National Poetry Month Feature: Jeffrey McDaniel

An interview + writing prompt with the legend of verse.

I’ve had the wind knocked out of me, but never the hurricane.
—Jeffrey McDaniel

There is no poet quite like Jeffrey McDaniel. Jeff is known for his ability to capture a basic sentiment—desire, grief, self-recrimination—and turn it into the single most powerful, gut-punching line of poetry you’ve ever read. He is one of the most widely quoted modern poets in America, and almost every writer I know (myself included) envies the way his brain works, how it arrives at an idea on the page that most could only dream of writing.