I am honored that the editors of Always Crashing have nominated my long poem, “Postrock,” for a Pushcart Prize. Thanks so much to them and their ongoing support of my work.
Publications
“Grateful and Generous Reading: An Interview with Robert T. Tally Jr.” in boundary 2
I am really happy that my interview with Robert T. Tally Jr.—the first of two interviews I conducted in conjunction with The Babcock Lecture at Hartwick College, which I organized as Cora A. Babcock Chair in English from 2022–25—is now out in print. “Grateful and Generous Reading: An Interview with Robert T. Tally Jr.,” has just been published in the November 2025 issue of boundary 2 (vol. 52, no. 4).
It was a busy weekend—in the course of only a few days, Tally flew to Oneonta from Texas, delivered a lecture, sat down for an interview, and then moderated the final Zoom panel celebrating Fredric Jameson’s ninetieth birthday from my home office (all while he was in the middle of editing Verso’s “Jameson at 90” [2025] blog series)—and so I am deeply thankful to Tally for taking the time to come to Hartwick and chat.
Here’s an abstract of the interview:
This interview with literary critic Robert T. Tally Jr. was conducted on April 26, 2024, in conjunction with his delivery of the 2023–24 Babcock Lecture at Hartwick College. Tally is one of the premier critics presently working in the field of spatial literary studies and has published over a dozen books and over one hundred articles and book chapters on US and world literature, critical theory, and the history of criticism. Reflecting broadly on the trajectory of his career, Tally discusses the gratitude that has accompanied his scholarly writing, his interests in spatial literary studies, his relationship with the teaching and work of Jonathan Arac, Paul A. Bové, and Fredric Jameson, and the role of theory at the present time.
The second interview conducted in conjunction with the 2025 Babcock Lecture, my interview with Anna Kornbluh, will appear in the May 2026 issue of boundary 2.
And for previous interviews: “An Interview with Jonathan Arac,” “Something Worth Leaving in Shards: An Interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis,” and “Isn’t It a Beautiful Day? An Interview with J. Hillis Miller.”
“Postrock” in Always Crashing
I am beyond delighted to announce that my long poem, “Postrock,” which I composed between June 2021 and July 2022 and which was supported by the Cora A. Babcock Chair in English and a number of Faculty Research Grants, has (finally!) been published in Always Crashing. This is probably the piece of writing that I am the most proud of among everything I have ever published, and so I am just utterly thrilled to be able to bring it into the world. I am forever indebted to James Tadd Adcox and the other editors of Always Crashing for their ongoing support of my work.
“Postrock” is the concluding and last unpublished poem from an unpublished manuscript (also titled Postrock and seeking a publisher!) in which I endeavor to perform what I’m calling a weird phenomenology: seeing everyday objects anew by mediating their perception through lenses of poetic, environmental, and cultural influence. In particular, “Postrock” draws explicit inspiration from John Ashbery’s Three Poems (1972), is a sustained meditation on space, and, like all the poems from the manuscript, was composed while listening to postrock music. The poem is also in conversation with a large number of other texts, including books about space by Gaston Bachelard, Maurice Blanchot, Henri Lefebvre, and others, and it was composed using a variety of formal constraints, including being composed as an unbroken, nearly twenty-thousand-word paragraph.
“2022.07,” “2022.08–09,” “2022.10,” “2023.17–18,” and “2023.19” in Lothlorien Poetry Journal
It’s been a dark week, so a tiny ray of something else: more sonnets from my ongoing sequence, “2022.07,” “2022.08–09,” “2022.10,” “2023.17–18,” and “2023.19,” are in Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Thanks to Strider Marcus Jones for taking these!
“2023.32” in Cleaver
Thanks so much to Cleaver for publishing another sonnet from my ongoing sequence, “2023.32,” in their forty-eighth issue.
Reading at CANO’s Writers Salon
I recently published a book, 2013–2017: Sonnets (LJMcD Communications, 2024), the first in an ongoing sonnet sequence. I have written the next book in the sequence, 2018–2024: Sonnets, and I’ve started the third, 2024–20XX: Sonnets, and I will be reading poems from these two most recent projects at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at the Community Arts Network of Oneonta (CANO)’s Writers Salon at the Wilber Mansion on 11 Ford Ave. I promise a poem about the election (writing it right now).
“2023.21,” “2023.22/24,” and “2023.25” in Broken Lens Journal
Thanks so much to Broken Lens Journal for publishing some new sonnets in their ninth issue: “2023.21,” “2023.22/24,” and “2023.25.”
If you’re in Oneonta and want to hear some more poems from the manuscript these come from, stop by CANO’s Writers Salon on November 21.
“2022.11,” “2023.01,” “2023.11,” “2023.12,” “2023.13,” and “2023.14” in Pamenar Online Magazine
I am thrilled to have poems in Pamenar Online Magazine again! Check out: “2022.11,” “2023.01,” “2023.11,” “2023.12,” “2023.13,” and “2023.14.” Thanks to Ghazal Mosadeq for her support and the amazing journal and press she and her team have put together.
If you’re in Oneonta and want to hear some more poems from the manuscript these come from, stop by CANO’s Writers Salon on November 21. I’ll also be reading from 2013–2017: Sonnets on Wednesday, September 25 for Hartwick College’s Visiting Writers Series.
Hartwick College Press Release about My New Book
Hartwick College has put out a press release, “Routine, Rejection All Part of the Process, Says Poet,” about my new book, 2013 – 2017: Sonnets.
2013–2017: Sonnets
Now available! 2013–2017: Sonnets, my third book of poetry and the first volume of my American Sonnet sequence, has been published by LJMcD Communications. It can be ordered through Amazon.
2013–2017: Sonnets is the first volume in Bradley J. Fest’s ongoing sequence of American sonnets, a project concerned with how the distributed networks of the twenty-first century construct and filter time. Continuing the program of poetic assemblage explored in his first two books, these poems were composed consecutively as emergent temporal snapshots documenting certain experiences of what it was like to live precariously in the overdeveloped world between 2013 and 2017. Over the past decade, this ongoing experimental sonnet sequence has become: a complex encounter with time and its twenty-first-century rhythms; a document of artistic maturation; a personal archive of occasions, moments, days; a continually refreshed confrontation with the global computational hyperarchive; a discography of popular music; an extended reflection on contemporary literature, art, and culture; an increasingly multiplex meditation on the sonnet; an historical record of the troubling national situation in the United States; and a work of mourning for a world disappearing into climate emergency. The second volume, currently in progress, begins in 2018.
Eternal thanks to Lachlan J. McDougall for bringing 2013–2017 into the world and to Taylor Baldwin for the cover image.
The Hyperarchival Parallax 