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About Jen Fitzgerald

NBN Episodes hosted by Jen:

Poetry December 23, 2016

Still Something Rattles

Terence Degnan

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
I had the pleasure of interviewing poet, Terence Degnan while he sat on a bench in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. For those unfamiliar, we refer to Sunset not as a park …
Poetry November 30, 2016

Some Other Stupid Fruit

A Problematic Feminist Narrative

Margaret Bashaar

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
What is the best way to be a feminist? What is the best way to be a poet, a musician, or a painter? As a woman, what is the best …
Poetry November 26, 2016

My Bedside Radio

Anthony Cappo

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
The "coming of age narrative" will never lose its allure because we are constantly drawn back to the moments that shaped us into the adults we are today. Nostalgia, many …
Poetry November 23, 2016

Pull Yourself Together

The Gena Rowlands Poems

Amanda Deutch

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
In Pull Yourself Together: The Gena Rowlands Poems (Dancing Girl Press, 2106), Amanda Deutch reminds us of the current and historic importance of the muse. Something draws writers the page …
Poetry November 15, 2016

The Cavalcade

July Westhale

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
Where personal history and shared history intersect, we are left with the figures of memory and myth. These poems seek to reclaim the portions of personal history where we were …
Poetry November 12, 2016

I Could See Needing a Knife

Noah Stetzer

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
I am not going to lie to you, dear reader, this collection will require you to be fully present. With each layer of the speaker that is revealed, you …
Poetry November 9, 2016

Surveillance

Ashaki Jackson

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
Now in its fifth printing of a very short life, Ashaki Jackson's Surveillance examines the relationship between acts of violence, the witnessing of violence, the witnessing of the witnessing of …
Poetry November 6, 2016

Sweet/Crude

A Bakken Boom Cycle

Heidi Czerwiec

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
With a genre-bending hybridity that Czerwiec is well-known for, Sweet/Crude: A Bakken Boom Cycle (Gazing Grain Press, 2016) takes the structure of a heroic crown of sonnets and retrofits …
Poetry November 3, 2016

Restored Mural for Orlando

Mural Restaurado Para Orlando

Roy Guzman

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
After the enormity of our loss had been calculated, Guzman started writing. Drawn to the page to process his grief and to understand in the best way poets know how …
Poetry June 20, 2016

Political Punch

Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity

Fox Frazier-Foley and Erin Elizabeth Smith

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
Readers gather around: Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity (Sundress Publications, 2016) is an anthology for a new era. As Cathy Park Hong states at the end …
Poetry May 16, 2016

LEAVING CLE

Poems of Nomadic Dispersal

Janice A. Lowe

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
"Poems of Nomadic Dispersal" This latter phrase in the title of Janice A. Lowe's new book--LEAVING CLE: Poems of Nomadic Dispersal (Miami University Press, 2016)-- has hung around me, following …
Poetry May 10, 2016

Explosion Rocks Springfield

Rodrigo Toscano

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
What is explosion? What does language look like when it mimics a gas leak, a bang, or rubble? What does language look like when it orbits other sounds, mediums, and …
Literature February 16, 2016

Free Fall/Caida libre

Tina Escaja

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
Tina Escaja's, Free Fall/Caida libre, translated by Mark Eisner (Fomite Press, 2015), is an exceptional example of poetry in translation as artistic collaboration. Poetry exists outside of the margins, and …
Poetry December 17, 2015

Lady of the Moon

Mary Meriam, Lillian Faderman, and Amy Lowell

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
In Lady of the Moon (Headmistress Press, 2015), the reader is graced not only with the poetry of Amy Lowell, but with sonnets in response and a scholarly essay on …
Poetry November 3, 2015

BIG BROWN BAG

Marisa Crawford

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
Winner of the Gazing Grain 2015 Chapbook contest, BIG BROWN BAGby Marisa Crawford is our final Chapbookapalooza installment. And what a way to end a glorious month of celebrating this …
Poetry October 31, 2015

Dynamite

Anders Carlson-Wee

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
Dynamite (Bull City Press, 2015) is transit distilled. Anders Carlson-Wee's poems employ movement as mechanism and movement as reverence in a journey that most dream of making yet few ever …
Poetry October 27, 2015

The Burn Poems

Lynn Strongin

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
When Denise Levertov called Lynn Strongin a "true poet," she recognized an awareness that transcended the young poet's age. This very human awareness can come with suffering. Inflicted with Polio …
Poetry October 25, 2015

State of Grace

The Joshua Elegies

Alexis Rhone Fancher

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
Alexis Rhone Fancher's State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (KYSO Flash Press, 2015) is not an "easy" collection. This is not a group of poems that you can take on …
Poetry October 21, 2015

Trains

Hope Wabuke

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
The poem fragments in Hope Wabuke's Movement No. 1: Trains (Dancing Girl Press, 2015) function more as meditations than portions of a whole. They meditate on movement's power over the …
Poetry October 13, 2015

Fiddle is Flood

Lauren Gordon

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
In her macabre pastoral landscape Fiddle is Flood (Blood Pudding Press, 2015), Lauren Gordon conjures up a persona far-reaching enough to grapple with loss, grief, and the shock of intense …
Poetry October 10, 2015

Yolanda

An Oral History in Verse of Super-Typhoon

Tim Tomlinson

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
Think of a place you have visited and to which you feel a connection. Now think of that place in utter ruin and devastation mere months later. You feel a …
Poetry October 7, 2015

le animal and other creatures

Metta Sama

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
As pleasing to the eye as it is to the ear the contents of Meta Sama's le animal and other creatures (Miel Press, 2015) remind us that creativity takes …
Poetry October 5, 2015

The Feltville Formation

Suzanne Bottelli

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
When I first read Suzanne Bottelli's The Feltville Formation (Finishing Line Press, 2015), I was struck by the quietude and steadiness of the poems. Often in tercets, the stanzas stand …
Poetry October 2, 2015

How We Came Upon the Colony

Ross White

Hosted by Jen Fitzgerald
With air-tight verse and talent for the surreal, Ross White invokes a sibling version of our world in his new collection How We Came Upon the Colony (Unicorn Press …