Carl Phillips is the author of twelve books of poetry – including the forthcoming Silverchest (2013), Double Shadow (2011), and Speak Low (2009). His work has been honored with the Samuel French Morse Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Currently, he teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. A past and current contributor to The Journal, Carl recently spoke with Poetry Editor Michael Marberry regarding the role of inspiration in his writing process and why animals appear so frequently in his work.

Michael Marberry: We’re so excited to have two of your poems (“Moralia” and “Rockabye”) in our special 40^th Anniversary Issue of The Journal! Tell me: what inspired these two wonderful poems? To what extent do you see them being in conversation with or against one another? Are they from an upcoming project?

Carl Phillips: I’ve never been a writer who has a project or agenda from the start, so I have no idea where these poems are leading or whether, in fact, they will ever end up being in a book. I just write, and eventually – usually after about fifty poems or so – I think I may have reached a point where something is finished. There’s a sense of needing to stop. And I go through the poems, figure out which ones are speaking to one another, in which ways, etc., and I go from there.

About the two poems in The Journal, I’m already alarmed that there is a stag in both of them…

MM: That’s true: there are stags in both those poems, and they’re “broken” and “bloated” stags to boot! Oddly enough, I once had a conversation with a colleague about recurring poetic imagery; and he insisted that deer (of various shapes and sizes) seem to be a hallmark of many poems – especially work by contemporary gay poets. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but it does make me wonder: are there images, symbols, allusions, subject matter, etc. that you feel personally drawn and redrawn to as a writer? If so, what are those images and why do you think you’re drawn to them specifically? Conversely, are there images, symbols, allusions, etc. that you try to avoid? Is everything “fair game” at any time in your work?

CP: I don’t think deer are particularly linked to gay poetry, as they appear in many people’s poems. But as for why they – and raptor birds, the ocean, certain trees like sycamores, pines, and bamboo – appear in my poems, they happen to be the things that figure into my daily life.

I think that I write from my life, which of course has to include the things that constitute a world for me. It’s not uncommon, even in a city like St. Louis, to watch a hawk swoop down and destroy a mourning dove in mid-air. It happened twice in my backyard last winter. Similarly, on Cape Cod, where I spend time in the summer, deer emerge from the woods, and the ocean is everywhere.

I also will say that I’m drawn to animal life in general because I’m always thinking about the lack of self-consciousness that animals have, along with what I think is a lack of morality – as opposed to humans, who are always wrestling with such issues.

MM: You’ve been a great contributor for The Journal for many years. From what I can tell, your first appearance in The Journal was way back in issue 17.1, published in 1993. Think back for a moment: what was your writing life like back in the early to mid-1990s? How would you characterize your writing from that time period? How has your writing evolved from then until now? Is there anything that you wish you could tell your younger, 1990s-era self about writing, life, love, etc.?

CP: My writing life back then was a lot more regimented, I suppose. I wrote almost every day at some point, but I also made a point of reserving Sundays for writing – the entire day, if necessary. I’m not necessarily busier now. But I do have more responsibilities – most of them to do with day-to-day home life – which means that I don’t have regular writing time anymore.

I am more likely to come up with an idea around midnight on the sofa with the dog, and I run with that idea for an hour or so. And then I hope in the morning that I caught something that might equal a poem eventually.

MM: It’s very interesting to hear you talk so candidly about your writing process. The evolution of your own writing process makes me think of a topic that is important to a lot of writers: the tension surrounding “inspiration.” Should one wait to be inspired to write? Or does one create his/her own inspiration, so to speak, by willing the poem into existence? What advice do you give to your own students regarding this “problem” of inspiration?

CP: I believe that each person should write in whatever way works for him or her. It’s funny: I hardly ever think about all of these things that so many people – including my students – spend time talking about!

I’m not able to write to assignment. I’m not able to force inspiration. So I just live my life, waiting for a line to float into my head, often triggered by something I’ve seen in the world, which is the reason for spending a lot of time outdoors, trying new things, and taking chances.  I feel that’s a boring answer, but it’s an honest one.

