Click on the recommended poets' names for more information about them.
Ryan Collins has worked as a video store clerk, literary magazine lackey/editor, political canvasser, paraprofessional, writing consultant, arts administrator, and haberdasher. His work has been published in The Benefactor, Black Clock, Caffeine Destiny, Columbia Poetry Review, Cranky, Keep Going, LUNGFULL!, Sentence, Third Coast, Verse Daily, and other places. He also plays drums in the Chicago-based rock outfit The Prairie Spies (www.theprairiespies.com). His zodiac sign is Scorpio. (ryancollins3@netzero.com)
Recommended poet: Zachary Schomburg.
Brent Fisk is a writer from Bowling Green, Kentucky who loves the work of Charles Simic, Charles Wright, and a few other non-Charles poets as well. His poetry can be found in recent or forthcoming issues of Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and Greensboro Review. (brent.fisk@wku.edu)
Recommended poets: Charles Simic, Charles Wright.
Asya Graf has previously published poetry, short fiction and literary criticism in Anderbo, Best Poem, Vestal Review, Comparative Literature and Paroles Gelees. She currently lives in NYC and teaches high school English in the Bronx.
Recommended poet: Gabrielle Calvocoressi.
francine j. harris is a Cave Canem fellow and has work appearing or forthcoming in McSweeney's "Poets Picking Poets", Ninth Letter, The Drunken Boat, Ploughshares and in the recent anthology, To Be Left With the Body. She is Writer-in-Residence at a local high school in her hometown Detroit. (francinejharris@gmail.com)
Recommended poets: Bob Hicok, Reginald Shepherd.
Henry Kearney, IV is from Robersonville, North Carolina. He speaks softly while carrying an MFA and a big stick from Warren Wilson College.
Recommended writer: Laura Kasischke.
Jan LaPerle received her M.F.A from Southern Illinois University. Her poems are published in Subtropics, Tar River Poetry Review, Dislocate, and elsewhere. She currently lives in East Tennessee with the poet Clay Matthews. (jannasperle@yahoo.com)
Recommended poet: Anne Carson.
Janos Lanyi was born in 1937, in Budapest, Hungary, and grew up during the difficult years of World War II and then the communist system that engulfed Central and Eastern Europe. He studied Chemistry at the elite University of Sciences in Budapest, but his sophomore year was interrupted by the Hungarian uprising of 1956. After it was put down by the Soviet Army, he escaped to Vienna, and soon made his way to the U.S. He is a Professor of Physiology & Biophysics at the University of California at Irvine, a position he has held since 1980. His recent publications have been on colored proteins similar to the visual pigment of the eye.
Janos has traveled extensively with his wife, Brigitte, all around the globe, searching out different lands, cultures, and peoples. He regards photographic art, like scientific investigation, as means to understand the world and our place, as humans, in it.
To view more of his work, visit Janos' website: www.janosklanyi.com
Recommended poet:
Clare Marie Myers holds an MA in Poetry and is slowly wending her way through an MFA in Fiction, both from San Francisco State University. In 2007, she was awarded SFSU's William Dickey Fellowship in Poetry. Her work has recently appeared in ZYZZYVA. (cmmyers@gmail.com)
Recommended poet: Anna Journey.
David O'Connell received an M.F.A. in creative writing at Ohio State University. His poems have previously appeared or are forthcoming in Fugue, Poet Lore, Drunken Boat, and Bryant Literary Review, among other journals. He was recently awarded a poetry fellowship from the Rhode Island Council on the Arts.
Recommended poet: Terrance Hayes.
Soham Patel's work is in Shaking Like a Mountain, Copper Nickel and other places. She is a Kundiman fellow and teaches writing at the University of Colorado.
Recommended poets: Maureen Alsop, Jennifer Chang, Noah Eli Gordan.
J.R. Pearson played "Jonny B. Goode" in 1st grade with an audience of 15 people. Once, I seen him eat a whole case of Elmer's Glue. He was terrible at finger painting but he's proud of these poems. Read his stuff in A Capella Zoo, Word Riot, Ghoti, Weave and Tipton. What more do you really need? (pearson.poet@gmail.com)
Recommended poet:
David Allen Sullivan was first alerted to the power of poetry when his mother taught him Ogden Nash’s "Isabel, Isabel, met a bear…" The line "cruel and cavernous" chilled and thrilled him, and he's still working on exorcizing bogeymen and exercising his imagination by dipping into the word hoard. His book Strong-Armed Angels is available through Hummingbird Press and his poem "Warnings" can be heard (as read by Garrison Keillor) here. (dasulliv@cabrillo.edu)
Recommended poets: Brian Turner.
Joseph P. Wood's first book of poems I & We, will appear in 2010 by WordTech Communications on the CustomWords imprint. New poems from a second manuscript appear or are forthcoming in Backwards City Review, Copper Nickel, Drunken Boat, Front Porch, Typo, Willows Wept Review, and Zone 3. He's an avid runner when not laid up with some overuse injury, and an avid chowhound when money is around. (tuscaloosarunner@gmail.com)
Recommended poets: Kathleen Pierce. Abe Smith.