Principles of Belonging is now available!
I am very excited to announce that my book-length poem has finally arrived from Red Dashboard, LLC! It was up for about a day, but then it was taken down after I realized I...
Category: American Poetry
Editor Alex Cigale on my Beowulf
“What makes Joshua Gray’s “verse adaptation with young readers in mind” immediate and powerful is its tender tone: it is addressed to his son, in the same understated, hushed voice of expectation as a...
Georgetown University professor on my children’s Beowulf book
Tod Linafelt, Georgetown University says of my Beowulf for kids: Joshua Gray’s rendering of Beowulf for children is ‘grand and gruesome,’ just like the monster Grendel that stalks its lines. Gray captures both the...
Death by the Letter R
To understand poems, it is usually necessary to understand the poet’s history. But when it comes to historical poems, it can be equally important, if not more important, to understand the poem’s history. Sometimes,...
Concupiscent Ice Cream
I recently read The Emperor of Ice Cream by Wallace Stevens for the first time. I love the first stanza, but I do not get the second. As are other poets, Stevens was also...
Desert Where Frost Is
During my short stint with Poembusters, we tackled “Desert Places” by Robert Frost. It’s one of his better poems, yet I did not even know about it until this Poembusters session. Indeed, this poem...
Reconciliation for Whitman
Here we are as a country, about to swear in the first black President of the United States. The first non-white President too, but of course the fact that he is black brings a...
Shell for Adair
Virginia Hamilton Adair wrote poetry all her life, and published in a few journals early in her career, but did not publish again until her first book of poetry at the age of eighty-three,...