A Cure for Writer’s Block October 22, 2007: To clarify: I’ve never suffered from it. I don’t mean this as a boast. I’m simply saying that I’ve been too busy writing to not be able to write. I’m always navigating through so many different projects at once—book reviews, essays, poems, and now, blog entries—that I don’t have time to encounter that state of distress I’ve [...] by Rigoberto González

Postcard from America: Place Names October 21, 2007: We are currently in West Chester, Pennsylvania, but we have been travelling over the last week through Kentucky and Indiana, enjoying the exotic particulars of place names. We keep driving past signs here pointing us to a town called "King of Prussia". Our favorite may have been in Indiana, Gnaw Bone, Indiana, where we saw a camper/rv park [...] by A.E. Stallings

like winter October 20, 2007: Fall moving into Boston, and along with the up-and-down ALCS, which has more or less mesmerized our household-- game six is tonight!-- we've had a series of misty days: the weather hasn't changed my reading habits much, but it has helped me pick a poem from Laura Kasischke's new book, on which more below the fold. (more...) by Stephen Burt

H is for House October 19, 2007: A is for apple. B is for butterflies. H is for housesparrow, hedgesparrow. H is for hen. C is for cat. H is for hedge, hedgehog, horsetail, hawthorn, heather, hemlock, holly, hellebore and hazel. H is for [hats?], my [hat?] H is for haberdashery, hunting, [harthing?], [halfing?], hog, horse and hiccup. W is for the wren has a loud, dramatic song [...] by Ange Mlinko

naive advice for paisley rekdal October 18, 2007: Paisley Rekdal, who has written some neat poems herself, says it's a bad idea to drink five bottles of wine a week, and certainly I wouldn't try it. (I prefer n pints of coffee and m pints of beer per week, where 2n>3m. Values of both n and m vary from week to week and are not for public disclosure.) More seriously, Paisley Rekdal also says it's [...] by Stephen Burt

One Last Anagram from Canada October 17, 2007: ----------------- Language is a virus from outer space. Language is a pursuer of covert aims. Language frames our virus as poetic. Language tapers our vicious frames. Language for a sum is a corrupt sieve. Language for us promises a curative. ----------------- (more...) by Christian Bök

Postcard from America: Filling Stations October 17, 2007: We've left Chicago, and are now in Georgetown KY, located in the rolling hills and white fences of horse country. This is also bourbon country, though we discovered (on trying to get a couple of beers at a filling station--it had been a long day of travel with an ornary toddler) it is a dry county. We'll be driving today to Bloomington Indiana, [...] by A.E. Stallings

Wednesday Shout Out October 17, 2007: As the second winner of The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize hits the bookstore shelves (future shout out, y’all) I am reminded of one of Montoya’s early champions, poet Lee Herrick, founder and editor of In the Grove, where Montoya’s first published poems appeared. Sadly, Montoya’s only book the ice worker sings was published posthumously in [...] by Rigoberto González

GONZO PURO! October 16, 2007: At birth, before the umbilical was cut, Ralph Steadman pooped in the hand of the hospital nurse. This marked, according to Steadman, the “earliest manifestation of a Gonzotic event.” He claims to have sole understanding of Gonzo, a term taken from an astonished medical student, Giuseppe Gonzaga, who witnessed the immaculate crap and shouted, [...] by Fred Sasaki

small, busy flames October 16, 2007: John Keats wrote 64 sonnets, some very famous and rightly admired all over the wide world, and some that wouldn't get, nor deserve, much attention, had their author not been Keats. And some fall in between: there are good lines in bad poems, startling stanzas next to dully conventional ones, and effects in unfamiliar poems which remember, or echo, [...] by Stephen Burt