My oncologist knows what I do for a living. I figured that out a month ago as she was telling me about the potential side effects of a new chemotherapy I’ve since begun. “One of them can be voice loss,” she said gently. “I know why this would be particularly scary for you, Andrea.”

Hi boys. It feels like forever since we’ve talked. I know that can’t be true because somehow I’ve managed to stay true to my biweekly publishing cadence despite moving across the country, getting engaged, cohabitating with my parents again (what) … but this past month has felt like an enti…

I’m listening to Kell Robertson sing ‘When You Come Down Off The Mountain.’

I always enjoy corresponding with Hollis Robbins (@Anecdotal) and was therefore delighted to talk to her about poetry and literature. It’s a wonderful conversation that ranges across so many books and ideas. We covered why there is no crisis in the humanities, why you should read Walter Scott, our favourite modern poets (Hollis:

It is no secret that I have seen a few things, been around not just the block but the whole damn city. I can tell you all about national political conventions. I’ve covered 32 of them, going back to 1960. Here’s my takeaway from Chicago 2024: It wasn’t just well done, it was a spectacularly produced event. Frankly, I can’t recall a c…

Tagore said that the aim of a true work of art is to give a form to what escapes definition. Then the viewer will no longer be seduced by the material used nor even by the anecdotal content; instead he will be immediately plunged into a non-state which is the aesthetic experience.

What if I decide my life is fine? What if there’s nothing to fix, no huge changes to make? What if there’s just a little goal each day to appreciate the ripe strawberries in the refrigerator, or notice the yellow butterfly flying alongside me for half a block? Is it less of a life if the best part of my day was melting salty butter on warm sourdoug…

A woman who writes feels too much, those trances and portents! As if cycles and children and islands weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips and vegetables were never enough. She thinks she can warn the stars. A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl. A man who writes knows too much, such spells and fetiches! As if erections and cong…

Welcome to our bi-weekly news roundup!

We’re less than a week away from my personal fall (Sept 1; I will not be taking feedback), and it’s time to discuss the upcoming releases on my radar. We have grieving siblings (lots of them!), horny vampires (ditto!), all the romance (always!), scammers, rockstars, and even a peek into Taylor Swift’s closet.

** This article was originally published in Om Magazine, but I wanted to share it with you all here **

As a small way to say thank-you to my paid subscribers, I periodically send them snail mail, including a small poetry booklet. I had hoped to finish the most recent one by June, but the summer became quite busy with travel baseball. When our family went to Grand Bend for a few days last week, I made it a goal to spend a few hours every morning working o…

Hey y’all,

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Is it time to creatively mix it up?

Once you’re done being US President, I think they should kill you. You get four or eight years to kill anyone you want, destroy entire countries at will, throw around billions of dollars at whatever cretinous idea catches your fancy—but once it’s all done, once the White House dog’s being carried away by helicopter and the next guy is giving his inaugur…

‘I've always just drawn with a pencil and I've never used a ball of putty, for whatever reason, so I just keep the mistakes and let them be wrong, because it's often the mistakes that eventually lead…

“As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth . . . the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and st…

stylish defiance

People always think they’re smarter than Rudyard Kipling’s “If—.” In literary circles it’s a rule that admiration of the poem must be qualified, usually with disclaimers to show you are aware of the author’s moral and literary defects. T.S. Eliot condensed this attitude perfectly in one phrase when he called Kipling “a good bad poet”—the kind whose poet…

apocrypha (noun): writings of uncertain authenticity.

Elizabeth Bishop and April Bernard, drawings by Nicholson Baker, from photographs by, respectively, the publisher James Laughlin and the poet Mary Jo Bang. Nicholson Baker’s book Finding a Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better at Art, was published this spring.

Dear friends,