I've been thinking, lately, about those elements of poetry we tend to ignore: the actual letters used to write the words, and the white space that surrounds a poem on the page or screen.&nbs&hell…Read More

Rejoice! The latest issue of Chicago Review has dropped, and in it you'll find new writing about Fernando Pessoa, FLARF, and Basil Bunting, as well as an essay by Peter Middleton, Donna… Read More

If there is an international man of mystery in contemporary poetry, Marc Vincenz is it: British but also Swiss and in some meaningful sense Hong Kong Chinese, multilingual, with an unplaceab… Read More

The latest Hudson Review has dropped into my mailbox, and along with writing by William H. Pritchard, Zara Raab, David Mason, and others, there's an essay called "My Race Sees Me," in w… Read More

Rejoice! The latest issue of American Book Review has hit the streets, guest-edited by Anthony Madrid and focused on erotic poetry.  I wrote a little something called "A Feminine C… Read More

It's time, fiction writers, to submit your manuscript for the 2018 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize.  The image above depicts the Glen Rowan House, where the winne… Read More

I am, apparently, at the height of my powers—at least according to Ian Pople at The Manchester Review, where he discusses several books by John Matthias, including Revolutions: A Colla… Read More

Not long ago the latest issue of the Hudson Review hit the streets, with a little survey of new poetry I wrote inside.  It's called "From Rhymed Lines to Mongrel Tongues," and take… Read More

Hey hey! The good people at Copper Nickel have posted an essay I wrote for their print edition online.  It's called "Reggie Watts and Karl Pilkington Wrestle in Heaven," and it's about… Read More

Rejoice! The new Hudson Review has dropped with a satisfying clunk into the mailboxes of subscribers and onto the magazine racks of the more self-respecting sort of bookstores! As always, th… Read More

Check it out! See you there! Read More

Rejoice! The new issue of Copper Nickel is out.  It includes an essay of mine called "Reggie Watts and Karl Pilkington Wrestle in Heaven," about comedy, populism, globalism, and, of cou… Read More

The laws of logic may well maintain that something cannot be simultaneously wrong and right—but the laws of poetry beg to differ.  The laws of Anthony Madrid's poetry certainly do… Read More

Years ago, Ron Silliman wrote an essay called "Artifice of Absorption," where he claimed that popular fiction sought to make language disappear, putting words together so innocuously that th… Read More

The always-interesting journal Galatea Resurrects has been kind enough to run a review of my recent book written with John Matthias and Jean Dibble, Revolutions: A Collaboration.  … Read More

In the last years of his life, Pierre Bourdieu turned with increasing urgency to political questions.  Seeing in globalization an ever-greater concentration of all forms of capital&mdas&hell…Read More

Poussin's paintings, Shakespeare's epitaph, Thom Gunn's existentialism, and many other things animate the elegantly written essays in Alfred Corn's new collection of prose, Arks & Covena… Read More

I've always romanticized the Grand Old Literary Newsprint Journals—the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books and, best of all, the Times Literary Sup… Read More

Rejoice! David Caplan has edited a collection of essays called On Rhyme, with contributions from a host of interesting people. Here's the table of contents:Rhyme in Modern and Contemporary… Read More

How to write in the time of Trump and Putin? In words and images, John Matthias, Jean Dibble, and Robert Archambeau give you an answer to consider: find the muse of amusement and the rea… Read More

Here’s a poem called “Shawl Dance.” It’s by Eric Elshtain, from his 2015 book This Thin Memory A-Ha.The sky of it causesharmony in the bendingas a bird maneuvercreate… Read More

The good people at the Huffington Post have interviewed me about what’s going on in the poetry world. Here’s a snippet:I’ve always thought the most uninteresting thing a c… Read More

Not long ago, as I was shuffling my way through the local used bookshop, I saw a pristine copy of the November 1968 issue of Evergreen Review. William Burroughs! Céline! Nat Hentoff b… Read More

Happy to say that "His Swords and Armor: Remembering Michael Donaghy" is available in its entirety at Poetry Daily.  The piece originally ran in The Hopkins Review Read More

