Haunted America June 16, 2008: A Public Space is a quarterly literary magazine launched in 2006 by former Paris Review executive editor Bridget Hughes. It features poetry, fiction, non-fiction, criticism, and art. Produced in downtown Brooklyn out of a beautiful office that may have once been a garage but with its wide wooden front doors feels more like an old stable, the [...] by Alan Gilbert

Poetry in a small town…and a sample worker poet June 15, 2008: The other night, I rolled two miles downtown to a poetry reading—it was a lovely near-solstice night. Now that I’ve traded academia for a disability “retirement” in a small town, the peripheral ephemera of poetry (well, except blogging) is not so accessible to me. (more...) by Lucia Perillo

Are you a poet? June 14, 2008: D.A. Powell's mention of Etheridge Knight had me reminiscing: In 1984, when I was 20, I hung out at a Philadelphia bar called the Bacchanal, especially on Mondays, when they had their poetry readings. I had written so few poems, I could memorize them all. During the open readings, I'd recite my poems without paper, clutching a bottle of beer, with [...] by Linh Dinh

Call For Donations June 13, 2008: Etheridge Knight When I was an undergraduate, serving as editor of Sonoma State University’s literary magazine, I called my favorite living poet and asked him if he could be the “featured poet” in our next annual issue. Etheridge Knight was flattered, but also frank. “Will you pay me?” he asked. He explained that he’d been diagnosed [...] by D.A. Powell

Weekend Project: Compose 8 Bars for Bongo Drums June 13, 2008: Via Jason B. Jones at Bookslut, a questionnaire sent by poet and impresario Gerard Malanga to Daisy Aldan back in the real gone days of 1960: Are You a Beatnik? by Travis Nichols

Avant-Garde and Modern, Part Two June 12, 2008: From the haze of fever, fatigue, and nausea emerge further thoughts on the title topic. I hope that they will prove to be of interest. If not, I've got more up my sleeve... The poetic avant-gardening (to adapt Ron Slate’s clever phrase) of the past sixty years or longer has largely been a process of rediscovering the Moderns, turning over the [...] by Reginald Shepherd

Artists in the Workforce June 12, 2008: Four sentences that stand out from the NYT's story on the NEA's study of Artists in the Workforce: 1. "If every artist in America’s work force banded together, their ranks would be double the size of the United States Army. " 2. "Among artists under 35, writers are the only group in which 80 percent or more are non-Hispanic white." 3. [...] by Travis Nichols

“I Hear America Singing” June 12, 2008: More than a decade ago, just after I’d published the first issue of XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, a sheaf of poems arrived at my office. They were bi-lingual poems (in Khmer & English) from a poet then new to me, U Sam Oeur, whose collection Sacred Vows was scheduled to be published in 1998. I fell in love with the poems, and published two of [...] by Mark Nowak

End of the Line June 12, 2008: After more than fifteen years, the Poetry in Motion program that put poems by W.S. Merwin, Lucille Clifton, Lorine Niedecker, and Emily Dickinson—among many, many others—alongside ads for Dr. Z’s acne treatment and Lasik surgery on New York City’s subways, has ended. The New York Times reported last month that the "Poetry in Motion" [...] by Travis Nichols

Poetry and Technology June 11, 2008: A 42-year-old Asian man was found hanging by the neck, suspended by a rope attached to the raised shovel of a John Deere model J D 410, diesel powered, backhoe tractor. He was last seen alive by his parents, the prior evening at 10:30 when he walked out of their shared rural home. Shortly thereafter they heard the tractor engine start, as they had [...] by Linh Dinh