Interpretations of dreams July 31, 2008: Dreams are corrosive agents. Although dreams are usually imagined as expressions of unconscious desires or fears, it’s their form that’s most important: a fluid attack on the least secure parts of the psyche’s structures. That this happens while a person is sleeping doesn’t qualify this action but amplifies it. Dream imagery and narrative [...] by Alan Gilbert

Switch it up July 31, 2008: Last week’s public performance component of Urban Word’s Summer Institute of Social Justice and Applied Poetics was a fairly formal affair. As I described in my previous Harriet entry, Theodore Harris presented work from his Our Flesh of Flames artist book, and Amiri Baraka read poems. The Bowery Poetry Club was packed, there were lots of [...] by Alan Gilbert

Either/Or(r) July 31, 2008: I'm a little surprised that the exhumation in the New York Times back in May of a pair of poems written by Barack Obama hasn't excited more twittering in the blog-po-sphere. Here they are... (more...) by Don Share

Yonder All Before Us Lie Deserts of Vast Eternity July 31, 2008: I was going to call this entry “Why I Am Not a Critic.” But then I realized I’d probably get blasted for that, because, after all, everyone is a critic—and—everyone is a critic. But what I mean to say is that I generally don’t write a whole lot of criticism. The truth is, I don’t much care about criticism. I think it’s wonderful [...] by D.A. Powell

Bill Knott’s rejection slips July 29, 2008: [More, many, many more!] by Linh Dinh

On Bill Griffiths, Skeptical Militancy, & “Ghost Town” July 29, 2008: Back in the early 1980s in the anathema that was Reagan-era Buffalo, “Ghost Town” was as close as it got to our anthem. “This town… is coming like a ghost town… All the clubs have been closed down…” Little did I know then that, across the pond, Bill Griffiths (who I’ve mentioned here before at Harriet in “Poetics (Mine)”) was [...] by Mark Nowak

Summer Camp with Bernadette Mayer July 28, 2008: Poet and teacher Bernadette Mayer has put out a call for poets to come out to her upstate New York house for weekend experimental writing workshops focusing on “investigations of traditional forms made new.” Mayer is a legendary teacher, providing the catalyst for countless experimental movements large and small, from L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E to [...] by Travis Nichols

Art or propaganda? Both. July 28, 2008: I just spent two late evenings at Matthew Barney’s massive studio in Long Island City watching grindcore and death metal bands play, along with a bizarre and hilarious “diarrhea humiliation” performance. (Not sure if coverage of this might turn up, though I don’t have a sense Artforum.com was there.) I also had to write two short reviews [...] by Alan Gilbert

Rethinking Working-Class Literature July 25, 2008: Sonali Perera, an Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers, has published an engaging new essay in this year’s first issue of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies that dovetails in unique and productive ways with much of what I’ve been writing here for Harriet the past two months. “Rethinking Working-Class Literature: [...] by Mark Nowak

Taking Dictation from a Martian Muse July 24, 2008: While I am still in the hospital, I'm having Robert post this piece: Jack Spicer’s notion of poetry as dictation is hardly original (and originality is a notion Spicer would quarrel with in any case), but Spicer acknowledges its sources and rings his own changes on them: Yeats’ spooks bringing him metaphors for his poetry, or Cocteau’s [...] by Reginald Shepherd