Welcome to The Poetry Conversation with Sharon Bryan.
I post weekly thoughts on poetry, and I hope you’ll join in. I think of this site as a big room with comfortable chairs where we can gather to talk about poems and poets, craft, translation, what it is to be a poet, what others are reading and listening to, whatever interests you. I’ll be inviting other poets to do guest posts, so please feel free to make suggestions.
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What Prompts a Poem
In one of the last Fridays at 4 discussions I mentioned my bafflement at the current popularity of prompts for poems, and that’s still on my mind, partly because I don’t think any of the poems I love and go back to started that way. I can’t imagine Frost or Bishop or Plath or Clifton…
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Bedside Books
This week I’m interested in what poetry books we’re all reading right now. What’s on your bedside table–or chairside, or desk? The poems here are from mine, and range in time from the 1920’s (Mistral’s poems) to 2023. I hope you’ll comment on these and add own examples. Just a reminder that the next Fridays…
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Mary Ruefle’s Poems and Prose
This week I’d like to talk about Mary Ruefle’s poetry, and some excerpts from her prose. Her work always shakes me awake, and makes me see the world in new ways. Sparks fly. Please feel free to add your own comments and favorites, and we’ll discuss it all at this week’s Fridays at 4…
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Favorite Poems
I assume you’re all familiar with the Favorite Poem Project that was founded by Robert Pinsky when he was US Poet Laureate in 1997. Eighteen thousand people responded, from all across the country, and videos are available online. It’s incredibly moving to listen and watch as people read the poems and say…
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Long-line Metrical Poems
Now that we’ve spent two weeks looking at ways poets create music in long-lined free verse, I wanted to listen back to long lines in meter–specifically pentameter and hexameter, five- and six-feet lines. Iambic pentameter is the most frequently used used foot and measure in English poetry, of course, but there’s very…