MM: Last question: as I said, we’re celebrating our 40^th Anniversary this year at The Journal, which obviously gives us a good opportunity to look back at last 40 years of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction writing. But let’s look forward too! Let’s speculate (wildly?)! You’re in a unique position in that you not only write some wonderful poetry but, as judge of the Yale Younger Series and the Tufts Awards, you also get to read lots of wonderful poetry written by up-and-comers and experienced poets alike each year. Where do you see poetry heading in the next 40 years? What excites you about where we’re going as a writing community? What concerns or distresses you? Where would you like to see us go, moving forward?

CP: What I hope, as we go forward, is that poets will never lose sight of the fact that we are vulnerable, feeling creatures with not only the ability but the need to give meaningful expression to those feelings. Love is real, as is the loss of it. The fact of feeling doesn’t have to be somehow made distant by easy irony.

Lee Martin is the author of the novels Break the Skin, The Bright Forever (Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), River of Heaven, and Quaker Town; the nonfiction books Such a Life, From Our House, and Turning Bones; and a short story collection, The Least You Need to Know.  His essay “When You Have to Go There” appears in issue 23.1 of The Journal (Autumn 1999).  Recently, Martin spoke with nonfiction editor Silas Hansen about how his work has changed in the past thirteen years, the varying approaches to writing book-length vs. essay-length nonfiction, and his writing plans for the future.

Silas Hansen: Your essay “When You Have to Go There” was published in our Autumn 1999 issue. When this piece was published, where were you in terms of your writing career? What has changed since then?

Lee Martin: At that point, I was, though I didn’t know it, working on my first memoir, From Our House. I’d published my first book, the story collection, The Least You Need to Know, which had the honor of being the first winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize from Sarabande Books, and for the first time I was writing creative nonfiction. “When You Have to Go There” was one of the pieces that became a chapter in From Our House. So, you see, I was at the very beginning of my career as a writer of creative nonfiction. Since then, I’ve published three other memoirs and four novels, one of which was fortunate enough to be named a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

SH: If you could say anything to the younger self who wrote this piece, what would you say?

LM: Don’t be afraid. Tell the stories you need to tell.

SH: You’ve written a number of essays about your family and childhood in rural Illinois, and that was also the subject of your memoir, From Our House. How do you approach these similar subjects in essays versus in a full-length memoir? Are there particular topics you know will be better suited for a shorter piece, versus a book-length project?

LM: I’ve always thought of an essay as a compressed form no matter how associative it might be. In other words, I think essays, whether we’re talking about short pieces of memoir, or personal essays, or whatever other sub-form you’d like to mention, are all headed toward that moment of inevitable surprise at the end, that moment in which something arrives—an insight, a deepening of a question, a new question—and there’s a moment of luminosity. In this way, the essay is very much like a short story. When I have material from my life or from the world around me that fits that description, I know I have an essay. When I have material whose arc, usually narrative in nature, stretches over years, I know that I probably have a book-length project.

SH: In addition to your nonfiction writing, you’re also an accomplished fiction writer. Aside from the obvious, what do you see as the differences between fiction and nonfiction? Do you approach the genres in different ways, either as a writer or as a reader?

LM: The obvious answer, of course, is that nonfiction is true and fiction is invented, but really sometimes I think fiction can be just as “true” as nonfiction, but perhaps that’s a conversation for another time. What I expect from nonfiction as a writer and a reader that doesn’t always apply to fiction is the sense of the writer’s presence. A strong sense of a writer’s sensibilities, sometimes at odds, working to more fully understand something.

SH: What are your writing plans for the near future?

LM: There are novels to write and essays to write and maybe even a short story now and then. My plans are to work a little each day on whatever calls me to attend to it.

The Ohio State University Press and The Journal are very pleased to announce the winner of the 2013 OSU Press/The Journal Award in Poetry and the Charles B. Wheeler prize, selected by judge Kathy Fagan. This year’s winner is Corey Van Landingham for her collection titled Antidote. Congratulations, Corey!

We received well over 500 poetry manuscripts for consideration this year, and it was an immense challenge to pick just one winner among so many wonderful submissions. We want to thank our dedicated group of readers, our judge, Kathy Fagan, and, of course, the poets who submitted their manuscripts for consideration.

