“…we have to get over, as in getting over a disease, the idea that we can ‘all’ speak to one another in the universal voice of poetry” (Charles Bernstein, A Poetics, 5) Today on my drive to campus, I found myself mulling over a recent discussion with a poet friend about appeals to the “common reader” and “universal human truths” in the discourse around contemporary American poetry, and our mutual distrust of these terms. Poetry, so the story goes, has lost its ability to spe

What are we looking for when we look to the past? This is a question I find myself dealing with nearly every time I sit down to write a poem. My poetry is often image driven, and my image-repertoire is heavily nostalgic, homesick, and filled with objects and people from places I once thought of as home. Places I would return to if such a thing were possible. Of course, it is not possible. I will never again walk out of my first “Lesbian & Gay Film” class, twenty years old and

A watershed is a geographic feature that divides water into different systems. A watershed also represents the tributaries and gathering ground for a central body of water. As graduate students at the University of Nebraska, we acknowledge the significance of watersheds to the agricultural industry as well as the ecology of the Great Plains region. However and perhaps most popularly, a watershed is known to be a crucial event or occurrence recognized as causing a turning poin