“Something dark will happen to them anyway.” February 27, 2007: Is this poetry? by Harriet Monroe

Journal, Day Four February 22, 2007: So I started meeting poets. Now, you didn’t walk into a bar and always find Ginsberg, Snyder, Whalen, McClure, and Corso all sitting there like a matched set, any more than you would have found Picasso, Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and McAlmon nailed into place for constant viewing. But there were some poets who were around. There was Bob [...] by Robert Hershon

Journal, Day Three February 21, 2007: Anyway, I spent very little time in my pad. Sometimes I dropped into Frank’s Bar for a drink after work and didn’t get home for two days. Even when I was at low ebb, in the back of my mind I knew I was a regular, a guy who could run a tab, who always knew the bartender’s name, who could stand up to any obnoxious tourist, knowing Bad-Talking [...] by Robert Hershon

Journal, Day Two February 20, 2007: I moved to San Francisco 50 years ago. It wasn’t for the poetry. In 1957, I had a degree in journalism from New York University and two years’ experience as a copy boy and editorial assistant with the New York Herald Tribune. I was ready to take my place in the dashing, hard-drinking world of reporters. All that Hildy Johnson/The Front Page [...] by Robert Hershon

Journal, Day One February 19, 2007: Poets who have just started submitting their work to magazines are often tortured by the big questions. White envelope or tan? Flag stamps or commemoratives? Fold the paper in half or in thirds? Should I tell the editor how much I love to ski or just give the ages of my children? Against that background, we are very pleased to present the [...] by Robert Hershon

Andrew Feld & Pimone Triplett: Journal, Day Five February 16, 2007: In April 2005, Pimone and I had the dizzying experience of a private tour of Harvard’s Houghton Library Rare Book Collection, where Emily Dickinson’s fascicles are housed. The occasion of our visit to Cambridge was not a happy one (sorry—whenever I write about Cambridge I fall into Victorian locutions): we were there to visit a sick family [...] by Andrew Feld

Andrew Feld & Pimone Triplett: Journal, Day Four February 15, 2007: Start with one of the buzzwords of our time: globalization. In speaking of the parts that go missing in translation, M. Norbese Philip reminds us of the increasing homogenization of place as it goes the way of pure display, whether corporate or artistic. In our everyday world amid the contemporary cathedrals of cash, from Safeway to the local [...] by Pimone Triplett

Andrew Feld & Pimone Triplett: Journal, Day Three February 14, 2007: In today’s post I’d planned to discuss my editorial models and ambitions for Seattle Review, but this will have wait until Friday (although I will address some editorial concerns and ideas today) owning to a certain derailment in our lives. We all flew into Houston last Wednesday, to spend a few days here reading at the University of Houston [...] by Andrew Feld

Andrew Feld & Pimone Triplett: Journal, Day Two February 13, 2007: By most accounts the Sublime is less sublime than it used to be. Its popular usage today is a quick lesson in our culture’s priorities writ small, ranging from the million-selling punk/pop/ska band Sublime to a porn site called the Sublime Directory, offering complete downloadable ecstasy with lots of “adult picture galleries.” Gone from the [...] by Pimone Triplett

Andrew Feld & Pimone Triplett: Journal, Day One February 12, 2007: March, 2003, Oregon, which means there’s another two months left of rain, and I’m driving Jack Gilbert in my Saturn from his room at the Mountain Writers Center in Portland, where I work running a reading series, to a noon reading at Mount Hood Community College. The doors on my car leak and any good downpour works its way in as a trickle on [...] by Andrew Feld