Melissa Balmain's guest appearances

Melissa Balmain

Talkward

Rattlecast

Greener Pastures Podcast

The Other Pages

Naomi Shihab Nye

Tishani Doshi

Brendan Constantine

Chris Anderson

Dana Gioia

Amy Miller

Denise Levertov

Todd Davis

Richard Blanco

David Berman

Grace Thomas

Campbell McGrath

Ellen Bass

Mike White

Elizabeth Johnston

OwlTail

Now entering Greener Pastures! Greener Pastures is a comedy and satire site run by a bunch of writers obsessed with out-writing, out-joking and out-funnying each other! And because we love to writing satire, talking about it, and the people who do it, we’ve expanded into podcasting! Today, we interview Melissa Balmain! Melissa Balmain is a humorist, poet, journalist, and teacher. Since 2012 she has edited Light, the country's longest-running journal of light verse (founded in 1992). Balmain's poems and/or prose have appeared in The American Bystander, American Life in Poetry, Ecotone, The Hopkins Review, Lighten Up Online, Literary Matters, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Measure, Mezzo Cammin, The New Criterion, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New Verse News, Poetry Daily, Rattle, Slackjaw, The Spectator (UK), Verse Daily, The Washington Post, Weekly Humorist, and many anthologies.  Find Melissa online:⁠ ⁠https://melissabalmain.com⁠⁠ Tune in next Monday for the next episode! Follow us on Twitter at ⁠⁠⁠@greenerpastsat⁠⁠⁠ and on Medium at ⁠⁠⁠Greener Pastures Magazine⁠⁠⁠.

Now entering Greener Pastures! Greener Pastures is a comedy and satire site run by a bunch of writers obsessed with out-writing, out-joking and out-funnying each other! And because we love to writing satire, talking about it, and the people who do it, we’ve expanded into podcasting! Today, we interview Melissa Balmain! Melissa Balmain is a humorist, poet, journalist, and teacher. Since 2012 she has edited <a href="https://www.lightpoetrymagazine.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Light</a>, the country's longest-running journal of light verse (founded in 1992). Balmain's poems and/or prose have appeared in The American Bystander, American Life in Poetry, Ecotone, The Hopkins Review, Lighten Up Online, Literary Matters, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Measure, Mezzo Cammin, The New Criterion, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New Verse News, Poetry Daily, Rattle, Slackjaw, The Spectator (UK), Verse Daily, The Washington Post, Weekly Humorist, and many anthologies. <a href="https://focus.theater⁠⁠" rel="noopener noreferer nofollow" target="_blank"> </a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Satan-Talks-Therapist-Melissa-Balmain/dp/1589881818/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=EqhYj&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.ed85217c-14c9-4aa0-b248-e47393e2ce12&amp;pf_rd_p=ed85217c-14c9-4aa0-b248-e47393e2ce12&amp;pf_rd_r=145-6901234-0449210&amp;pd_rd_wg=ZGvJ0&amp;pd_rd_r=bb181c11-7505-495e-b016-3a3b96c5b103&amp;ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk⁠⁠" rel="noopener noreferer nofollow" target="_blank"> </a> Find Melissa online:⁠ ⁠<a href="https://melissabalmain.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://melissabalmain.com⁠⁠</a> Tune in next Monday for the next episode! Follow us on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/greenerpastsat" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">⁠⁠⁠@greenerpastsat⁠⁠⁠</a> and on Medium at <a href="https://medium.com/greener-pastures-magazine" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">⁠⁠⁠Greener Pastures Magazine⁠⁠⁠</a>.

Melissa Balmain Talks to Her Therapist (and also Kegan)

Rattlecast #96 features the editor of Light poetry magazine, Melissa Balmain. As always, the first half-hour will feature Poets Respond Live. Melissa Balmain is a humorist, journalist, and teacher. Since 2012 she has edited Light, the country's longest-running journal of light verse (founded in 1992 by John Mella). Balmain's poems have appeared in The American Bystander, American Life in Poetry, The Hopkins Review, Lighten Up Online, Literary Matters, Measure, Mezzo Cammin, The New Criterion, The New Verse News, Poetry Daily, Rattle, The Spectator (UK), Verse Daily, The Washington Post, and many anthologies; her prose in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Weekly Humorist, and elsewhere. A former columnist for Success magazine and other publications, she's the author of a memoir, Just Us: Adventures of a Mother and Daughter (Faber and Faber). Balmain has received national honors for her journalism, including the National Society for Newspaper Columnists humorous columnist award and multiple Pulitizer Prize nominations. She teaches at the University of Rochester and lives nearby with her husband and two children. Her poetry collection Walking in on People was chosen by X.J. Kennedy for the Able Muse Book Award. Her newest collection is The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy-Tale Reboots for Adults, illustrated by Ron Barrett (Humorist Books).For more on the author, and to order the book, visit: https://www.melissabalmain.com/Visit Light poetry magazine here:https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/This Week's Prompt:Write a a poem in which an inanimate object or concept is personified. (See “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath for a great example.)Next Week's Prompt:A pivotal moment in your childhood.The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Rattlecast #96 features the editor of Light poetry magazine, Melissa Balmain. As always, the first half-hour will feature Poets Respond Live. Melissa Balmain is a humorist, journalist, and teacher. Since 2012 she has edited Light, the country's longest-running journal of light verse (founded in 1992 by John Mella). Balmain's poems have appeared in The American Bystander, American Life in Poetry, The Hopkins Review, Lighten Up Online, Literary Matters, Measure, Mezzo Cammin, The New Criterion, The New Verse News, Poetry Daily, Rattle, The Spectator (UK), Verse Daily, The Washington Post, and many anthologies; her prose in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Weekly Humorist, and elsewhere. A former columnist for Success magazine and other publications, she's the author of a memoir, Just Us: Adventures of a Mother and Daughter (Faber and Faber). Balmain has received national honors for her journalism, including the National Society for Newspaper Columnists humorous columnist award and multiple Pulitizer Prize nominations. She teaches at the University of Rochester and lives nearby with her husband and two children. Her poetry collection Walking in on People was chosen by X.J. Kennedy for the Able Muse Book Award. Her newest collection is The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy-Tale Reboots for Adults, illustrated by Ron Barrett (Humorist Books). For more on the author, and to order the book, visit: <a href="https://www.melissabalmain.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.melissabalmain.com/</a> Visit Light poetry magazine here: <a href="https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/</a> As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: <a href="https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/</a> This Week's Prompt: Write a a poem in which an inanimate object or concept is personified. (See “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath for a great example.) Next Week's Prompt: A pivotal moment in your childhood. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

