Organizing Isolation: The Podcast

On August 2, Fitz Books in Buffalo hosted James McWilliams, author of  The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford , released last month from The University of Arkansas Press, and Leo Lensing, author of  “Subiaco’s Unofficial Poet Laureate”: A Memoir of Frank Stanford in High School , released this month in a second, expanded edition from Foundlings Press. It was an honor for me to MC the event and conv...

Episode 5: A visit to the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly In 1882, an offshoot of the Chautauqua Movement found a home in Monteagle, Tennessee, a town just up the road from Sewanee University atop the Cumberland Plateau. This past week I had the pleasure and honor of visiting for a talk and film screening. My hosts were Mark and Anne Byrn Floyd, two fixtures here “on the mountain,” as the residen...

Episode 4: On Alice Notley, unsent letters, pizza kitchens, making a home in Western New York, leaving it, what we can learn from Griselda, and how to keep making art A book tour is the best excuse to see old friends. This past weekend I reunited with two: Western Massachusetts and  Gabriel Bump , author of the novels  Everywhere You Don’t Belong  and  The New Naturals . I met Gabe in Buffalo in 2...

Unnameable Books in Brooklyn hosted the second stop of the  I Am Here You Are Not I Love You  tour. Although the book’s official release date was Friday May 16, I billed the 17th as a second launch, because I think this is a New York City book almost as much as it’s a Buffalo book. (In the  recent  Brooklyn Rail  review , Melissa Holbrook Pierson observed that Buffalo is a prominent character in t...

I’m deeply grateful for the invitation from John Deming to read at the KGB Bar Monday Night Poetry Series. For nearly three decades, this series has presented exceptional poetry in the best Soviet-themed pro-Ukrainian bar in the East Village. As the date of my reading approached—with  real poets  Kristina Andersson Bicher and Tom Sleigh—I grew increasingly nervous. I hadn’t written a poem since 20...

Episode 1. Panel discussion recorded live at the New Orleans Poetry Festival and Small Press Book Fair, Sunday, April 13, 2025. From the NOPF website: This roundtable will explore the life and legacy of the poet Frank Stanford (1948-1978). Drawing on the unique expertise of each panelist, it will do so through several perspectives. James McWilliams, author of the first Frank Stanford biography (du...