Congrats! You, us, we have made it through two whole seasons of this wacky little experiment to get poets to talk to us about poems. Can't think of more lovely way to close us out than with this conversation with the one and only Justin Phillip Reed on Reginald Shepherd's "Occurrences across the Chromatic Scale". Listen to us astonish, awe, swell, delight, and learn from, over, below this poem. Then be sure to go back and re-listen the very first episode. It's a treat!
JUSTIN PHILLIP REED is an American poet, essayist, and amateur bass guitarist. His preoccupations include horror cinema, poetic form, morphological transgressions, and uses of the grotesque. He is the author of two poetry collections: The Malevolent Volume (2020) and Indecency (2018), both published by Coffee House Press. He participates in vague spirituality and alternative rock music cultures. He was born and raised in South Carolina and enjoys smelling like outside
REGINALD SHEPHERD was born on April 10, 1963, in New York City and raised in tenements and housing projects in the Bronx. He received his BA from Bennington College in 1988 and MFA degrees from Brown University and the University of Iowa. His first collection, Some Are Drowning (1994), was chosen by Carolyn Forché for the Associated Writing Programs' Award in Poetry. His other collections are Fata Morgana (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), winner of the Silver Medal of the 2007 Florida Book Awards; Otherhood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), a finalist for the 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Wrong (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999); and Angel, Interrupted (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996). He is also the author of Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press, 2007) and the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press, 2004) and of Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath Press, 2008). His work has been widely anthologized, and has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies. His honors and awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, the Florida Arts Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lived in Pensacola, Florida. Shepherd died on September 10, 2008.
