What I Learned Blogging for Harriet (after Alan Gilbert) November 30, 2008: That in response to postings, a lot of people prefer to send back channel emails than to publish their comments on site. That one criterion for death is the failure to communicate or respond. That I generally like poetry ridden hard and put up wet. That some poets are a lot more interesting in their poetry than they are in their commentaries. That [...] by Forrest Gander

Verse Charades November 30, 2008: I offer you two charades: 1. My first doth affliction denote, Which my second is destin'd to feel And my whole is the best antidote That affliction to soften and heal. 2. My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings, Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease. Another view of man, my second brings, Behold him there, the monarch of the seas! But, [...] by Javier Huerta

THAT WHICH I SHOULD HAVE DONE I DID NOT DO November 30, 2008: "already i missed not working and felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of everyday that is wasted in your life..." (more...) by Olena Kalytiak Davis

Revolver November 30, 2008: I first came across Robyn Schiff’s poem “Dear Ralph Lauren” at jubilat (where I’m a guest editor) and was floored by the formal and emotional torques of this wonderfully odd poem. Put simply, it’s a poem about Ralph Lauren (real name: Ralph Lifshitz). Put crudely, it’s about the narrator’s obsessive father fixation with Ralph [...] by Cathy Park Hong

The plain shape of things November 30, 2008: Something stops making sense, won’t stay still, can’t be grasped, and then you come across the plain shape of it - a simple version that says ‘This is what I mean.’ Once when I was broken-hearted, I went to stay in a place where it rained every day. Each morning when I opened my door and set out along the path, I found a heart-shaped [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw

What Is Eco-Poetry November 29, 2008: Owl Visitation recorded by visionary artist Thomas Ashcraft (play the brief movie clip at the site below) Thomas Ashcraft, Heliotown As globalization draws us together and industrialization and human population pressures take their toll on natural habitats, as species of plants and animals flicker and are snuffed from the earth, it may be [...] by Forrest Gander

McGonagalls All November 29, 2008: Javier Huerta: More and more I am convinced that what we need now is a revival of bad poetry. So I’m working on a book of bad poems. Friend Unnamed: You mean another one. JH: Ah, well . . . FU: Listen, why do you speak of “revival’? Don’t you think bad poetry has been alive and well all these years. In the biggest journals. In the [...] by Javier Huerta

A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century: Don’t Look Away November 28, 2008: Adina Hoffman, author of the biography of Taha Muhammad Ali: My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century
 As Adina Hoffman notes in the Prelude to My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, “no one has ever written a biography of a Palestinian writer [...] by Forrest Gander

Europe: Don’t Look Away, 16 New German Poets
 (Burning Deck) & New European Poets
 (Graywolf) November 26, 2008: New European Poets
, Edited by Wayne Miller & Kevin Prufer (Graywolf, 2008) There’s a lot to complain about Graywolf’s New European Poets
, edited by Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer, but only if you’re a sneering, retromingent malcontent. Otherwise, it’s impossible not to celebrate this book with a big whooping hurrah. It was [...] by Forrest Gander

Clear Cutting November 25, 2008: To do five readings, I went from Philadelphia to San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Portland, then back to San Francisco. I slept in five homes, two hotels and two trains. I saw old friends, made many new ones. The sweetness and generosity I encountered upset my habitual guardedness. On an Amtrak between Klamath Falls and Eugene, I chatted with Jack D. [...] by Linh Dinh