Stagecoach, Detached August 17, 2007: Courtesy of the website wood s lot, I found this site by the trenchant name The Business of Emotions. "Americans now buy their emotions and experience them as they consume the goods and services to which they have been attached by artful emotional and neuro-marketers." Shouldn't every poet with ambitions to sell books -- especially books [...] by Ange Mlinko

Something Else to Do August 15, 2007: A few months ago I tried to quit the blog. I emailed the po foundation honchos and my fellow bloggers to say I didn’t think I had it in me to blog more regularly, and I was tired of feeling so guilty about my erratic postings. Well, actually, this is what I said: i feel really rotten that i'm the lamest blogger on the blog. i cannot put my baby [...] by Rachel Zucker

Why I Am Not a Poet-Mom August 15, 2007: Kwame's post (below) got me thinking about, of all things, motherhood. Because he brings up our cultural identities as something both constructed (a narrative) and a given (we can't choose it), and because the one aspect of identity I've ever been asked to write about was -- not my race, or my nationality, my parents' immigration, or my gender, [...] by Ange Mlinko

Black Enough? August 14, 2007: Warning: There is poetry somewhere in this blog, but you are going to have to dig deep to find it… The things I am reading and the things I am writing and the things I am doing are all making me think about America and Americanness. Recently I was asked in a public forum what were my thoughts on Barak Obama’s dilemma with African Americans. [...] by Kwame Dawes

The Outernationale August 13, 2007: Peter Gizzi's The Outernationale is magnificent. It gives me what I need from poetry -- a reminder to feel alive -- even as it addresses a bleak civic landscape. The long, excellently palindromic "Vincent, Homesick for the Land of Pictures" sent me hunting for this quote: Exiting from positivism -- casting aside the possibility of art's going [...] by Ange Mlinko

It’s 1:31 a.m…. August 11, 2007: ...and I'm exhausted. But I'm sitting in front of my laptop, bleary-eyed, listening to a muted Lightnin' Hopkins and staring at the 17th line of a poem that I've been working on for four years. This profession--this writing of measured and meaningful lines--is for crazy people. I can hear the warm, contented snoozing of my husband and [...] by Patricia Smith

What I did over (the last week of) summer vacation… August 9, 2007: Certainly couldn't afford to, but this past week I decided to reread the poetry books I keep rereading. Trying to think of why I keep coming back to these volumes, I realized that I was thinking too much. Let's just say riveting narrative, muscle, muscle, muscle, guts. Let's say porch stories, inherent music. Let's say I'm a creature of habit. For [...] by Patricia Smith

Tourbillon August 9, 2007: If you live in or around New York City, you know that it was in chaos yesterday after torrents brought three inches of rain in one hour down on its delicate mechanism, a nouveau riche’s Philippe Patek accidentally submerged. A tornado (tourbillon) even touched down in Brooklyn. When a waterspout on the Hudson moved in and shredded trees like a [...] by Ange Mlinko

Felicitous Words August 6, 2007: “Poems are the impossibility of plainness rendered in plainest form.”—Susan Howe Henry VIII bequeathed to his royal children a love of seeing bulls and bears “baited,” that is, penned up in a ring or chained to a stake and set upon by fierce dogs. The bulls—on occasion “wearied to death” for sport—seem to have been more or less [...] by Ange Mlinko

August Wilson August 4, 2007: August Wilson’s monumental project, the Century Cycle of plays is soon to be released as a single publication—a beautifully (it seems to me) packaged production of all ten of the plays in the cycle. This is exciting news. I have been thinking a lot about August Wilson lately having spent most of this week at the National Black Theater Festival [...] by Kwame Dawes