Robert Pinsky’s POEMJAZZ
I’ll admit I’m a bit of a lazy poetry reader. When I read novels I’m ok with a 1200-page epic (Game of Thrones!) now and again, but when it comes to poetry, I want brevity! (Admit it; so do you.) If a poem sprawls onto a 2nd page, ok– fine. If it runs more than 4...
Adrienne Rich: Tonight No Poetry Will Serve
I remember, as if it were yesterday, reading "Diving into the Wreck" for the first time. Just as vividly, I recall the first time I heard a reading of "What Kind of Times Are These." Today I learned that Adrienne Rich passed away.
Poets Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison In Conversation
Baroque is a word that will never spring to mind in connection with Ted Kooser-- instead, plain spoken or direct. But not completely. In addition to the quiet openness of Kooser’s poems are his subtle insights into the vagaries of human activities.
An Interview with Poet Christopher Hennessy
In the past couple weeks, Christopher Hennessy has had a poem featured on Poetry Daily and his debut collection Love-In-Idleness has been named as a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. I thought it'd be a good time to ask Christopher a few questions, and he was kind enough to answer them....
Wrestling with Arda Collins, Part 3: A Look at “Low” and “Pool #13″
In part 3 of this strange and wandering series of posts about the poetry of Arda Collins, I'm going to look more closely at her poem "Low," which first appeared in The New Yorker on June 2, 2008. And then we'll glance quickly at "Pool #13" from her collection It Is Daylight.
Poet Mark Strand Interviewed on Here & Now
Mark Strand, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and describer of all things chilly or absent, appeared yesterday on NPR's Here & Now to discuss his latest collection Almost Invisible. Coincidentally or not...
Winners and Judges of the Griffin Poetry Prize
The Griffin Poetry Prize is the world’s largest annual prize for a first edition single collection of poetry written in, or translated into English. Two $65k prizes are awarded each year-- one to a living Canadian poety, and an international prize granted to a living English-language poet from any country in the world (which can...
The Waste Land: The iPad App
We all know that April is the cruelest month. It's also National Poetry Month (at least for the US and Canada; the UK has to wait until October). So, that gives you a couple weeks yet to prepare...
May I suggest you get into the spirit of things with an iPad app?
Waiting for “Pitch” by Poet Todd Boss
I've been doing a lot of waiting lately-- living out of a suitcase while I travel for work, waiting for the next destination; waiting for my dad to go into isolation in the hospital for a 17-day procedure; waiting and passing the time with him in his room; waiting for various results; waiting to hear...
Making a Film From Nick Flynn’s “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”
I'm just finishing Nick Flynn's first collection of poems Some Ether, which won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award in 2000. The book is incredible, but I'm pacing myself a bit.
Nicelle Davis and The Living Poetry Project
Poetry isn’t always found in books or being slammed from a stage. Poet and teacher Nicelle Davis is trying to underscore that fact. As agent provocateur she has embarked on The Living Poetry Project.
Poet Wislawa Szymborska: On Death, Without Exaggeration
Czelaw Milosz told the story of a group of famous Polish poets riding to another poet's funeral, speeding actually, who were stopped by the police. When the officer recognized two of the poets, Milosz himself and Wislawa Symborska,...
Poet Christian Wiman: Given a God More Playful
I've made no secret of my Poetry Foundation fandom. Poetry Off the Shelf is my favorite podcast since the invention of podcasts (with the POETRY Magazine podcast a close 2nd); their website and the Harriet blog are, like, awesome; and I've been reading POETRY pretty religiously for about 4 years.
Winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Except for one year following WWII, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry has been awarded every year since 1922 to honor an exceptional collection of original verse by an American poet. Below is a list of winners by year, broken up by decade. Did they have it bad for Edwin Arlington Robinson, or what?
