Mommy Must be a Fountain of Feathers July 7, 2008: Summer has come slowly to Seattle, but it was fully present last weekend. The audience at Gallery 1412--there to hear Don Mee Choi read her translations of the South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon--arrived sun-dazed and pink-cheeked, with swimming hair, flip flops, and (in my case) ice cream. We shuffled into the dark makeshift gallery—a rickety [...] by Travis Nichols

Different kinds of messages July 7, 2008: Saturday night’s reading concluding week three of Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program traced a large arc. It featured Eileen Myles, Daisy Zamora, and Anne Waldman. Myles read from a forthcoming work entitled The Inferno: A Poet’s Novel. Much more than a novel, the manuscript is part ars poetica, part memoir, and part underground [...] by Alan Gilbert

Summer school July 6, 2008: I’ve never attended summer writing programs at Bread Loaf, Squaw Valley, Iowa, Juniper, Aspen, etc., but I feel confident in saying that the one held each year at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado is the most progressive—aesthetically, intellectually, politically. Perhaps Cave Canem’s Summer Retreat approximates it, although it’s only [...] by Alan Gilbert

The Usable Field…Let’s try this again July 2, 2008: I just finished Jane Mead’s new book, The Usable Field, and wanted to post a poem from it because I read with interest, chagrin, and both agreeable and argumentative impulses, the comments following Doug Powell’s post on Larissa Szporluk (it’s in the archive now, see “New Bat City.”) One reader made the remark that she found the posted [...] by Lucia Perillo

Labor Love July 2, 2008: Late last year, The Monserrat Reporter published an article whose title begins “Deputy Governor of Montserrat writes book…” We can all imagine the subject matter of hardcovers that would be penned by (or ghostwritten for), say, the governor of Wyoming or Alabama or New Jersey or _________ (fill in your favorite state). In fact, just last [...] by Mark Nowak