Here’s a complete list of the honorees:

Winner: Corey Van Landingham for Antidote

First Runner-Up: Nancy Kathleen Pearson for Long Slow Distance

Finalists: Lisa Fay Coutley for Errata; Robert King for Some of These Days; Janine Joseph for Extended Stay; Christopher Salerno for ATM; and Michael Schmeltzer for Some Nights the Stars They Sour

Semi-Finalists: Danielle Chapman for Someone Else’s Eden; Aviva Englander Cristy for What She Never Owned; Raphael Dagold for Bastard Heart; John W. Evans for The Consolations; Brandi George for Bell a Body Rings; Michael Homolka for Sleep Sculptures; Maria Hummel for House and Fire; Josh Kalscheur for Tidal; Jennifer Browne Lawrence for The Goddess of Scales; Fritz Ward for Letters from the Handmade Dark; Elizabeth Whittlesey for How to Relume; Eliot Khalil Wilson for The Island of Dogs; and Jim Zukowski for Camp Happy

Congratulations again to our winner, runner-up, finalists, and semi-finalists.

Denise Duhamel is the author of several poetry collections—including Ka-Ching! (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009) and Blowout (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012)—and is a professor at Florida International University in Miami. A former contributor to The Journal, Duhamel’s new poem “Ouroboros” is featured in our upcoming 40^th Anniversary Issue (37.1).

Recently, in a conversation with Poetry Editor Michael Marberry, Duhamel spoke about this upcoming poem, the prose-poem form, and the benefits/drawbacks of poetic labeling.

Michael Marberry: Denise Duhamel! It’s so very cold, wet, and rainy today in Ohio—which makes me grumpy and jealous of all the folks (like yourself) basking in what I imagine are those perpetually sunny Floridian days. Ease my grumpiness a bit. Tell me about your poem “Ouroboros,” which is appearing in our special upcoming 40^th Anniversary Issue of The Journal. It’s such a strange and wonderful piece. Where in the world did it come from? What inspired it? How do you see this poem operating with/against your other work right now and/or your larger oeuvre? Is this poem part of a project you’re currently working on; and, if so, do you care to give us a sneak peek about said project?

Denise Duhamel: Thank you, Michael! I am happy The Journal is publishing “Ouroboros.”

As our culture moves more toward exposing women’s bodies in advertising and music and fashion, I have become interested in how young girls see themselves and the glamorized bodies around them. When I was growing up, the word “tween” hadn’t been coined and there wasn’t, by the culture at large, this complacency about the sexualization of young girls. “Ouroboros” grew out of remembering my own early peeks at pornography. I am very interested in women being subjects rather than objects, so in that way, “Ouroboros” is a continuation of one of my obsessions. I am between books right now and in that freefall of writing—so I’m not doing a project exactly, though I am writing quite a lot of prose poems.

MM: It’s interesting to hear you talk about where “Ouroboros” originated from—culturally, politically, personally, etc.—because much of your work seems to deal with both depictions and perceptions of women, which actually leads to my next question. You’ve been called a lot of things: a feminist poet, a humor poet, a collaborative poet, etc. Personally, you strike me as predominantly a poet who takes chances with her work and with each new collection. Like a lot of folks, I’m wary of those poetic labels; however, even if we don’t like the labels (i.e. “a _____ poet”), it’s interesting to think about what those labels mean, where they come from, and how they might inform the writer, the work, and the reader. How have you responded to some of these poetic labels in your own work? To what extent do these labels encourage, challenge, and/or torment you as an artist? If you had to, how might you categorize your own work—both currently and where you’re headed? Any advice to other writers (young and old alike) about this sort of thing?

DD: I am teaching a class in the prose poem, and for teaching and scholarship, labels can be really helpful. We’ve studied the miniature, the avant-garde prose poem, the meditative, the neo-surreal, and the deep image. Not any poem really fits into these categories completely—and even the prose poem is slippery. Who can really define it?

I really like your label for me—and I think that I will use it if you don’t mind and say, “I’m a risk-taking poet.” I think it’s fun to be a part of several schools of poetry. Why not? I would advise young writers not to get too hung up on trying to write to fit any school. I would also advise not to think about where their own poetry fits at all. Just read widely and write what you need to write.