ep. 96 - Melissa Balmain

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Did I mention that we haven't talked about love poems much in this series? We still aren’t there, but at least we have the title this time.  Love Poem by Melissa Balmain is light verse-ish. What is light verse? Great question. There is no real definition. In general, it's an ironic, sometimes humorous treatment of a subject or a person, written more to entertain than to probe deeply into a concept. It’s often observational, and as with today’s poem, slightly skewed logic and comparisons are common. In some cases, it might be thought of as what a meme might have sounded like before the internet. First, a quick comment about the poet. Melissa Balmain is a poet, journalist, humorist and teacher. She’s the editor of a journal of light verse, titled, logically enough, Light (https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/) and teaches at the University of Rochester. Getting back to the poem, what struck me was not the poetic techniques, or novel vocabulary, or unusual insight, but the fact that light verse, and the ironic or sardonic or sarcastic tone it often takes, is a wonderful vehicle for stating the obvious. Or at least, what should be obvious. I am an Engineer by day (novelist and editor by night) so my normal inclination when anything isn't working, is to fix it. My wife gets annoyed with me sometimes, for taking something the neighbors threw out, lugging it home, and making it look like new again, or making it into something completely different, but useful. I was always a fan of Charles Dutton as garbage collector Roc Emerson, turning castaway items into a well-equipped, if miss-matched home. Melissa Balmain looks into this idea, with the view that, if we can make something look so good, why give it up? Her Love Poem starts out: The afternoon we left our first apartment, we scrubbed it down from ceiling to parquet. Who knew the place could smell like lemon muffins? It suddenly seemed nuts to move away. She takes that idea, and revisits the logic through several examples - a common technique in light verse - including fixing up a car, and tuning a piano, and then focuses her attention on human relationships:  (The full article text is available on Facebook or Tumblr) Once again this is Steve Spanoudis for theotherpages.org. Thank you for Listening. If you’re enjoying these commentaries, and the poem selections, please share them - either the text versions or the podcasts - on social media. You can find more at theotherpages.org, or at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Did I mention that we haven't talked about love poems much in this series? We still aren’t there, but at least we have the title this time. <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57761/love-poem-56d23b8f415b9" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Love Poem</a> by <a href="https://www.melissabalmain.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Melissa Balmain</a> is light verse-ish. What is light verse? Great question. There is no real definition. In general, it's an ironic, sometimes humorous treatment of a subject or a person, written more to entertain than to probe deeply into a concept. It’s often observational, and as with today’s poem, slightly skewed logic and comparisons are common. In some cases, it might be thought of as what a meme might have sounded like before the internet. First, a quick comment about the poet. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MelissaBalmainAuthor/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Melissa Balmain</a> is a poet, journalist, humorist and teacher. She’s the editor of a journal of light verse, titled, logically enough, <a href="https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Light</a> (<a href="https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/</a>) and teaches at the University of Rochester. Getting back to the poem, what struck me was not the poetic techniques, or novel vocabulary, or unusual insight, but the fact that light verse, and the ironic or sardonic or sarcastic tone it often takes, is a wonderful vehicle for stating the obvious. Or at least, what should be obvious. I am an Engineer by day (novelist and editor by night) so my normal inclination when anything isn't working, is to fix it. My wife gets annoyed with me sometimes, for taking something the neighbors threw out, lugging it home, and making it look like new again, or making it into something completely different, but useful. I was always a fan of Charles Dutton as garbage collector Roc Emerson, turning castaway items into a well-equipped, if miss-matched home. Melissa Balmain looks into this idea, with the view that, if we can make something look so good, why give it up? Her Love Poem starts out: The afternoon we left our first apartment, we scrubbed it down from ceiling to parquet. Who knew the place could smell like lemon muffins? It suddenly seemed nuts to move away. She takes that idea, and revisits the logic through several examples - a common technique in light verse - including fixing up a car, and tuning a piano, and then focuses her attention on human relationships: (The full article text is available on Facebook or Tumblr) Once again this is Steve Spanoudis for <a href="http://theotherpages.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">theotherpages.org</a>. Thank you for Listening. If you’re enjoying these commentaries, and the poem selections, please share them - either the text versions or the podcasts - on social media. You can find more at <a href="https://theotherpages.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">theotherpages.org</a>, or at The Other Pages on <a href="https://facebook.com/theotherpages" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook </a>or <a href="https://theotherpages.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tumblr</a>.

2021 NPM 18 Melissa Balmain