. Our featured poet in the spring issue of West is John Spaulding. Spaulding’s The White Train was chosen by Henry Taylor for the 2004 National Poetry Series. He is the author also of The Roses of Starvation (1987), Walking in Stone (1989), and Hospital (2011). His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, […]
Speaking in Voices
. In the new, spring issue of West, my Poetic License column offers a discussion of voice in poetry, in introduction to the poetry of John Spaulding, whose The White Train was chosen by Henry Taylor for the National Poetry Series in 2004. The first thing I look for in a poem is its voice. It is […]
Eating Poetry (XXXI) – “Poem #1”
. Tirui Getekian is a student at West Los Angeles College. From the spring 2012 issue of West. Poem #1 Sex is Eating cheese While jump-roping Love is Quickly square-dancing While breathing ammonia You are The butterfly that accidentally flew under my step one summer afternoon when I was young I am A wind-up doll […]
On Your Leaving
. William Wallis is my fellow contributing poetry editor at West magazine. Bill was born in the American South and educated at Hendrix College, Southern Illinois University, the University of Nebraska (Ph.D.in Literary Criticism and Creative Writing, 1972), and the Hanover Conservatory (Opera Performance). Between 1978 and 1985, he worked as a stage director, then as a […]
Earthquake
. “I grew up like an earthquake, all across California.” From the Fall 2011 issue of West, where I am co-poetry editor, the rhymes and rhythms of Joseph McDaughtery, with an excerpt from his introduction by West editor Nuala Lincke-Ivic: Joseph McDaughtery and the Name Tattooed on the Area of Skin Just Above His Eyelids — I first met […]