Things I’ve learned while blogging for Harriet . . . August 31, 2008: —that blogging is hard work I have a new respect for people who blog every day. I’m a regular reviewer of art and literature for a variety of publications, and during busy periods I sometimes have a deadline a week. Yet even this doesn’t compare to the rigors of having something intelligent and coherent (not that I always succeeded) to post [...] by Alan Gilbert

Labor Day Adieu August 31, 2008: Several years ago in my essay for a special symposium on Adrienne Rich published in the Virginia Quarterly Review (82:2), I outlined a series of industrial accidents and union/social movement engagements with capital that had all occurred during the week the essay was written: 42 workers trapped in a flooded Chinese coal mine… 600,000 Korean [...] by Mark Nowak

Thank You, Thank You, You’re Too Kind August 30, 2008: Solipsism n. 1) the theory that the self can be aware of nothing but its blog. 2) the theory that nothing exists or is real but one's blog. In 1984, there's a telescreen in each room that can never be turned off, only dimmed. A sort of two-way mirror, it studies us as we watch it. Before writing his diary, an act punishable by death, before he [...] by Linh Dinh

Fast poetry August 30, 2008: Mark’s post about the Republican National Convention site being 2.68 miles from his house reminds me—in a non-self-congratulatory way—of the various political protests I’ve attended over the past decade, many of them with poets, some with non-poets, and a few alone. I say “non-self-congratulatory” because what I’ve mostly come away [...] by Alan Gilbert

I could be blogging or I could watch the red dog running in the field August 29, 2008: Despite this experiment with blogging, I remain jittery about how computers have changed our experience of poetry, and our experience with each other, which is a bigger question that isn’t suitable to being addressed in something as ephemeral as a blog entry. Some quick thoughts though, from a computer know-nuttin, Harriet’s one and only [...] by Lucia Perillo

“The Republicans are coming! The Republicans are coming!” August 29, 2008: 2.86 miles. According to Mapquest.com, that’s the distance from my front door to the barricades outside the entrance to the Republican National Convention, which opens on Monday at the Xcel Energy Center here in Saint Paul, Minnesota. On Labor Day no less. Four years ago, when we as a nation supposedly democratically decided that four more years [...] by Mark Nowak

Foetry! Get it? Faux-etry! August 28, 2008: The sordid ghost of Foetry.com has stalked the internets this past week, with much being made of Stacey Lynn Brown’s tale of contest troubles with Cider Press Review. According to Brown’s blog—and Cider Press’s Robert Wynne --Brown won Cider Press’s contest last year, but had her award subsequently “revoked” for reasons no one can [...] by Travis Nichols

Poetry’s violent dream August 28, 2008: Blogging for Harriet this summer has felt a little bit like a slow striptease—never knowing how many personal details to reveal, or which parts to keep covered up. It’s my sense that readers enjoy a little bit of personal information (I definitely do), but too much—for me, at least—and I begin to think, Who cares? . . . or worse, if the [...] by Alan Gilbert

Heaven Is a Place Where Nothing Ever Happens: On Tim Dlugos’s “Turandot” August 26, 2008: I am in the hospital for the fourth time in the past five months, this time for excruciating abdominal pain that turned out to be due to a bowel obstruction which has still not cleared up. I have had a tube down my throat and have been unable to eat for over a week. I spend most of my days trying to sleep through the pain and nausea. In the course [...] by Reginald Shepherd

Kneejerk poetics August 25, 2008: There are certain notions about poetry that must apparently always automatically spring to mind. I've decided to start a list of them here. (more...) by Don Share