Remember how the anti-Trump demonstrations were so vast they sent our president running to his phone to squeak out some angry tweets? I'm hoping the vast list of contributors to Resist Much/… Read More

You want to know about rhyme, you ask Anthony Madrid.  Trust me on this.  Here's the beginning of his new essay, "A Gallery of Rhymes from Palgrave's Golden Treasury," the latest i… Read More

These are dreadful times, for which we need a poetry of dread.  Ernest Hilbert's got us covered, in his new book Caligulan.  I wrote a little something about it for Literary Matter… Read More

Left to right: Michael Donaghy, Richard Pettengill, Robert Archambeau, at Donaghy's last American reading, 2004Talk to anyone about the late poet Michael Donaghy and you realize something im… Read More

When did Buffalo become Buffalo? If you're at all interested in the little demimonde of American poetry, you know that the unlikely city of Buffalo, New York has long been a kind of Emerald… Read More

Poetry wars? What poetry wars? Henry King has written a very insightful review of my book The Kafka Sutra in which he gets at my sense of poetic pluralism better than anyone else I've s… Read More

The age of "alternative facts" demands an alternative approach to the humanities.  Or so I argue in a short essay called "With Trump, a New Case foe Why the Humanities Still Matter," no… Read More

"When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners i… Read More

Rejoice! There's a new collection of essays just now out on that great Canadian poet, novelist, and raconteur Robert Kroetsch.  A founder of boundary 2, a disruptor of established forms… Read More

So Trump is now in the White House—what are we going to do about it? For starters, we can realize that he comes in as a weak and unpopular president, with an approval rating marginally… Read More

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What's your poetry worth? And who's to say?Ernest Hilbert is a good guy to ask when it comes to these questions. Not only is he a poet of distinction, he's also been running America's premie… Read More

Remember that guy in the big London scene in Wordsworth’s Prelude—the battered old veteran begging on the streets, holding a sign that tells his story? His image haunted Wordswor… Read More

Those photos from Ankara, with the Russian ambassador lying dead on the floor? They're haunting, and not just because they depict an atrocity. They're haunting because they are more beautifu… Read More

Whatever the reason—his insightful writing on Polish literature for the TLS, his poems, or the kind of courtesy he showed when we both tried to get into the same taxi on a cold Belgian… Read More

Rejoice! This troubled world has been blessed with two new lights in the darkness—the latest issues of The Battersea Review and Plume.The sixth issue of The Battersea Review (prou… Read More

The good people at Spuyten Duyvil are putting together a collection of poems to coincide with the inauguration of the man chosen by a minority of American voters as our next president. I'm c… Read More

In one of Aesop's fables, "The Frogs Who Desired a King," the frogs of the local pond grew disillusioned with the king Zeus had given them. Fair enough: the capricious deity had, after all… Read More

If you're like me, you're probably thinking that this is not a good year to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with extended family, that it'd be in everybody's best interest to step back from… Read More

Utter silence on the train platform among the normally talkative commuters.An old woman in a coffee shop crying quietly, alone.A man in the parking lot dropping the keys from his shaking han… Read More

Utter silence on the train platform among the normally talkative commuters.An old woman in a coffee shop crying quietly, alone.A man in the parking lot dropping the keys from his shaking han… Read More

Utter silence on the train platform among the normally talkative commuters.An old woman in a coffee shop crying quietly, alone.A man in the parking lot dropping the keys from his shaking han… Read More

Back in the 1990s, when I edited the poetry broadsheet Samizdat, my favorite part of the job involved receiving dispatches about poetry from all over the world. We published them as part of… Read More

Inventions of a Barbarous Age: Poetry from Conceptualism to Rhyme—my latest book of essays—has just rolled hot off the presses at MadHat Press.  What's it all about? We… Read More

Poetry and stupidity are, it seems, secret kissing cousins. Who knew? Lawrence Raab, that's who. Check out his short, punchy essay "Poetry and Stupidity," now online as part of the Essays &a&hell…Read More

Mark Scroggins is, hands down, bar none, my favorite critic of contemporary poetry. His latest collection is out now from MadHat which, under new leadership from Marc Vincenz, is turning int… Read More

