Bits: Reading Around February 20, 2008: Some things I liked this week: Terrance Hayes has two good poems in the January/February 2008 APR; you can read “Support the Troops” here, which I liked, and I liked even more “The Shepherd” which is a surprising riff on James Dickey’s “The Sheep Child,” on sheep and on fathers. It’s hard to give a sense in an excerpt of the [...] by Daisy Fried

Late Review 01 February 19, 2008: ----------------- "Bad abba the endgame. In- seminal doomdom alert: pueblo naturans or else. But the breadcrumbs are gone, and the story goes on, and how haply an ending no nextwise has shown us, nor known." from "Tale" in Yesno by Dennis Lee Anansi Press, 2007 ----------------- (more...) by Christian Bök

Random Poetry 08 February 18, 2008: ----------------- "Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly? Now is the time that face should form another; Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb By unions married, do offend thine ear, Making a famine where abundance lies, And threescore year [...] by Christian Bök

Seeing is believing February 18, 2008: This rose is a rose and its mirror image—eight petalled. Above and below the two heads glow, larger, translucent. Together, they form a hexoctahedron—that is, if you were to cut out the two ‘roses’ and fold them in triangular facets you would make a 48 faceted solid of eight irregular ‘planes’ composed of six facets. (more...) by Don Share

Snow on the Parthenon February 18, 2008: It has been snowing—yes, snowing!—the past two days in Athens, and the concrete city of horn honking and jack hammers, illegal parking, protest-marches and garbage collection strikes, has suddenly been transformed—briefly— into something nearly silent and pristine. The Parthenon, sugar-dusted, gleams against a bright blue sky. Youths [...] by A.E. Stallings

On Poetry February 17, 2008: (Research report: Couldn't find a picture of one with the legs stuck together. Most look like this now.) One whole summer, I taught kids to dive at the Albany JCC. First the sitting dive: sit on the edge of the pool, feet in the gutter or hanging into the water, close to but not in the shallow end. Raise your arms up alongside your head, press [...] by Daisy Fried

My new New Year’s Resolutions February 17, 2008: I have almost never made a new year's resolution, but online events of the past month (I think we all know what I'm referring to) have prompted me, belatedly, to make some for this year, plus a couple more just for good measure. Instead of nine muses, I have nine resolutions. This post is partly humorous, but fundamentally, I'm quite serious. [...] by Reginald Shepherd

Ugly Duckling Presse February 17, 2008: (The “e” at the end, the UDP website explains, comes from Kafka- or K-Presse, a small German publishing house.) First of all, isn’t this like the best name for a press? This art & publishing collective was founded in 1993 by “a couple of college kids who wanted to put together a zine, without really knowing what that is.” Fifteen years [...] by Rigoberto González

OPEN BOOKS: A POEM EMPORIUM February 15, 2008: Here’s an unusual double-duty entry: both a special Thank You to my favorite poetry bookstore Open Books in Seattle, where I stand around and gab for hours about all-things poetic while browsing the fabulous shelves (over 9,000 titles and counting!—indeed the poetry reader’s paradise), and a special Friday Shout Out to its co-proprietor, [...] by Rigoberto González

Edward Lear February 15, 2008: I've been thinking about a post on Lear, but a couple of entries have pushed it to the fore... Steve's which mentions the ghazal, and Daisy's on Rexroth in Rome. And I have been thinking too about poet-painters and painter-poets. And it ties in as well with some of my recent entries on children's literature--Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss. One of [...] by A.E. Stallings