2017-07-13 14:30
The author constructs a very cogent argument about contemporary culture, in particular its narcissism. “Bad art is from no one to no one”, she states. “Aspiring to fame i… Read More
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2016-06-01 18:28
Available for pre-order here! Read More
2016-04-22 16:00
what other dude you know own a whole color?" - Nate MarshallAs a public service, I offer a compendium, the compilation of which is still in progress, of legit PRINCE-related poetry info.Viz… Read More
2016-01-19 15:19
2015-11-09 18:51
This is no place to add my mite to the confusion that exists on the subject of what is meant by "understanding" a poem. "Understanding" is something that people more respectable than m… Read More
2014-12-02 16:08
They are back, the angry poets. But look! They have come with hammers and little buckets, and they are knocking off pieces of The Monument to study and use in the making of their own sma… Read More
2014-11-25 21:26
An open letter from Danez Smith, whose poem "alternate names for black boys" has been sadly all too resonant with recent events. --> We Must Be the New Guards: Open Letter to… Read More
2014-11-12 21:41
Poetry has been slammed by Harpers. It’s been declared dead at the Washington Post. It’s been called AWOL by NPR Books. Whenever recent observers announce poetry’s demise… Read More
2014-07-21 17:53
New movements in literature are those which copy the last century but one. If they copy the last century, they are old-fashioned; but if it is quite clear that they are much more than a hund… Read More
2014-07-14 20:59
Philip Larkin once said he didn't understand the word "sentimentality," figuring that Dylan Thomas's definition of alcoholic—"a man you don't like who drinks as much as you do"&mdas&hell…Read More
2014-06-25 14:42
The idea that somehow poets, and publishers, are failing the public at this time, in not delivering the goods, is a pernicious error that some poets (those especially who neither understa… Read More
2014-06-18 17:54
"Poetry and fiction have grieved for a century now over the loss of some vitality which they think they see in a past from which we are by now irrevocably alienated."-- Guy Davenport in th… Read More
2014-06-12 17:23
Historically, there are hierarchies of purity. Certain aspects of poetry are very, very pure. The lyric poem can’t be anything but the lyric poem. If you want to do what Sylvia Plath… Read More
2014-06-11 16:49
I’m not, in all the foregoing, attempting either to defend or critique what conceptual poets are up to. I just don’t see why people can get so aggravated about what these poets d… Read More
2014-05-05 16:57
Translation is the ultimate humanist gesture. Polite and reasonable, it is an overly cautious bridge builder. Always asking for permission, it begs understanding and friendship. It is opti… Read More
2014-04-04 14:36
I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and her… Read More
2014-03-31 21:26
If we are to think about poetry as a kind of violence, we will have to rethink form itself. It can no longer be the fence which separates poetry from other kinds of discourse. It must inst… Read More
2014-03-18 18:00
"Sentimentality" is often the accusation brought by the critic when he would refuse some experience or idea arising in the poem that does not satisfy or support his personal world of values… Read More
2014-03-18 17:59
"Little magazines (and I wish to god they wouldn’t call themselves “little” but literary; it is a mind state that builds smallness—let’s use the good words) t… Read More
2014-02-10 20:03
"It totters when she licks it with her tongue." - Robert Frost Two roads diverged in yellow wood. And then converged. And that has made no difference.* Is the new Sappho a bit… Read More
2014-01-22 16:41
Virginia Jackson, in Dickinson’s Misery (2006), reminds us that we cannot understand the what of lyric without understanding the when. She traces the process by which, since the 19th c… Read More
2013-12-14 16:29
“The language they think of as democratic anti-elitist are really the scraps of the English language that have dropped from the feasting tables of the oligarchs. This sort of ord… Read More
2013-11-09 14:07
On the El not long ago, I met a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who is now a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools. We discussed what it means for a country to suffer from the deteri… Read More
2013-11-01 15:29
--> Given the mental brownout I suffer when confronted with abstractions like “race,” “class,” “gender,” “politics,” I’ve becom… Read More
2013-10-02 16:30
The real question is why so many readers (poets, critics, journalists, etc.) expect poetry to carry the burden of cultural repair. No one writes jeremiads deploring the novel (or at least… Read More
2013-09-26 14:57
Authority is a slippery thing, and its nature is going through yet another permutation in literary life. There are plenty of young, gifted critics writing fiercely and argumentatively in r… Read More
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