Rafter of Satan September 20, 2007: You gotta love those poetry explication exams in undergraduate English classes. (more...) by Rigoberto González

Miss her, Catullus? September 20, 2007: I really enjoyed reading Steve’s post about translation. A lot of my writing time is spent not working on my own things, but translating. Translation is a great boon to a poet. You never have to face the white page alone if you don’t want to. I think of translation as a special kind of deep reading. It lets you try on other voices, and [...] by A.E. Stallings

and the pleiades September 19, 2007: I've been looking again at Sherod Santos' slightly controversial volume Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation. A few of you might remember Garry Wills' broadside against it, and Rosanna Warren's response. Wills thought it inaccurate, not really a translation, and hence a betrayal: Warren and others thought the poems, often enough, worked in [...] by Stephen Burt

Wednesday Shout Out September 19, 2007: Watershed moments happen unexpectedly and they sometimes come in the most surprising of shapes. In the following poem by Scott Hightower, a youth with an entire life yet to live comes across a life already lived via a memoir, and the Ethel Waters story becomes a paradigm for hard living (is there any other kind?) that resonates throughout this [...] by Rigoberto González

Nowhere’s Vernacular September 18, 2007: I [heart] A.E. Stallings’s post on the vernacular: Do I think the “plain-spoken” impetus in poetry has gone to far? Yes. "Plain-spoken" often just means dull and listless and unimaginative writing. Real plain-spoken people are more imaginative than that. “Idiomatic” after all, is Greek for “individual,” for “peculiar.” There are [...] by Ange Mlinko

To Our Readers September 18, 2007: Where is Kwame Dawes? Did we muzzle Kenneth Goldsmith after his Madonna/Koons post? Why have Patricia Smith’s musings and shout outs slowed down? And who are all these newcomers prattling and jabbing away on Harriet? (more...) by Emily Warn

Texture September 18, 2007: During Greece’s long hottest-on-record summer, and while Arcadia was, literally, burning, and while I was without babysitting and left with the lioness’s share of child care (we have a three-year old, Jason), I took up . . . knitting. (more...) by A.E. Stallings

a world of words to the end of it September 17, 2007: We don't want our toddler to watch much TV, but we do let him watch some things, and we watch them with him: Meerkat Manor, for example, and WNBA basketball (congratulations to the Mercury!), and, now, a new show called Word World, an animated series designed to teach reading, in which all the characters and most of the sets (a DOG, a SHEEP, a [...] by Stephen Burt

The Quetzal Quill (and the Henny Penny Syndrome) September 16, 2007: I attend at least two poetry readings a month in New York City. A few venues I check on periodically like The Bowery Poetry Club and Cornelia Street Café—both are fabulous spaces that lend themselves to the intimacy between a reader and an audience. So when the time came that I decided to curate my own series, I turned to Angelo Verga, poet [...] by Rigoberto González

Champagne September 16, 2007: These Jeanne Moreau-ish Bourgeois eyeballs (cast upward as, we are told, is proper to champagne sipping) led me to the entrance of the Williams College Museum of Art in a faint drizzle. Autumn has a light touch here: a burgundy fringe on the roadside, gold and blush in haptic patches on the tree crowns, like the burnish on a pear. Inside, [...] by Ange Mlinko