The Tradition

He serves as poetry editor for The Believer.

He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta

The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The American Poetry Review, The Baffler, Bennington Review, The Best American Poetry 2017, BOMB Magazine, Boston Review, BuzzFeed, The Georgia Review, The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, Gulf Coast, Memorious, The Nation, The New Criterion, The New Yorker, Opossum, Oxford American, The Paris Review, PEN Poetry Series, Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Poetry, Poetry London, Poetry Society of America online, The Rumpus, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Time, Tin House, TriQuarterly, Vinyl, and Weber: The Contemporary West.

This book was written with the support of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Emory University, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Practical. Like
pennies. Like copper. It can conduct electricity. Keep the heat on or
shock you. It works hard, earns as much as my smile.

We lay there together
As if we were getting
Something done. I

And flesh properly placed will lead
One to think that he can

We were the symptoms, the road our sickness:

My last love drove a burgundy car,
Color of a rash, a symptom of sickness.

None of our fights ended where