MM: So…you’re thinking about prose poems. You’re teaching prose poems. You’re writing prose poems (like “Ouroboros”). Maybe that’s all just a “happy accident” (so to speak), but I’m guessing that it probably isn’t just a coincidence that all these things are coalescing in your life right now. As a fellow writer/teacher, I’m very interested to hear the extent to which your teaching informs your writing (and vice-versa)—both inside and outside the classroom. What sort of things do you strive for as a teacher and a teacher of poetry, in particular? What role do your students play in your teaching and writing life? Who are some of your own poetic “teachers”—past and present—i.e. those folks whom you find instructive in some way to your own intellectual and creative endeavors?

DD: I have to say that I am indeed a bit obsessed at the moment with prose poems, what they can do. The ouroboros is circular, as is (or can be) the prose poem—even though it is a box. I love the fluidity when the poem loses the line-break but retains sonic qualities. The prose poem is a conundrum, of course, and trying to define it has been fun for the class I’m now teaching at Florida International University—a graduate seminar on the prose poem, using theory: Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry by Holly Iglesias and The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and the Boundaries of Genre by Michael Delville.

I enjoy discussing and debating different modes of the prose poem—the deep image, the neo-surreal, the meditative, the miniature, and so on. My students have taught me a lot this semester through their presentations. One of the things I ask them to do—as many of them will be teachers themselves one day—is to devise writing exercises, which I do along with the class. So it really is at some point the student becoming the teacher. My own “poetic” teachers are Frank O’Hara, Sharon Olds, Dylan Thomas, and Ai.

MM: That’s very interesting to hear how all these things are coming together. Shifting gears a bit: as you know, it’s our 40^th anniversary this year at The Journal. (In celebration, I’m eating birthday cake every day for every meal this year. But that’s just me.) Like all birthdays, this seems like a nice time to glance backwards. From what I can tell, your work first appeared in The Journal back in issue 21.2, published in 1997. What was your writing life like back then? How would you characterize your writing from that time-period? How has your writing evolved? What aspects have changed or remained constant? Is there anything that you would tell your younger, 1990s-era self—any words of encouragement or warning?

DD: Ha! Yes! That first poem in The Journal was called “Bacon”—also a prose poem about the lives of young girls. It is really hard for me to remember how I wrote the poems. I was living in New York, not Florida, and adjunct teaching at various schools. I look back at the poems I wrote then, and though I can’t remember the actual writing of them, I can remember the events surrounding them.

If I could go back and tell my 1990s-era self anything, I would tell her to be patient and not to worry, that she would still be writing poems decades from now, that the poetry wouldn’t go away. I would also say: have that piece of birthday cake.

MM: I love those lessons to your past self! Be patient. Don’t worry. Poetry doesn’t go away. So simple, yet they seem like such incredibly valuable pieces of advice—especially for young writers. But let’s think about the future a little bit and some of those impossibly large and looming questions that keep us up at night. Let’s look into our crystal ball, at our rooster bones, etc. Where do you see poetry moving in the near-and-distant future? What excites and/or worries you about where we might be headed? Where would you like to see us end up, as a community of writers?

DD: I am very excited about poetry at this moment. There is more interest in it now than when I was coming up, and there is a hunger for it, as so much of our culture is prepackaged. The predominant culture is a visual one—to which poetry can adapt and has adapted to quite easily. And I think there are wonderful online communities of poets with many people exposed to poetry at a younger age. The downside is, of course, the flood of simply awful poetry online. My friend said at a conference: there is no poem horrible enough that it can’t find a home on some blog or webzine. I fear that reinforces the stereotype of poetry as self-indulgent and/or Hallmark-ish and could potentially exasperate would-be readers of serious poetry.

But I think readers and writers will ultimately find their way.