Poet Louise Glück: LOST LOVE’s Tiny Pendant of Iron
Last week I posted about Yusef Komunyakaa's "Facing It" and the kind of surface sadness we can experience as emotional tourists (or readers of a poem). I said of this feeling: It’s not that kind of deep, inexpressible sadness which pulls like a magnet on the heart throughout a lifetime.
Poet Kim Addonizio & the Intense Beauty of Words
The body and all it’s pleasures, difficulties, and disappointments lives and breathes in her work; not just the body but all our passionate encounters, as well as our physical and psychological maneuverings.
Yusef Komunyakaa Visits the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
I cry easily: at movies -- while listening to records -- I cry occasionally while reading, though the teary eyes make the reading tougher. And perhaps not surprisingly, I cry at places too: Ground Zero, Gettysburg, Nuremberg, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The Weekly Paraphrase: 7 Days of Poetry News in Under 60 Seconds
After much controversy over the prize's new hedge-fund sugardaddy (where 2 nominated poets pulled out of the running), someone has finally won the T.S. Eliot Prize. Scottish poet John Burnside took home the prize and £15,000 for his collection Black Cat Bone.
A Couple of Horses: Ted Kooser & Maxine Kumin
Before I'd ever read a single word of Maxine Kumin's poetry, she was, in my mind, linked with horses. In the anthology where I first encountered her work, there was a picture of Kumin standing next to a horse and a dog. All the other photos in the anthology were of solitary poets...
Wrestling with Arda Collins, Part 2: “Garden Apartments”
A few weeks ago, I realized that there was something -- strange -- about Arda Collins' It Is Daylight that kept pulling me back in. But her voice was so unlike other poets that I've returned to over the years; it got me wondering-- what exactly do I like about these poems?
Poet Paul Merchant: Not a Time Machine in Sight
The affinities in these poems are sympathies evoked about various poets, and range from the Roman poet Cattulus (1st century B.C.), and Count Borromeo III (from 16th cen. Italy), to the medieval Japanese printmaker Hokusai.
The Weekly Paraphrase: 7 Days of Poetry News in Under 60 Seconds
Noteworthy occurrences in the wide world of poetry-- for the week ending January 14th, 2012.
An Interview with Poet Sandra Beasley
I have the closing of Borders Books to thank for my first encounter with Sandra Beasley. During the last week of their Going-Out-of-Business sale, when you could pretty much just walk out the door with books, I thought I'd go on a shopping spree through their poetry section.
Criticism and Identity: Who Needs Poetry Anthologies?
If truth be told, the recent fracas between Helen Vendler and Rita Dove (and the many poets who are tentatively choosing sides) over Dove's editing of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry has got me a little worried about my own aesthetic prejudices.
Poet Kenneth Patchen’s Wondrous House
Poems are mentors. From them I have learned things I might never have experienced any other way. This poem, if you look at it very closely is quite unremarkable - a few beautiful images, nice form - but if you look away slightly and don't think about the white bear...
The Weekly Paraphrase: 7 Days of Poetry News in Under 60 Seconds
Noteworthy occurrences in the wide world of poetry- for the week ending January 7th, 2012. Well, I skipped a week. Hell, it was the holidays. But it's a new year now...
August Kleinzahler Asks “Are You an Ideal Reader of Poetry?”
Author Elmore Leonard may wake up every day saying, "Thank fucking Christ I'm not a poet!"-- but according to August Kleinzahler, it's a far more worthy job to carry off one successful poem than it is to write 41 best-selling novels.
William Matthews’ Suburban Feral Children Roam the Mall
A quick look at Matthews' endearing villanelle about mall-rats and masturbation; and how one man practices memorizing and reciting that poem in public.
Winners of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition
The Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is the oldest annual literary award in the United States. Here's a list of every winner since 1919.
Wrestling with Arda Collins, Part 1
The penultimate poem in Arda Collins’ collection It Is Daylight ("The Sky As With Bells, As With Nothing In It”) is an enactment of observation through distancing language: a kind of poetic version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
