Sharing a common Minnesota locale, the Hold Steady look to John Berryman for lyrical inspiration on their new album. Critic
Brandon Stosuy finds out just what the band sees in the respected, yet often-depressed, poet.
We first
heard Kenneth Goldsmith give this paper last week as part of the Presidential Forum at the 2006 Modern Language Association Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Along with several other panels and programs, this Forum considered the role and meaning of sound in poetry.
Our columnist
Jeff Gordinier wants to pass his love of poetry on to his child. Finding a suitable poem, however, is proving extremely difficult. What's it going to be: Basho's haikus, Dr. Seuss, or something completely off the grid?
Skeptics, a dour Anglican priest, a Zen student, and other poets contemplate religious feeling in these poems selected by
Mark Jarman.
W.S. Di Piero takes a stroll through the through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition of art either inspired, owned, or exhibited by Ambroise Vollard, perhaps the most influential art dealer ever.
The December 2006 issue of Poetry features 12 portraits of poets by
David Schorr. The artist explains how a chance meeting 30 years ago in Rome turned an obsession with a few faces into a lifelong affair with literary portraits.
For 20 years,
Wendy Salinger has run the Schools Project at New York’s 92nd Street Y, bringing well know writers together with high school students. Even though most of the students don’t know Salman Rushdie from Adreianne Rich, it still seems to work. Salinger gives us a tour.
The November issue of
Poetry magazine features
D.H. Tracy’s essay
“Bad Ideas,” a consideration of serious and unserious poetry. What’s the difference? PoetryFoundation.org asked Tracy to select six serious or unserious poems from our archive and write a few lines about each.
Teaching at a private high school out East,
Brian Staveley was sure that he had his students pegged. After the students nixed Herbert and Keats, giving Donne and Milton a pass, Staveley had to change his approach. Enter the zombie filled poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