With the Vietnam War ongoing, Dick Nixon was sworn in as president. The Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, overturning state bans on abortion, and Foreman defeated Frazier for the heavyweight championship. American-Chinese relations improved after Nixon’s visit to the PRC, and less than two weeks later Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon. The year was 1973. Before long, Watergate would break, the Twin Towers would open for business and the patent for the ATM would be filed. Amid all this, William Allen, a professor in the English Department at The Ohio State University, started a little literary magazine called The Ohio Journal, which would later be shortened to The Journal.

Now, in 2013, it’s time to celebrate our little publication’s fourth decade of putting out some of the best poetry, fiction, and nonfiction (though, back in the day, the only labels we used to distinguish our content were poetry and prose, and before that we didn’t use any labels because we weren’t into “labels”, man). The year of our magazine’s first issue was a good vintage for literature more broadly, particularly for writing of the postmodern ilk. John Barth’s Chimera got the nod for the National Book Award in fiction, beating out Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, while Eudora Welty won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her novel, The Optimist’s Daughter, and Maxine Kumin took home the Pulitzer honors in poetry for her Up Country. But perhaps no release would prove more important than Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, which came out in February and cemented his reputation as the most prominent voice of postmodernism in America. ’73 would also see the passing of many luminaries: Picasso and J.R.R. Tolkien would both be dead before the fall. Pablo Neruda and W.H. Auden would follow them into the void on September 23^rd and 29^th, respectively.

As we look back at The Journal’s history throughout the course of this year, we have several events in the works to celebrate our ruby anniversary, including an off-site reading at the AWP conference in Boston (March 8^th at 10PM in the Sheraton Boston! More details as we get closer to the date). Our next post will begin a series of interviews with contributors from throughout our last four decades. In a few hours we’ll kick things off by posting an interview with poet Denise Duhamel. Stayed tuned, dear readers, stay tuned.

Davis McCombs is the author of two poetry collections—Ultima Thule (Yale 2000) and Dismal Rock (Tupelo 2007)—and is the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arkansas. His poems, “Ozark Landscape” and “Trespass,” are featured in issue 37.1 of The Journal. Recently, McCombs spoke with Associate Poetry Editor Matt Sumpter about the origin of these particular poems, the influence of the past on his work, and the artistic tension between multiple Davis McCombses.

Matt Sumpter: First of all, thanks so much for contributing your wonderful poems, “Ozark Landscape” and “Trespass,” to this issue of The Journal. You have already completed two collections, Ultima Thule (Yale University Press 2000) and Dismal Rock (Tupelo Press 2007). How do these two new poems relate to the work that has come before them?

Davis McCombs: I’m at a stage in the writing process now that makes answering that question difficult. I’m on leave this fall, deeply involved in the writing, so I’m too close to it, too embroiled in the messiness and failure and self-doubt of it right now to have any clear sense of how everything fits together. I suppose if I’ve learned anything over the years it’s that I shouldn’t try to force things to happen in my poems. This can be a real struggle, a lesson I keep learning and re-learning. But if I go into writing saying “Now I’m going to do this or that,” whatever that thing is is never ever ever going to happen, so it’s futile and wastes lots of time. I just have to be alert to the poems that come, to the images that start clustering together, and to the language that suddenly seems charged with possibility. The frustrating thing about my job teaching and directing the Creative Writing Program here is that sometimes I’ll feel a poem starting to happen, but so often I won’t be able to drop everything I’m doing and pursue it.

That’s the terrific thing about the semester away from the job: it’s time, lots of it, to make room for the possibility that poetry might happen.

I know this answer may make me sound flaky, but I find myself jealous (and maybe a little suspicious) of poets who can talk very fluidly and convincingly about their own work, their processes, etc. I just can’t—and anything I might be able to say will come much later, long after the writing.

MS: One of the most striking things about your poems is their embrace of landscape: quite often Kentucky, but in your poems for The Journal, also the Ozarks. The label “nature poetry” is tempting. Yet they are often full of man-made structures—barns and cabins, a graveyard, the Elgin Marbles—as well as memorable people: tobacco farmers, a slave working as a cave guide, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, even Bob Marley. So I’m curious to what extent you consider yourself a nature poet. What role do setting and environment play in your work? What is “nature poetry” anyway?

