I have a major intellectual-aesthetic-poetry crush on Gregory Pardlo and Teresa Leo.
Poet Lore has a crush on Greg too. Cornelius Eady selected Greg as this month’s featured poet. Be sure to check out the stunning “Problema” poems included there– http://www.poetlore.com/issues.php (Actually, APR had a crush on him first, awarding him the Honickman Prize for his stunning collection Totem—available on Amazon. But my crush is longer still, tracing back to his early poems, his Serengeti years, his Rutgers days).
And Elixir Press has a big crush on Teresa Leo’s Halo Rule. http://www.teresaleo.com/
Each time I read Teresa’s poems I’m stunned by the way she masterfully combines rigor, heart and wit. And you MUST check out “Arc: A Quest,” the essay she penned for APR. Basketball, a broken tooth, artist colonies, and the art of crafting a poetry collection: the wild range of material coheres via the magnetic pull of her thought process. Cool indeed: http://www.aprweb.org/issues/july07/leo.html
And the attendees at the New Jersey Poetry Festival now have a crush on them too.
Greg and Teresa read for PBQ yesterday at Diane Lockward’s New Jersey Poetry Festival in West Caldwell, NJ. http://www.dianelockward.com/fest.html.
Lockward runs an warm, welcoming, amazingly efficient day of readings– 4 hours, 12 journals, 24 poets, AND the Mayor showed up and dubbed her West Caldwell’s Poet Laureate. Huzzah.
So, fine, everybody loves them now. But PBQ loved you first; we’ve loved you longest. And we’ll keep on loving you as your stars continue to rise. Cue REO Speedwagon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-mw1HGJjdA
Do I sound desperate? Fear not. I’ve decided to expand the range of objects of my affection.
Helloooo, New York Quarterly: http://www.nyquarterly.org/support.html
Come here often, Now Culture?: http://www.nyquarterly.org/support.html
How you doin’, The Literary Review: http://www.theliteraryreview.org/
