What I've Learned from Nick Sturm

First, be involved in what you do and produce.  By doing this people will know your name with your writing, chapbooks, and presses.  Second, stay real.  Writing takes honesty and that is clearly displayed in the poems in all three of these collections.  What I write outside of the classroom is sometimes similar to Sturm’s voice.  the grappling tension, the incongruent thoughts, the theories off the world are all themes that span past Sturm specifically and to many contemporary poets like Heather Christle, Leigh Stein, and S.E. Smith.  These chapbooks perhaps don’t have a larger narrative arc so perhaps they are time based.  Perhaps they were written during a certain time and then placed in the chapbook thusly.  A career this successful while going through your MFA and PhD is impressive and noteworthy.  To have a hand in so many productions and pieces of the poetry world makes me firstly jealous and second something worth watching in the years to come.  Sturm’s career could make it even bigger than it is currently and I hope, as a fan of his, to watch that flourish.