DM: It’s interesting that you should pick up on the change to the Ozark landscape in this particular poem. We’ve lived in the Arkansas Ozarks for ten years now and this is the only poem I have written specifically about this place. The poem’s genesis is also unlike any other I’ve ever experienced. Two summers ago now, for reasons I can’t articulate, I started making figures out of the rocks and twigs and bark and rotten vegetables, etc. etc., I found on our property.

Often these creations—I don’t know what to call them—were grotesque animals and anthropomorphic figures. Really, I think I was doing it for fun, to amuse our kids, just playing; I’ve never really lost my desire to play. Give me a pond, a pile of rocks, some sand or a riverbank and I can amuse myself for hours.

Anyway, I made a few of these things and then my wife, Carolyn Guinzio, a poet and photographer, started taking photos of the pieces. Somehow when I saw her photos, it was as if I was seeing the pieces for the first time. She managed to find and capture a quality in them that was kind of dark and mysterious and previously unknown to me. So then I started getting more serious about making the figures; I started finding them interesting. After we’d compiled a series of photos, I wrote a poem about one piece specifically, but also more generally about the experience of making all the pieces. It was a strange process and kind of wonderful. Once I started doing it, I found myself always being attuned to how the things I encountered could be re-purposed, re-imagined. In that way, I suppose, it was like writing a poem, and it all seemed to have something to do with being here, in this place.

So, as I say, this was a unique experience, one that, so far, hasn’t been repeated. It was collaborative in a way I never dreamed was possible for me.

MS: Whether it’s because of the angle, lighting, or human/inhuman-ness, those pictures are quite haunting. That aspect made me consider the extent to which your other work is haunted: by lost stories (Ultima Thule), by lost culture or tradition (“Tobacco Mosaic”), and by past violence, such as in your poem “Trespass.” What is your poetic or personal relationship to the past? Do certain pasts compel you more than others? Or is this trend in your work, as you mentioned before, more an incidental result of the language that coalesces for any given poem?

DM: Well, I think I grew up in a place—South Central Kentucky—in which the past is very present. When I wrote the poems about tobacco farming in Dismal Rock, one of the things I loved thinking about was the way that our modern farming implements often unearth their prehistoric counterparts in the fields. Modern plows uncovering flint hoes, etc.

Also, of course, there is Mammoth Cave, where I worked for ten years. Because of the thick sandstone caprock on top of the ridges in that part of Kentucky, much of the cave is dry, a desert, and has been for several million years. This means that all of the things people have left there over the centuries are preserved. Step just off the trail and the floor is littered with the burnt ends of cane torches that were brought into the cave at least 2000 years ago. And that’s just the beginning of what’s there.

So I grew up in a world in which the past was available. I grew up taking that kind of access for granted. And I think you’re right; it definitely informs my work.

MS: You mentioned needing time in order for poetry to coalesce. Is the waiting, the time between projects, the hardest part for you as a writer? For you, what is the most challenging thing about writing poetry?

DM: I’ve thought about this topic a lot. Writing poetry is ridiculously difficult for me; it’s almost embarrassing. For several years now I’ve had this idea that there are two Davis McCombses. One guy writes the poems. The other guy doesn’t want to write them. He doesn’t know how. He has no patience for the solitude and self-examination required. He doesn’t want to work for weeks or months to eke out a handful of lines. He gives readings. He teaches. He occasionally relaxes. But he does not write poems. He can’t.

And so I’ve begun to recognize a pattern in my life as a poet. Any period of writing “success” that I’ve had in, say, the last fifteen years or so is always preceded by a period of incredible struggle and failure. I now think of those periods as the times in which I am forced to kill off the guy who doesn’t know how to write the poems. I have to destroy him—and it’s painful—but it’s the only way to relocate my writing self, to get back in touch with the guy who sits alone in a room for hours and hours, who lives in his head, who obsesses, and who approaches language with an unselfconscious sense of wonder and possibility.

So that’s how it works: I kill off my non-writing self. I write the poems. And then events intrude and the second guy comes back to life and takes over again.

MS: It’s fascinating to hear you explore the role writing plays in your internal life, the state of mind that makes writing or the inspiration to write possible. To that end, I’m curious about what other writers you’re reading. Who is the one poet who compels you the most right now?