Some interesting reflections on my most recent book of poems, The Kafka Sutra, are up at the Queen Mob's Teahouse site.  Stu Watson has a number of nice things to say, but the one I'm t… Read More

Here's the cover of my next book, Inventions of a Barbarous Age: Poetry from Conceptualism to Rhyme. I'll post something about the contents soon, but I'm not here to talk about the contents… Read More

The barbarians are here! They've breached the walls of the fortress! The city lies in ruins! Poetry is at their mercy!Well, it's all a bit more complicated and not so grim. Find out more in… Read More

I like just about everything about Sweden, even the weather. I like their intellectuals, too, mostly for being both meticulous and down-to-earth—at least by the standards of in… Read More

Like you, I love to have a small notebook in my pocket.  Me, I like Moleskines, preferably green (I am deeply superstitious about color).  The notebooks are usually filled with not… Read More

You're probably yearning for a 2400 word reading of John Ashbery's "The Skaters," aren't you? Well, you're in luck! I've just edited this out of the manuscript of Making Nothing Happen: Poet… Read More

So I've been editing down the manuscript of my book-in-progress Making Nothing Happen: Poetry in Society, Poetry for Itself, and have decided to remove this passage—not because I have… Read More

Rejoice! The latest issue of the Journal of Poetics Research, John Tranter's latest creation (you may remember him for running the original version of Jacket, now run out of the University o… Read More

W.H. Auden—what's not to love? And I don't just love Auden's writing, I love the enormous body of writing about him—memoirs, critical analyses, scholarly exegesis, scandalous gos… Read More

Sheena, the Ramones inform us, is a punk rocker.  She wasn't always, though—I once tried to combine the history and prehistory of the various Sheenas and proto-Sheenas of pop cult… Read More

Rejoice! The new issue of Valley Voices is out, and it's a special issue devoted to the writing of Michael Anania.  You'll find new poems by Anania, an interview, and essays an rem… Read More

What is a critic supposed to do? If I know anything about critics, you could put a dozen of them around a café table and at the end of the evening have at least two dozen opinions, an… Read More

I'm quite convinced this photograph of Robert Duncan touches on something central to the man and his poetics.  Two things, actually.  When Michael Anania showed me the photo, taken… Read More

This afternoon the latest issue of The Hudson Review landed in my mailbox with the satisfying thump of old-school print media, and it's a fine issue, with writing by Alfred Corn, Willia… Read More

This afternoon the latest issue of The Hudson Review landed in my mailbox with the satisfying thump of old-school print media, and it's a fine issue, with writing by Alfred Corn, Willia… Read More

If you look at the photos of of themselves most poets approve for their book jackets, you wouldn't get the sense that these are, you know, people much given to laughter.  Solemn-eyed an… Read More

See you there! Read More

Hold the phone! Stop the presses! Put down that doughnut!  The new issue of the literary annual Plume has arrived, with a list of contributors too diverse and distinguished to be b… Read More

A young English poet, fostered by an ancient and glorious university, starts writing startling, experimental verses, which find their first audience among a talented, radicalized coterie of… Read More

Archambeau, Burt & Mazer before "Poetry: What's Next" at the GrolierHere, courtesy of Mark Schorr, is an audio recording of "You Will Object," my talk on the future of poetry at the Grol… Read More

“Poetry: What’s Next?” That’s the title of the first in a new series of critical talks to take place at the legendary Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Massachus… Read More

Research continues in the vital field of descriptive poetic sociology, people, and my army of assistants labors ceaselessly in the fourth sub-basement of the secret backyard writing dojo. &n&hell…Read More

Do you like Roland Barthes? Me, I'm a big fan, especially of his elegant little essay "The Death of the Author," which I'm happy to confess was something of an inspiration for an essay of mi… Read More

Look out! The fifth issue of Lute and Drum just hit the internet, and it's heavy with goodness.  It has new work by D.A. Powell, Monifa Love Asante, Norman Finkelstein, Mary-Jane H… Read More

The jets are waiting on the runways, the engines of the motorcade hum in readiness: the Kafka Sutra world tour, 2016 edition, is about to begin!The first stop: Louisville, Kentucky… Read More

The Western bourgeoisie has long known its rôle in art is to be abused by the avant-garde; however, groups outside this tradition or class don’t easily see why they or their cult… Read More

