Arranging the Blaze

Poetry. "The poetry of Chad Sweeney is exuberant, imagistic, and prophetic. It locates a 'critical moment' of the ineffable that would be inexpressible, had it not been so beautifully expressed: 'the last hawk in the net of his eye.' Prophetic means of the world--'the median burns with oleander from Miami to LA' and 'the beer tastes of uranium'--but also touched by the marvelous ('the fire is folded inside its wood'). This is a poetry of awakening, of coming into knowledge. We are near the beginning and the end, but in a curiously real place where you can hear the white teeth of a bull pull at the grass" – Paul Hoover.

About the author: Chad Sweeney was born in Norman, Oklahoma. He is the author of AN ARCHITECTURE (BlazeVOX, 2007) and A Mirror to Shatter the Hammer (Tarpaulin Sky, 2006). Chosen for Best American Poetry 2008 by Charles Wright, Sweeney's work has appeared in journals such as Barrow Street, Crazyhorse, New American Writing, Verse, Colorado Review, Hunger Mountain, Black Warrior Review, Passages North, RUNES, and AMERICAN LETTERS & COMMENTAR. He edits Parthenon West Review with David Holler, and is the editor of Days I MOVED THROUGH ORDINARY SOUNDS (City Lights, 2009), an anthology of poetry, fiction and memoir by the teaching artists of the national WritersCorps. With Mojdeh Marashi, Sweeney translated a book of Iranian poetry, Arghavaan, Selected Poems of H.E. Sayeh, for which he was awarded a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA in poetry from San Francisco State University. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in literature/poetry at Western Michigan University, where he teaches creative writing and serves as assistant editor for New Issues Press. He lives in Kalamazoo with his wife, poet Jennifer Kochanek Sweeney.