DM: There are so many possible answers to this question, but let me give you two poets of fairly opposite sensibilities, neither of whom I think a lot of people read, but both of whom are great and have been important to me.

Aleda Shirley is one. Aleda was one of the first poets I met, back when I was, gosh, eighteen. She was a fabulous, generous, funny and open spirit. Her poems are lush and gorgeous. They strive for—and often achieve—beauty in a way that has become downright unfashionable. I go back to them over and over and have for over twenty years.

Also, R. S. Thomas, the Welsh poet, who is a more recent discovery. I love the flintiness and the austerity of his poems. I love the way they perfectly capture a speaking voice, the way they unfold on the page. He is unflinching in his grim view of Wales and its history, but that clear-eyed vision never masks his deep and abiding love of the place. His poems, the best ones, strike me as little miracles—it’s amazing what he’s able to pull off in just a few spare lines.

I don’t know about you, my friends, but here in Columbus the snows have set in, which means it’s time for me to get back to my duties as Online Editor, and likely means it’s time for you all to come in from your holidays and get back to your books. As we let this past year’s frozen remains sink into the ocean’s icy dark, while we remain on a piece of wreckage-turned-life-raft, floating into the mysterious waters of 2013, it’s time for 2012’s last gasp (“We’ll never let go!”). And thus, I come to you this week with an end-of-the-year list.

Nick McRae, Poetry Review Editor: Olives, A.E. Stallings; The Coal Life, Adam Vines

McRae’s first pick is the third collection of poems by Athens-based American Alicia Elsbeth, and you can read and listen to the title poem here. Nick’s second pick is The Coal Life by Adam Vines, who is the editor of the Birmingham Poetry Review. This debut collection is available from the University of Arkansas Press.

Dominic Russ, Fiction and Nonfiction Review Editor: Train Dreams, Denis Johnson

Mr. Russ picked a book that came out in August 2011, but it’s the Holidays so I let it slide. Also, I have a soft spot for Denis Johnson, who, in my opinion, is one of our greatest living prosers. Not one of his books has failed to impress me, including this novella about the development and expansion of the American West during the early 20th century, which was originally published in The Paris Review in 2002.

Silas Hansen, Nonfiction Editor: Wild, Cheryl Strayed; Hitless Wonder: A Life in Minor League Rock and Roll, Joe Oestreich

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is Cheryl Strayed’s memoir of hiking up the West Coast after the death of her mother and the dissolution of her marriage and, being a Pacific Northwesterner myself, I’m looking forward to reading it (Wild was also the first selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0). Joe Oestreich is an OSU Alumnus who was very kind and funny when he was here for the Creative Writing Bookfair in September. The reading he gave from his book dealt with his experiences with his Columbus-based band, Watershed, and was also quite hilarious.

Michael Marberry, Poetry Editor: Touch, Henri Cole; Holding Company, Major Jackson; Slow Lightning, Eduardo Corral; Maybe the Saddest Thing, Marcus Wicker; Animal Eye, Paisley Rekdal

If this list is any indication, Mr. Marberry has been busy this year. I won’t try to cover all of these titles, but I’ll note that Henri Cole is a member of the faculty here at OSU, who has gained himself a good bit of notice for his excellent dispatches in The New Yorker. Good reading, if you’re in a Paris state of mind.

Nick White, Fiction Editor: This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Díaz; The Round House, Louise Erdrich

My brother gave me Díaz’s story collection for Christmas, which Nick has picked as one of his favorite titles of 2012. This Is How You Lose Her reunites us with Yunior, and in it Díaz uses a variety of perspectives to paint this portrait of a cheater’s downfall. The Round House just won Louise Erdrich a much-deserved National Book Award, and deals with a rape on a Native American reservation.

As for me, the best I’ve read this year is either Nathan Englander’s spectacular short story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, or Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds, which is one of the first novels that deals with the most recent Iraq War in a way that feels equal to the subject. If you’re so inclined, you can read an excerpt here.

That’s it for 2012, ladies and gents. Celebrate duly, and check back with us in the New Year. Bonne nuit et bonne chance.