher Spaide speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his poem “Closure?,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Chris talks about how his curiosity for language and wordplay …

Poetry October 10, 2023

Happy Everything

Caitlin Cowan

Hosted by Megan Wildhood

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Caitlin Cowan is the author of Happy Everything, forthcoming in February 2024 from Cornerstone Press. Caitlin holds a PhD in English from the University of North Texas, an MFA in …

Ukrainian Studies October 7, 2023

On the Road to Lviv

Christopher Merrill

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed

Prismatic and polysemous, On the Road to Lviv (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) invites us on an odyssey across Ukraine in the hour of war. "This chronicle/ Took shape the day the …

Poetry October 5, 2023

Pathetic Literature

Eileen Myles

Hosted by Hal Coase

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“Literature is pathetic.” So claims Eileen Myles in their provocative and robust introduction to Pathetic Literature (Grove Press, 2022), a breathtaking mishmash of pieces ranging from poems to theater scripts …

Poetry September 19, 2023

The Asking

New and Selected Poems

Jane Hirshfield

Hosted by Tricycle Magazine

When poet Jane Hirshfield first arrived at Tassajara Monastery nearly fifty years ago, a Zen teacher told her that it was a good idea to have a question to practice …

Poetry September 15, 2023

The Alchemy of the Beast

Alyssa Noelle Coelho

Hosted by Megan Wildhood

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"I wept as time stopped, and I wept as time refused to cease." Grieving her faith, her love, and her identity, twenty-one-year-old Scarlett V. Leonelli is devastated by an unexpected …

Poetry September 12, 2023

The Orange Tree

Dong Li

Hosted by Anna Zumbahlen

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Dong Li’s The Orange Tree (U Chicago Press, 2023) is a collection of narrative poems that braids forgotten legends, personal sorrows, and political upheavals into a cinematic account of Chinese history …

Political Science August 28, 2023

The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley

A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence

David Waldstreicher

Hosted by Susan Liebell

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Thy Power, O Liberty, make strong the weak, And (wond’rous instinct) Ethiopians speak. At the age of 19, Phillis Wheatley published the first book in English by a person of …

Literary Studies August 26, 2023

Forms of Contention

Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition

Hollis Robbins

Hosted by John Yargo

As I learned from Hollis Robbins’s monograph Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition (U Georgia Press, 2020), there has been a long-standing skepticism of the sonnet …

Poetry August 15, 2023

A Friend Sails in on a Poem

Essays on Friendship, Freedom and Poetic Form

Molly Peacock

Hosted by Megan Wildhood

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For the last forty-five years, the distinguished poets Molly Peacock and Phillis Levin have read and discussed nearly every poem they’ve written-an unparalleled friendship in poetry. In A Friend Sails …

Poetry August 1, 2023

Bone Country

Prose Poems

Linda Nemec Foster

Hosted by Megan Wildhood

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Linda Nemec Foster has published twelve collections of poetry including Amber Necklace from Gdansk (finalist for the Ohio Book Award in Poetry), Talking Diamonds, and The Lake Michigan Mermaid (2019 Michigan Notable Book) …

The Common Magazine July 21, 2023

Guy with a Gun

A Conversation with Matt Donovan

Matt Donovan

Hosted by Emily Everett

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Matt Donovan speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his prose poem “Guy with a Gun,” which appeared in The Common’s fall issue. Matt talks about the conversation that inspired …

Poetry July 15, 2023

The Naomi Letters

Rachel Mennies

Hosted by Anna Zumbahlen

Rachel Mennies embraces the public/private duality of writing letters in her latest collection of poems. Told through a time-honored epistolary narrative, The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021) chronicles the relationship …