Hot news! Two of my favorite journals, the eminently respectable Boston Review and the eminently raffish Toad Suck Review have new issues out.  Both include things I've writte… Read More

If, like me, you can’t pass a used bookshop without going in, to emerge at least an hour later with as many titles as you can carry shoved into your bag and your jacket pockets, then y… Read More

It's time for year-end lists, and the good people at Partisan have not neglected to provide one.  Along with William Logan, A.E. Stallings, Daisy Fried, Jonathan Farmer, and others… Read More

Hot news! The Amazon listing for my new book of poems and literary oddities, The Kafka Sutra is now up and running.  Just in time for the launch of the book, along with two other n… Read More

Hot news! The glorious new issue of Prelude magazine is out in print and online.  It includes many fine things, (new work by Rae Armantrout, Felix Bernstein, Anne Tardos, Katy Lederer… Read More

You're probably wondering how San Francisco streetcar consolidation in the 1890s helped make modernism happen, and speculating on how much of the legendary Paris of the 1920s would have disa… Read More

Good news for those interested in the state of poetry criticism: there's a feature on that very topic just now available in the latest issue of The Battersea Review.  It includes contri… Read More

Good news for those interested in the state of poetry criticism: there's a feature on that very topic just now available in the latest issue of The Battersea Review.  It includes contri… Read More

Ben Mazer in his natural habitat, the streets around Harvard SquareIn a couple of weeks I'll be reading at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts with Ben Mazer and Stephen… Read More

I’m no better at predicting the future than you are (a fact which hasn’t stopped me from trying to do so in public) but let’s, for the sake or argument, pretend that I am… Read More

Lake Forest College's middle campus.  Note presence of both lake and forest.So you want to be a professor of creative writing? You've come to the right place: we're hiring! It's a visit… Read More

If you're inclined to think that active controversy about poetry in the mainstream media is a sign that things are going well for the art, then we're living in a very auspicious moment indee… Read More

Whatever you think the "other" kind of poetry is, and whether you hate that kind of poetry or not, I hope you'll take a look at my essay "Hating the Other Kind of Poetry" in the latest issue… Read More

Hot news, people—the latest issue of the reborn Copper Nickel has arrived, fresh from the good people at the University of Colorado.  It has Tony Hoagland, Paige Ackerson-Kie… Read More

Hey hey! The Kafka Sutra is now available for pre-order at the MadHat Press website!A bargain! A great gift for all occasions!With images by Sarah Conner and a cover by Kriss Abigail! G… Read More

You’ve got to be kidding me. Really? You haven’t heard of Papirmass? Don’t worry, people, I’ll fill you in. Papirmass is sort of like a literary journal, if a literar… Read More

You’ve got to be kidding me. Really? You haven’t heard of Papirmass? Don’t worry, people, I’ll fill you in. Papirmass is sort of like a literary journal, if a literar… Read More

Migrants, we're told, present a crisis for Europe—untold thousands trek over dusty trails from Syria, or put themselves at the mercy of the Mediterranean as they set out from North Afr… Read More

Robert Creeley and Charles Bernstein at BuffaloI'm very happy to announce the call for papers for Poetry City: The Founding of a New American Poetry at Buffalo, 1963-2003.  It will be t… Read More

Where, you ask, is the place to be on the evening of Tuesday, September 15th? From 7:00-8:00 pm in Chicago it'll be the Poetry Foundation, at 61 West Superior, for a free reading featuring M… Read More

You know what would really bother Gore Vidal, were he living today? A lot of things—the persistence of homophobia, say, or the banality of the mass media, or the continued overextensio… Read More

Hardly anyone thinks of Sun Ra as a poet.  A visionary outsider figure even in the realm of music, where his work is only occasionally taken as seriously as it ought to be, he has almos… Read More

The good people at "Where do you write, my lovely?" (who appear to have an expansive definition of loveliness) asked me to write a few words about where I write, and provide a few photos. &n&hell…Read More

Great news! The new issues of two of my favorite literary journals, The Laurel Review and The Notre Dame Review, have dropped from the sky.  The latest Laurel Review is a… Read More