Crabby Thought of the Day January 16, 2008: Some time ago, poetry expressed universal experiences; a little later it posed important questions and, even if it was about as radical as a lukewarm mug of Sleepytime tea, tended to take risks and transgress. Lately it’s a really good thing to attack the language. I’m all for attacks. But is there any more dreary cliché than the feeling that [...] by Daisy Fried

More Thoughts on Translation January 16, 2008: I had planned to post this as a reply in the comments section to Vivek Narayanan’s eloquent response to my posts on translation and my post on Paul Celan in particular, but I’ve decided that both the topic and my reply are substantive enough to warrant a new post. (One of the advantages of blogging is a much greater level of response than one [...] by Reginald Shepherd

Dead Letter Office January 16, 2008: Dear Letter, It's been a long time since I've written you. But I think about you often. It's always great to hear from you, to hold you, to gaze at the stamp of your beauty, your unique hand. Reading this article made me worry if you are OK. Are you OK? (more...) by A.E. Stallings

Designer Label Poetry January 15, 2008: Derek Melander "Nomad", 2007 (video) In the grand tradition of Nick Beef's DieKu" series or Claude Closky's Mon Catalogue, Derek Melander creates a poem out of the labels on the clothing in his closet. The resultant poem is: Dreams Divided The Natural Uniti One Free Voice Above The Crowd R Nomad Identity InStride Spellbound Acrobat S Bridge The [...] by Kenneth Goldsmith

Random Poetry 02 January 15, 2008: ----------------- "art, by, contemplate, distribution, except, free, galleries, hexagonal, is, just, know, letters, melancholy, number, of, part, quite, railings, shafts, this, universe, variations, with, you, zero." (First appearances of words that begin with a chosen letter of the alphabet in an English translation of "The Library of Babel" by [...] by Christian Bök

The taste of silence January 15, 2008: "In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes, there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the dampness and richness of the soil. Under the soles slides the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls." (more...) by Don Share

These Were a Few of My Favorite Things January 15, 2008: I almost titled this post “Everybody’s Doing It, Why Can’t I?”? (after the Cranberries' first album), since it seems de rigueur to compile year-end lists of various kinds (ten best Britney Spears meltdowns, ten worst George W. Bush malapropisms, etc.). I actually love lists but, as usual, I decided to jump on the bandwagon after it had not [...] by Reginald Shepherd

rounding up and rounding off January 14, 2008: As some of you know, I write-- indeed, I promise various editors that I will write-- reviews and essays about other people's poetry with an almost depressing frequency. When I started trying to do that sort of thing I would visit this wonderful bookshop, pick up an armload of poetry books, and try to review them. At this point I'm lucky enough to [...] by Stephen Burt

Random Poetry 01 January 14, 2008: ----------------- TRIUMVIRATE (The only English word that might be enciphered in the famous, random series of letters cited by Jorge Luis Borges, who writes in "The Library of Babel": "I cannot combine some characters, dhcmrlchtdj, which the divine Library has not foreseen and which in one of its secret tongues do not contain a terrible [...] by Christian Bök

The Pure Products of America Go Crazy January 14, 2008: That’s me at the Pennsylvania Farm Show last week in Harrisburg doing a woman-and-goat-and-baby version of Picasso’s famous Man-With-a-Lamb sculpture. I love that there’s a road somewhere in Pennsylvania called Lick Run. I’m not sure that I love that I’ve become the kind of person who pays to get pictures taken of her with her human [...] by Daisy Fried